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The Redeeming the Dirt Podcast
The Redeeming the Dirt Podcast
Missional Stewardship: Radical Discipleship through Redemption of the Ordinary
What if faith in Jesus could transform your everyday routines and responsibilities? This episode of the Redeeming the Dirt podcast challenges you to rethink how your Christian beliefs can permeate all aspects of life, especially in agriculture. Join me, Noah Sanders, as we unpack the concept of missional stewardship—where faith meets practical living. Discover how the biblical call to stewardship and discipleship can not only redeem our relationship with Creation but also reflect a life of surrender and purpose that glorifies God.
Explore how living as a missional steward isn't just about rule-following; it's an invitation to embody faith in daily actions. From the Apostle Paul's example of a quiet, productive life to practical initiatives like Foundations for Farming, Farming God's Way, and Equipping Farmers International, we illustrate how faithfulness in the ordinary things of life can lead to extraordinary impacts. Learn how these approaches empower individuals to reduce poverty and dependency while showcasing a heart grounded in God's wisdom rather than man's.
We'll also discuss the power of integrating faith with farming, creating missional opportunities for discipleship in community development. Resources like the Well-Watered Garden Handbook and Redeeming the Dirt Academy offer practical guidance for those eager to engage in faith-based outreach. Whether you're cultivating a garden or a relationship, this episode encourages you to embrace your role in spreading God's kingdom, using your gifts purposefully to make a lasting impact.
Welcome to the Redeeming the Dirt podcast. It's great to be with you today. I'm Noah Sanders and today we're going to talk about a term I've been thinking about recently called missional stewardship. You know, here at Redeeming the Dirt we're focused on helping people live for Jesus, excel in agriculture and make disciples, and really what we're helping people do is to integrate this idea of faith and, in our case, farming, and how our belief as Christians, our values as Christians and the way we think because of the gospel, how that impacts our everyday life, including agriculture, how it helps our everyday life, including agriculture, how it helps to address the problems that we face. And then, as we begin to see that redemption in our lives, we begin to see healing and restoration, that that gives us then a testimony to be able to share with others about Christ in an organic, real way, because it's actually from our heart and it's who we are, and as I've been thinking about that concept lately and seeing and hearing from lots of different people who have that kind of perspective, who really feel called to do something like start a homestead, but it's not about them, it's really about, or let's say, it's not about the homestead only or just the kind of life that they could get from that, but it's about the impact that it could have on their family. It's really because they feel God calling them to do that and that there's potentially something that God wants to do for His kingdom in terms of them being able to serve others or experience Him in a different way or again disciple their kids or engage with people. That's really the motive and the purpose and the real meaning behind what they're feeling called to do in agriculture. And yet I see this in more than just agriculture. I see it in people that are in other areas of stewardship, you would say, because land stewardship is definitely one area that we're called to be faithful with as um, as part of our mission as christians and what we really have.
Speaker 1:And when we look at the scriptures and we just kind of start from the beginning, we were made in god's image and we had this first, the first commission, where god said to be fruitful and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over it and and basically, uh, be his caretakers of the earth, working it, making it productive, caring for the needs of it, making it more beautiful, a better place for people to live, more productive and basically reflecting and being his image bearers in our role as stewards. And then then there's the second Great Commission, or the Great Commission, the first commission in the Great Commission, which is to go and make disciples, and it really is a result of and reflects basically the gospel or the story of how our original role as stewards submitting under the authority of the Creator we rebelled against His authority and, as a result, we said we want to be in charge, we want not to be stewards but we want to be the king. And so in that rejection in the Garden of Eden at the beginning, it resulted in broken relationships in our lives that God intended originally to be good and wholesome and part of our experience our relationship with our Creator, with our spiritual relationship, our relationship with ourselves and our identity and who we are, our relationship with others and our relationship with creation. All of those were broken when we rejected God's authority and wanted to be our own kings and didn't want to be stewards anymore. We want to be in charge and ultimately, you know when we want that authority ourselves, not only do we try to run our lives like we want against God and that results in a lot of problems, but we end up getting that authority to the world, to our own fleshly desires, to even satanic kind of power in order to fix and address the emptiness that we have because of that broken relationship with God, and it just ends up, instead of us being the king anymore, we end up being enslaved to those things. And we just see so much of that in the world around us today, not only just the problems we face today practically because of our not doing things God's way, but our eternal punishment that we deserve.
