Leadership Is a Trust

Adeniyi has been the caretaker of a block of eight flats in Surulere for eleven years. The owner is a retired nurse who lives in Houston with her children and comes home every two or three years. In between, Adeniyi collects the rents, pays the electricity bills, calls the plumber, settles quarrels about the generator schedule and climbs onto the roof himself when the rains find a new crack. He has never once called the building his.

He keeps a green hardback ledger in a nylon bag on top of his wardrobe. I saw it the first time I visited him. Each page is ruled into two columns. On the left he writes money: rent received, receipts for the borehole pump, the cost of a new gate padlock. On the right he writes people. Flat 3: Baba is unwell, his son now pays the rent. Flat 5: Mama Tobi’s ceiling leaking again, carpenter coming Thursday. Flat 7: new tenants, young couple, wife expecting.

I asked him why he bothered with the second column. The owner had never asked him to keep it. He looked at me as though the answer were obvious. “Because when she comes, she will ask about them first.”

Two streets away there was another building, and another caretaker. That man raised the rent without telling the owner and kept the difference. He let his nephew live in the boys’ quarters for free. When a widow on the ground floor complained about the soak-away overflowing into her kitchen, he told her that if she called the owner abroad, she would find her things on the street. “I am the landlord here,” he said. Everyone on that street knew it was a lie. He had simply been left in charge for long enough to forget whose building it was.

Both men held the same kind of position. Both had keys, ledgers and the power to make life easier or harder for the people under their care. The difference between them was not authority. It was what each man believed about ownership.

Every leader stands somewhere between those two caretakers. The pastor, the managing director, the head teacher, the director of a ministry department and the father at the head of a household all hold keys to something that belongs to someone else. This teaching is about learning to hold those keys the way Adeniyi holds his.

Nothing you lead belongs to you

The Bible’s word for Adeniyi’s role is steward. In the Greek of the New Testament it is oikonomos, literally the manager of a household. A steward was usually a trusted servant, sometimes a slave, placed over the property, staff and daily affairs of a wealthy master. Joseph held such a position in Potiphar’s house, where his master “left all that he had in Joseph’s hand” (Genesis 39:6). The steward might handle enormous sums. He might give orders to dozens of people. He might be the most powerful man most of the household ever dealt with. But he owned none of it.

That is precisely how Paul asks the church to think about its leaders: “Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Corinthians 4:1). And the one thing asked of such a person is plain: “it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2). The church in Corinth had been ranking its preachers like football clubs. Paul refuses to let them treat leaders as owners, and he refuses to let leaders treat themselves that way either. The next verses are remarkable. He says it is “a very small thing” to be judged by the Corinthians, and then adds, “yea, I judge not mine own self” (1 Corinthians 4:3). The verdict on a steward belongs to the Master. “He that judgeth me is the Lord.”

Peter uses the same logic when he writes to the elders of the scattered churches. He tells them to “Feed the flock of God which is among you” and warns them against “being lords over God’s heritage” (1 Peter 5:2-3). Notice the possessive words. The flock is of God. The heritage is God’s. Elders are given real oversight, but they are overseeing what has been allotted to them by Another, and they will meet Him “when the chief Shepherd shall appear” (1 Peter 5:4).

Once this settles in your heart, it changes the way you see every role you hold. The congregation is not your estate. The company is not your personal kingdom, even if your name is on the incorporation documents, because the people who work in it are image-bearers of God and not instruments of your ambition. The department you head will be led by someone else one day. Even your children, whom you will lead longer than anyone, are a heritage from the Lord (Psalm 127:3), entrusted for a season and then released.

Leadership, in other words, is a trust. Someone has handed you the keys.

The steward Jesus described

Jesus told a parable about stewardship that should be read slowly by anyone who has ever been put in charge of anything. He had just been speaking about readiness for His return, and Peter interrupted with a pointed question: “Lord, speakest thou this parable unto us, or even to all?” (Luke 12:41). Jesus answered with another question, and then a story aimed squarely at those who would lead His household.

Look first at the job description. The faithful steward is made “ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season.” His authority exists so that other people are fed. He is placed over the household for the household’s sake. The measure of his success is whether the servants under him receive what they need at the right time.

Then look at the reward. “Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.” So doing. The master does not reward the steward for having an impressive title or a large household. He rewards him for being found at the ordinary work of feeding people when the master walks through the door unannounced. Faithfulness is mostly unspectacular. It is the rice measured out fairly on a Tuesday when nobody important is watching.

Then look at the failure, because it begins in the heart before it reaches the hands. “But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming.” The unfaithful steward does not stop believing in his master. He simply decides that the master is far away and will not be back soon. Accountability has become theoretical. That was exactly the caretaker two streets from Adeniyi. The owner was in Houston. She would not be back for years. Why not behave like the landlord?

And finally, look at the principle that closes the parable: “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.” Responsibility and accountability rise together. Jesus even distinguishes between the steward who “knew his lord’s will” and the one who did not. The more you know, the more you have been entrusted, and the more visible your influence, the greater your answerability. That runs against every instinct of human power, which tends to assume that the higher you rise, the fewer questions you should face. In Christ’s household it is the other way round.

