Friends General Conference

Together we nurture the spiritual vitality of Friends

Stewardship of Personal Resources

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Queries

Do we regard our resources as gifts from God, to be held in trust and shared according to the Light we are given?

What are we doing as individuals and as a meeting to nurture our gifts?

How do we encourage the members of the larger community to be careful stewards of their gifts?

Advices

“To turn all we possess into the channel of universal love becomes the business of our lives”: this, in the words of John Woolman, is the meaning of Quaker stewardship.

And this applies to all that we have and are, as individuals, as members of groups, and as inhabitants of the earth. As individuals, we are obliged to use our time, our various abilities, our strength, our money, our material possessions, and other resources in a spirit of love, aware that we hold these gifts in trust and are responsible to use them in the Light.

Investment of assets and consumption of resources require our careful stewardship. As Friends, we can direct our investments toward socially desirable ends, avoiding speculation and activities wasteful or harmful to others. We seek to participate constructively and without greed in the economic life of the community and to refrain from undue accumulation of wealth as well as irresponsible borrowing.

Voices

Of the interest of the public in our estates: Hardly any thing is given us for our selves, but the public may claim a share with us. But of all we call ours, we are most accountable to God and the public for our estates: In this we are but stewards, and to hoard up all to ourselves is great injustice as well as ingratitude.

John Woolman, 1720

In reading those short last essays of John Woolman, which are little treatises on economics, I have been struck by his intuition that wrong roads were being taken by his contemporaries, upon which we their descendants should find our direction almost irreversibly fixed. Unrighteous use of other human beings, unrighteous use of one’s own powers, irresponsible use and waste of land and other natural resources - he touches on them all. It is evident that he was convinced that the spiritual life of men and women is deeply conditioned by their economic life. 
Mildred Binns Young, 1966

Friends need to examine their decisions about obtaining, holding, and using money and other assets, to see whether they find in them the seeds, not only of war, but also of self-indulgence, injustice, and ecological disaster. Good stewardship of economic resources consists both in avoidance of those evils and in actions that advance peace, simple living, justice, and a healthy ecosystem. 
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 1986

To “stretch beyond one’s compass” grasping at shadows, and encumbering oneself with more than is needed for simple, wholesome living, is at variance with all our best traditions. 
Caroline E. Stephen, 1890

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