Speaker 1:The good news of the gospel is the king himself paid the price and made a way for us to be offered a pardon, to be completely forgiven and to be restored back into that original relationship, that original role as his stewards, as his image bearers.
Speaker 1:But now we have a second element to that is not only are we reflecting him as his stewards, but we're also as recipients of his grace sharing. We have a role and responsibility to share that offer of pardon, to be his ambassadors testifying to the grace that he's shown us, so that others could hear about it and receive it as well and also be restored back into their right relationship with God and begin to experience that redemption in different areas of life, and so that's really why stewardship is an important element and how it relates to the gospel, and what I've been seeing today with this kind of move to begin to integrate faith and practical things like farming or really discipleship and stewardship is just people beginning to recognize that our ability to make disciples and to show people not only how to be made right with God but how to walk with God and how to begin to acknowledge who he is, his ownership over our lives, his wisdom, the purpose he's given us, our role and responsibility to show love to others all of that impacts and is impacted by the way we live our lives and the way that we allow God to address and to speak into not just the spiritual side of life, but the everyday things that we deal with our, you know occupations, our work, our jobs, the way we manage our finances, the way we treat our and view marriage, the way we do parenting, the way that we like our goals in life and where we're trying to go and get to, and what we want to be about, our fun, our play. All these different areas are areas that the kingship of Jesus can be reflected, not in a legalistic way, but do we even care what God thinks? Are we trying to reflect him better in what we're doing or not? The ability to make disciples is impacted by who we are as disciples of Jesus, how we are following Jesus, how he is impacting our life.
Speaker 1:And if there's no way to practically relate our common problems that we have with other people and how Jesus is addressing and changing those, like my management of my garden or the way that I respond when my kids are being annoying or whatever if I don't have testimonies of how Jesus is helping me to learn to be a better steward of those things and to accept his grace in my life, to help me to learn to be who he wants me to be in those areas, then my ability to share and show other people how to follow Jesus is really hindered. On the other hand, if we only focus on stewardship and just how we can, you know, multiply what God's given us, build businesses, build homes, build farms and, you know, be able to give and share with others, that's great. But if there's not kind of a missional, bigger purpose to why we're doing those things, then it can become either just kind of all about us still, or we can become disenchanted with the cost of sometimes doing things God's way or trying to follow him in, not just listening to and accepting all that the world has to offer us. I think about a lot of homesteading families where, if it's just about the homestead and it's just about what you're doing as a, you know your cool life, that you're making on your homestead and you've left the city and you are, you know, raising chickens and growing a garden and maybe you're trying to live off-grid or whatever. There's a lot of neat things there, but there's a lot of sacrifice too.
