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It was meant to be another ordinary day at the church office, but when I arrived at my desk, a mysterious package wrapped in brown paper welcomed me! A couple of hours later, my department head explained that I had three days to carry out a forensic audit on one of our major donee’s financial books; warning me that various relevant documents may be missing!

At the time, my responsibilities straddled between the church’s finance dept (troubleshooting budgetary issues) and the missions dept (managing missions finance and training). Eventually, I ended up in the family life dept as a counsellor. The church’s membership then exceeded 6,000.

The donee was a large Christian NGO in a third world country which had been generously supported by the church for several years. I was not informed of the reason for the audit, which was probably wise, enabling me to approach the task with an unbiased frame of mind.

As I unpacked the parcel and cursorily scanned its content, I immediately noticed that several bank statements and cheque stubs were missing. The ledger and other daily record books had a few pages torn out. This appears to be a typical investigative case to ascertain any abnormal diversion of funds that veered from the support constraints of the church.

Together with our church’s own documentation, I began putting together the NGO’s financial canvas over the years. Not unlike many of my more intractable psychological cases, a Voice will at times guide me, “Look further into that figure or account… That expense is a cover-up… Investigate that amount... etc.” With these promptings, the inspective bookkeeping details swiftly fell into place.

By the end of the day, the audit of the NGO, with an accompanying report, were completed. With a sigh of relief, I settled back into my chair. A substantial sum of donated funds appeared to have been siphoned off the NGO’s bank account. I thought aloud, “What could the Director of the NGO, a senior pastor of a church, have done with such a huge sum of money?” Immediately, the Voice shot back, “You will soon discover what he did.

He abused his stewardship of My resources for personal gains.” I sat up, questioning, “What’s going to happen to him and our support?” He answered, “Your senior pastor will decide!” A couple of days after the submission of the embezzlement report, our senior pastor came to my desk.

He mentioned that a whistleblower had arrived in Singapore about a month back and informed him that the church’s donations for the NGO charity had been used personally by its director to purchase an imported van and a scooter, completely new sets of furniture, and paint, for his own home.

I was flabbergasted! Unquestionably, this disclosure explained the huge sum that had disappeared from the books. A month later, the support for the NGO was terminated. Biblical stewardship entails managing and utilizing all the resources provided by God for His glory and the wellbeing of His creation.

It emphasizes that God is the ultimate owner of all things (Gen 1:28; Psalm 24:1), and we are entrusted as caretakers of His creation, and this includes our time, talents, finances, and the environment. Hence, as Christians, our stewardship of the resources that God has placed in our hands are accountable (Genesis 2:15; Matthew 25:14-30).

Yahweh is no man’s debtor and He will not tolerate how we squander or mis-apply His resources. Besides, stewardship invariably involves being fruitful (i.e., multiplying resources) for God's kingdom (Genesis 1:28; John 15:8; examples in Scripture include Joseph in Genesis 39, who managed Egyptian resources wisely during a time of famine, and Jesus' parable of the talents).

For the majority of us, to mentally and emotionally separate ourselves from the resources in our hands in view of our stewardship responsibility remains challenging, as we have grown accustomed to exclusively managing them according to our individualistic preferences.

It would nonetheless take an intentional effort to include Yahweh in the overall management of our finances, especially on major expenditures; if only we are convinced that we are indeed stewards of His resources!

About Coram Deo

Coram Deo — before the face of God. This blog reflects on Scripture, world events, science, music, psychology, and the human mind — always through the lens of Christian faith. All of life is lived before the face of God.