Punchline

Authority in Christ’s household exists so that others are fed. The steward is measured by what happens to the people in his care when the Master walks through the door.

Two ways to betray a trust

Look again at what the unfaithful steward does once he has decided his master is delayed. He “shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken.” There are two failures in that sentence, and between them they cover most of the ways leaders go wrong.

The first is the abuse of people. He beats the very servants he was appointed to feed. Power that was given for their good is turned against them. In our day the beating is not usually with a stick. It may be the manager who humiliates staff in meetings because he knows they cannot afford to resign. It may be the pastor who shouts down a question from the pulpit, or the ministry head who threatens volunteers with spiritual consequences if they step back. It may be the man who uses his position to gain sexual access or to frighten someone into silence. Every one of these is the same sin in the parable: turning against the household the authority that was meant to serve it. Where such behaviour involves violence, sexual abuse or exploitation of children and vulnerable adults, it is not only sin. It is crime, and it should be reported to the authorities as well as to whatever church or company oversight exists.

The second is the consumption of resources. He begins “to eat and drink, and to be drunken.” The food that was meant to be distributed in due season is now being consumed by the steward himself. This is the leader who treats the organisation’s budget as his personal allowance, the church fund that quietly pays for the pastor’s second home, the procurement officer who inflates the contract and keeps the difference, the union leader who negotiates a deal that enriches the executives while the members wait.

Jesus told a second parable about a steward a few chapters later, and it begins with exactly this accusation:

“Give an account of thy stewardship.” The charge was waste. The steward had handled his master’s goods as though they were his own to spend. And notice the consequence: “thou mayest be no longer steward.” Trust can be withdrawn. Positions that are held as a trust can be lost when the trust is betrayed. A leader who imagines that his appointment is permanent and unconditional has misunderstood what an appointment is.

Most leaders do not begin as the unfaithful steward. They drift there. A small privilege becomes an expectation. An expectation becomes an entitlement. A question about the entitlement starts to feel like disrespect. And one day the leader finds himself saying, in substance if not in words, “I am the landlord here.”

The people are the measure

If leadership is a trust, how do you know whether it is being kept? The parable gives us the test. Ask what is happening to the people under that leadership. Are they being fed, or being beaten? Are the resources reaching the household, or being consumed at the top?

Scripture’s description of David as a shepherd-king puts it beautifully:

God took David “from following the ewes great with young.” There is a lovely detail in that phrase. A shepherd following ewes heavy with lambs has to move slowly, at the pace of the most vulnerable in the flock. That is where God trained His king. And when David came to the throne, he “fed them according to the integrity of his heart; and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands.” Integrity and skill. Character and competence. Both serve the same end: the good of the people.

David did not always live up to that description, as the prophet Nathan would one day have to tell him to his face. But the standard stands. Toward the end of his life, in his last recorded words, David put it this way: “He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God” (2 Samuel 23:3).

Paul gives us the same test in personal terms. Writing to a church that had questioned his motives and compared him unfavourably with flashier preachers, he said this:

“I seek not yours, but you.” That one line separates stewardship from exploitation. The exploiting leader looks at a congregation, a workforce or a constituency and sees what he can take from it: money, applause, labour, loyalty. The steward looks at the same people and asks what he can give them. Paul even uses the picture of a parent: “the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children.” In healthy families the stronger give to the weaker. When leadership reverses that flow, so that the weak are constantly drained to enlarge the strong, something has gone badly wrong.

So here are some honest questions for any leader. After five years under your leadership, are the people more mature, more able, more secure? Or more anxious, more dependent and more tired? Have the junior staff grown, or have they simply served your growth? Are those who disagreed with you still able to speak? Has anyone been quietly crushed by a decision that made your life easier? The good of those you serve is the test of how your authority is being used. Not their applause, which can be manufactured. Their good.

Resources held in trust

Nugget

Stewardship covers more than people. Leaders also handle resources, and every one of them is held in trust.

Money is the obvious one. Church offerings are given to God, and those who manage them handle sacred trust. Company funds belong to shareholders, and in a broader sense to the staff whose labour produced them. Public funds belong to the public. Paul took remarkable care over the relief offering he gathered for the poor in Jerusalem, arranging for trusted men chosen by the churches to travel with it, “Providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men” (2 Corinthians 8:21). He did not consider transparency an insult to his apostleship. He considered it part of faithfulness. If an apostle submitted his handling of money to visible accountability, no pastor, treasurer or chief executive should consider himself above it.

Time is a resource too. A leader’s decisions spend other people’s hours. The meeting that could have been an email, the vigil that ends at four in the morning for workers who must be at their desks by eight, the overtime demanded without pay: each spends what is not the leader’s to spend. A faithful steward asks whether he is using people’s time as carefully as he uses his own.