Speaker 1:If it's not for a bigger purpose, if it's actually not just about yourselves and your own family, but it's got to be about how that is potentially being able to be an opportunity for God to use you to build his kingdom and to multiply not only the hope of the gospel but the hope of the impact Jesusesus has on our lives and how our values change and how the um, the, the simple things that god has given us, um to, and, and really the contentment that he, he offers and calls us to walk in, is way more satisfying than anything that the world has to offer, and it really is, is really is a foolish thing that we have to like the life of a Christian. If it's not for an eternal purpose, if it's not for a bigger picture, it really is foolishness in the eyes of others, and so there's got to be an eternal perspective to it. But if it doesn't have, if there's no practical ramifications to the practical effects of sin, then what kind of hope are we offering at the end of the day? Anyways, and really to me it's just a whole, it's a different way of looking at life, where it's not about you know where God is our referee and we're just kind of living our normal life and making sure that we don't you know where God is our referee and we're just kind of living our normal life and making sure that we don't, you know, offend him and that we stay within the rules. It's really that he's the coach. He gets to call all the shots, and it's not just that some of us are the, you know, really give up everything to follow Jesus and go into full-time ministry and the rest of us, you know, are stewards. In order to fund those that do that, it's that all of us are called to make disciples, all of us are called to be stewards, and what we're entrusted with as stewards looks different, and how God's going to use us to spread his kingdom is going to look different. But all of us are called to live with complete surrender, completely radically, for him, right now, with whatever we've been given. If that's to you know, plant your garlic and to weed it and that's out of obedience to seeking the Lord and seeing what he wants you to do, then that's the most radical. Planting your garlic is the most radical thing you could do this afternoon. If it's going and talking to your neighbor, yeah, and bringing a meal to them, that's the most radical thing.
Speaker 1:Whatever it is that we're doing, it needs to be an overflow of our seeking God, of our trying to obey him, and it's about being faithful with what he's given us, the knowledge he's given us, the passions, he's given us the skills, the resources. And everybody, then, is really called to be, in this case, a missional steward, one who is reflecting God in how we're using the time, talent and resources he's given us, and also one who's reflecting the redemptive, restorative miracle that Jesus does in the lives of people who have all turned away from him. You know, and so it's just this idea of it's not, it is actually through ordinary Christians, living faithful Christians, living ordinary lives in a radical way for God. That are some of the primary ways that God wants to multiply his kingdom, through that witness and through that model, in a sense, the Apostle Paul. Even though he did go on missionary journeys and those kind of things, he would go, and when he really wanted to, in some communities he would live and kind of live a normal life, not accepting support from anybody for periods of time and stuff, in order to show them what it looked like to live as a follower of Jesus, productively, as a light and a witness in that community. And we see that in one of my favorite verses, where in 1 Thessalonians, paul says make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you won't be dependent on anybody. So you have elements here of just it's not crazy radical things or unordinary things that are the primary thing we should aspire to, but it's actually radical living in the ordinary things, done in such a way that we are free because we're providing for ourselves and we're able to then serve others. We're not dependent on anybody, but we're also able to people, when they look at us, it's a, it's, it's helping them, say there's something about that that they respect. That you know. Of course there's. There's always an element of of rejection that Christians will experience because of our faith. But we should be disciples that are worth multiplying.
Speaker 1:People that have hope that other people wish they had, people that are experiencing practical progress and growth in their lives, not perfect prosperity, gospel kind of Everything's going to be perfect and happy but like to see progress in learning to love each other and learning to heal the land and learning to steward our finances well and not be just irresponsible in that way, in just seeing the humility and the faithfulness and the unselfishness of Jesus transform our practical lives, everyday, ordinary lives even that are quiet. That's more radical and more hard to find really than people that are ready to go do abnormal, radical, out-of-the-ordinary kind of things. And so we are all called to missions, we are all called to stewardship, and when you bring both those two together, being a steward reflects our change of heart and it helps us to do mission better, puts boots on the gospel, and doing mission while we're stewards gives meaning to the stewardship that helps us to become better stewards, rather really, and to see and to want that input and to want to realize our need for God in that area. You know, one of the things I love at George there's a George Washington Carver quote, and he was a believer. He said you know, when you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world. And I think that's something that's similar to one of the Proverbs that says you know, do you see a man skilled in his work? You know somebody that's a good steward says he will stand before kings.
Speaker 1:So this idea of the gospel with boots on is something that I've learned from some of my friends in Africa, my mentors there, and it's been interesting because I've seen several examples. Recently there was a friend of mine who was doing some real missional community in an area where people really needed Jesus and ended up starting a garden as a way to express and show stewardship. And stewardship, you know, that reflects a Christian worldview and the way that he was trying to approach the land and grow food as a way to engage with, to practically show the impact of the heart of Christ to the people in the community. Because when they were just, you know on mission just trying to make disciples and just share the message of Jesus, without any kind of practical stewardship in their lives that was visible to and allowed them to interact with people in their community, it was challenging to know how to display that and communicate that. So bringing an element of stewardship into the mission that they had in this community was something that has given them opportunities that they didn't have before.
Speaker 1:And then I have another gentleman I talked to recently that has a really amazing farm and has had a lot of success on the practical stewardship side and is beginning to look at how you know, it's not just about the farm. He is a really strong believer and is now looking at how can I use the reputation that I have as a good steward to bring people in that don't know Jesus, that are far from God, provide them opportunities to learn really great regenerative agriculture, good stewardship principles and techniques, and also they have the opportunity to go through some discipleship at the same time of hey, what does the Bible say about this stuff? Let's read Genesis together. No pressure here, but just these people, a lot of times people that are looking. There are people in that area, in that realm of wanting to start farming and that kind of thing that often are searching, and so he was able to bring a missional aspect to his good steward, to his stewardship on his farm that was allowing him to have a real impact on people when he was marrying those two together. It's not like he stopped his farm in order to do mission. It was his farm itself was giving him opportunities to more intentionally offer hope and training and discipleship to people in a missional way.
Speaker 1:You know there are a lot of ministries over the years that have really focused on how to make disciples or how to be good stewards, and I think what's neat, though today is to see kind of the integration of discipleship and stewardship, is to see kind of the integration of discipleship and stewardship. I've seen this. You know, historically, one of the examples of a ministry that's been around for a while doing this is Crown Financial Ministries. Larry Burkett did a great job of just really talking about how stewardship of money relates to the heart and, you know, teaching people to disciple people in God's principles for money in a way that addressed the heart and really helped point them to Jesus.
Speaker 1:And then Foundations for Farming, with Brian Oldreve and his things that he learned about stewarding the land but also about how you can't just give people good stewardship techniques without giving them hope and discipling them in the heart. And once he integrated those two discipleship and stewardship that's when they began to see people actually come out of poverty. And so today we have Crown, we have Foundations for Farming doing that, we have another network under Farming God's Way that are doing amazing things with also combining discipleship and stewardship. And then there's another ministry now that's working with a lot of church networks, called Equipping Farmers International. That is also working with how to integrate stewardship and discipleship as a way to allow churches in areas of the world that are normally dependent on Western aid to be able to experience and help their Christian members to now, through stewardship, be able to make a profit for the first time by stewarding the land well and then stewarding their finances well, and be able to support the local church, rather than that local church in Africa or Asia or whatever having to be dependent on Western aid. So it's been neat to start to see more ministries popping up that are integrating these things.
Speaker 1:But also you know, I hear from a lot of people being in the space that I'm in, and I just I hear that this is something that's on people's hearts. They really, you know, where what they're doing practically is motivated by an eternal missional motivation, and it's not just, oh, an opportunity to share the gospel, but it's kind of like the practical things of life, the thing that you're doing whether it's raising kids or whether it's, you know, fixing cars or whatever it is. When you're, when you begin to let Jesus transform the way you look at that, you think about it, then it begins to. All you have to do is just open your mouth to talk about what you do, and you are telling and showing people what kind of impact Jesus can have on their life, because you're telling them what kind of impact he's had on your life and it really starts with that, with thinking about it in your own heart. So I'm excited what God's going to do through this kind of movement that I feel like I would describe as missional stewardship, because it's bigger than just agriculture, and I think it's something that all of us are really called to, but that God's calling really specifically people into this space now, and so I'd consider, I just really challenge you to think about that call to um being stewards, to having that missional disciple making uh, motivation and desire through that um to live in light of.