Information is held in trust. Leaders often know things others do not: the true financial position, the reason for a decision, a confidential matter in someone’s life. Information can be shared to build understanding or hoarded to maintain control. It can be kept confidential to protect someone, or kept secret to protect the leader. The difference matters.

Influence is held in trust. A word from the pulpit or the corner office carries weight. A leader’s casual remark can lift someone for years or wound them for a decade. James warns that the tongue is a small member that “boasteth great things” (James 3:5), and that warning lands hardest on those whose words are amplified by position.

And reputation is held in trust, both the reputation of the organisation and, for Christian leaders, the honour of the name of Christ. Nehemiah, when he refused to take the governor’s allowance that previous governors had extracted from a struggling people, explained that “so did not I, because of the fear of God” (Nehemiah 5:15). He held the office for twelve years without consuming what was legally available to him, because he knew whose name he bore.

Stewardship in the office and the boardroom

Many who read this lead in the marketplace rather than the church, and the principle of stewardship applies to you without any reduction. Paul gave instructions to the business owners of his day, the masters of households and workshops: “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven” (Colossians 4:1). The reason he gives is the same reason Jesus gave in the parable. You also have a Master. The managing director is a steward. So is the supervisor of three cleaners.

What does that look like on a Monday morning? It looks like paying salaries on time, because the Scriptures repeatedly condemn the employer who holds back wages (James 5:4). It looks like telling staff the truth about the company’s situation when a hard season comes, rather than letting them discover it when the cheques bounce. It looks like refusing to sign off on a misleading report to the board or the regulator, even when the figures would make you look better. It looks like protecting a junior colleague from a powerful client who is mistreating her. It looks like making the decision that is right for the organisation’s long-term health, even when a different decision would maximise your bonus this year.

It also looks like accepting accountability structures willingly. Boards, auditors, compliance officers and governance codes exist because people with power are tempted to forget whose power it is. A Christian chief executive who welcomes a strong audit committee is doing what Paul did with the Jerusalem offering. He is making it easy to see that the trust is being kept.

There is a liberty in this as well. A leader who knows he is a steward does not have to carry the weight of ownership. He does not have to pretend to be the final source of every answer. When a crisis comes, he can say honestly, “This belongs to the Lord, and I will do my best with it.” He can rest at night, even with problems unsolved, because the outcome does not finally depend on him. Adeniyi does not lie awake over the building’s future. He does his work and sends his voice notes, and the owner carries the rest.

Giving account without fear

Punchline

The parable in Luke 12 is sobering, and it is meant to be. But a believer who reads it should also remember who the Master is and how He has dealt with us.

The letter to the Hebrews places every human steward alongside the Son:

Moses was faithful in the house, as a servant. Christ is faithful over the house, as a Son, and “whose house are we.” Every Christian leader is in the position of Moses at best: a servant within a household that belongs to Another. But that also means the house does not rest on our faithfulness. It rests on His. The Son has already been perfectly faithful. He gave His life for the household. Our stewardship is a response to His, carried out under His care.

That is why the New Testament can speak of giving account with joy. The writer to the Hebrews describes faithful leaders as those who “watch for your souls, as they that must give account,” and he hopes they may do it “with joy, and not with grief” (Hebrews 13:17). A steward who has been forgiven, who knows the Master’s kindness, can serve without dread. He still takes the account seriously. But he does not serve as one waiting to be caught. He serves as one who wants to hear the words, “Well done.”

And for those who have failed as stewards, there is grace. Peter, the man who asked Jesus whether the parable was for the disciples, went on to deny Him three times. After the resurrection, Jesus met him on the shore and three times asked, “lovest thou me?” Each time Peter answered, Jesus gave him the same charge in different words: “Feed my sheep” (John 21:17). The Master restored the steward by giving him the household to feed again. If you have misused a trust, the way forward is honest confession, real repair to those you have harmed, and submission to whatever accountability is right. Restoration to fellowship with God is immediate for the repentant. Restoration to a public trust may take time and must be earned through rebuilt trust. But the Master who restored Peter has not changed.

The owner of Adeniyi’s building came home last December. She arrived on a Friday afternoon without much warning, as owners do. Adeniyi put a plastic chair under the mango tree for her and brought out the green ledger.

She did not open it at the money column. She ran her finger down the right-hand side of the page. “How is Baba in Flat 3? Did the ceiling ever get fixed for Mama Tobi? The young couple, did the baby come?” Adeniyi answered each question. Baba had passed, but peacefully, and his son was still in the flat. The ceiling was fixed. The baby was a girl. Only after all that did she turn to the figures.

When she finally closed the book, she said to him, “You have looked after them as if they were mine.” Then she corrected herself, and smiled. “They are mine. That is why you looked after them.”

One day the Master of the house will sit down with your ledger too. He will look at the column you kept for money and buildings and budgets. But I believe He will look first at the other column, the one with the names. How did they fare under your care? Were they fed in due season? Were they safe? Did they grow?

Keep that column well. They are His. That is why you were given the keys.