Speaker 1:We don't just live in, we're not just stewards in a world that's all perfect and wonderful, like we still live in this context of battle. So there is a mission that we're on. We're not just in the new heavens and new earth at this point in time, we're not just before the fall. Yes, we're being stewards. We're being stewards in a broken creation with our own broken hearts and broken people around us that need that hope. But we don't want to just be sharing the message of pardon without being models of what Jesus shares like saves us to, in the redemption that he begins to do in our lives, that he can do in other people's lives.
Speaker 1:You know, first of all, do you really, do you appreciate the pardon that you have received, what you deserve, the grace that you've really been given in a way that makes you so grateful that you desire to share that same the offer and invite people to partake of that same pardon as you have? Do you care about other people? And if you don't care about other people coming to the Lord or experiencing the same things that you have, then do you really appreciate it yourself? So think about first of all if you're going to be a missional steward, you've got to fully appreciate the mission God's called you to because of the grace that you've received yourself. Another thing to think about is are you a disciple worth multiplying?
Speaker 1:Not just do you know what to say about the gospel, but people looked at your life. They copied and pasted not only your spiritual life, but the other areas in life, your relationships, your work, your maintenance of the practical things God's given you, your finances. Would that be something that would honor God if it was multiplied around your community? And you know just really the idea. I think it would be a duh for most of us.
Speaker 1:But it is this that we do have to ask ourselves honestly sometimes have I given Jesus ownership, given the authority back in every area of my life, or do I still have areas of my life that I treat or view as mine? You know Sunday's gods, the spiritual elements of God, are gods, but you know my car is mine, or my kids are mine, or the way I manage my money, apart from my tithe, is mine. That is a false view of life and it denies the authority that god has. And we tend to live and reflect uh, that um, when we haven't, if we're not acknowledging god's ownership in an area, it shows because we make decisions as if we have the authority to do whatever we want in that area. So it's good to say have I given, given Jesus, ownership of every area of my life? Do I view that I am a steward that's going to have to give an account for everything, every you know, talent, every skill, every resource, every relationship that he's given me?
Speaker 1:And as we face problems in life, we want to ask ourselves are we leaning on God's wisdom or man's wisdom, like when we talk? When I train in land stewardship, I'm always contrasting man's solutions versus God's solutions. A man's solutions, where it's death-based and chemical based and goes against God's design, are typically always lead to death and destruction, whereas when you look at God's ways, it's sometimes foolish compared to man's high-tech solutions, but they're always so amazing and they bring life and healing and those kind of things. And I think that's true in every area of life. And a lot of times we're experiencing problems in life because we're not asking God well, what's your solution for this. What kind of wisdom do you have for me? How should I parent my kid? How should I treat my wife? How should I steward my finances? How should I be a good friend or live in my community?
Speaker 1:And if we're not being open to it, then it's often likely that we're accepting lies and then we're going to church asking God to comfort us for the suffering, that we're accepting lies and then we're going to church asking God to comfort us for the suffering that we're going through because we've been ignoring him the rest of the week. And that's not really something that's going to allow us to be a missional steward where the life, our life itself, gives us an opportunity to make disciples. And I think in light of that, we want to ask do we, do you have regular testimonies to share about how God is helping you, how, when somebody shares about a problem they're having, you can be like I mean, I share, I struggle with that too, and here is how God's helped me lately with it. Or you know whether we talk about that with gardening. You know, when you face a problem and you ask God and then he provides a solution, that gives you then an opportunity to share that as a testimony next time, genuinely, without awkwardly without it being awkward because it's a real story. And yet we don't have those stories.
Speaker 1:If we aren't viewing ourselves as stewards, if we're not giving God ownership over our in every area of our life, and then are we? You know we can be faithful stewards, but we also need to be asking are we looking for opportunities to be honest about our faith? And that is really what discipleship is. It's just honesty. I love one of my friends. They kind of talk about the idea of evangelism through just not lying, not just by just just not lying First of all, being somebody who's in love with Jesus and who thinks about all of life in light of Jesus, and then just speaking the truth about who you are and what you believe and what you believe to be true.
Speaker 1:If you find yourself never saying anything about your faith or about Christ, is it really in here, is it really in your heart? And are you looking for opportunities where you have the freedom we don't always have the freedom in different situations, you know we have to be tactful, I guess, in terms of communication, but are we looking for those opportunities where we can be honest and open about our faith and listen to other people and share and engage in a way that God could sow seeds in their heart and point them closer to Christ, or even, you know, the part of harvest where they give their lives to Christ would be great. But a lot of that's just seed sowing and allowing God to give us those opportunities to sow into people's lives. And I think it takes intentionality to want God to use us in people's lives, to be looking for that and to be praying for that and trusting that he'll provide those opportunities. And it's not always going to look like what we want and we'll mess up and miss opportunities at times. But if we aren't ever looking for them and don't ever want them, then it's very unlikely that we'll take advantage of them, of the missional opportunities that we have as a result of our stewardship. So this is a new topic that I've been thinking about. I hope it's helpful and maybe given you a few things to think about Again, as I've the last few weeks it's just been on my mind that, as I see all these different ministries and all these different people involved in really combining stewardship and discipleship, you know I teach Foundations for Farming, but it's not just Foundations for Farming you know, foundations for Farming is an example, I feel like a really good example of missional stewardship, and so is Crown Financial or a lot of these other ministries in Farming God's Way.
Speaker 1:They're examples of missional stewardship and it's something that I feel like God wants to see more of and, of course, I just think it's something that he's doing. He's calling a lot of people to. I'm excited to be a part of it and excited to see what he's going to do with it in the future, and so I'd love some of your feedback on things that you've seen or thoughts you have about the idea of missional stewardship and how this could be a way that God could expand his kingdom and really kind of empower and mobilize more of the ordinary, everyday people in the church to do the work of spreading his kingdom to a darkened and and lost world. So, as far as uh, you know any way that I can serve you in trying to do that. If you're in, you know, if you're listening to this, obviously you are probably interested in the agricultural aspect of stewardship, if you're not already a part of it.
Speaker 1:Redeeming the dirt academy is is our free online resource to help cultivate community and to continue to share and equip you to be a missional agricultural steward, and so we have courses and coaching calls and community and all sorts of things on there that can be helpful for you. You can go to redeemingthedirtacademycom All sorts of things on there that can be helpful for you. You can go to redeemingthedirtacademycom. And then one of our tools that we're always equipping people we're working on for equipping people to learn how to integrate, you know, your faith into what you're doing in a way that allows you to be a missional steward is our Well Water Garden Project, where you plant a simple demonstration garden that reflects the heart of Jesus, that solves practical problems that we deal with in gardening and allows us to grow organic, nutritious vegetables just by utilizing God's amazing wisdom and creation and allows us to grow them organically and with very few tools and those kind of things, but then provides us the opportunity to share about where that comes from and that heart that it's based in, when we share with other people about that. That is something that you can either find at our website, redeemthedirtcom, or go to thewellwatergardenprojectorg and download our free handbook.
Speaker 1:We now have it available in print form. If you go to Amazon and look up Wellwater Garden Handbook. You can now order a print copy if you don't want to print your own. So hopefully these are going to be some resources that get you started with this. Be on the lookout, you know, for continued ways that God's moving, what kind of ministries are kind of popping up, what kind of people and ways that God is kind of moving out and who's responding to this call of missional stewardship in the church. And let's be excited, continue to, to be open to what God wants to do and how he wants to shape and refine how we respond to and how we follow him in a way that he can use us to the most impact during our short lives on earth here before he returns. So been great to visit with you today. I just encourage you to be humble, to be faithful and to keep redeeming the dirt. This is Noah Sangers, god bless.