Fiduciary

I was reading a report analyzing the Iraqi Banking System on account of a project we're working on.
There is lots of problems, but I thought there was an interesting piece of irony in the summary.
[After talking about massive failure of the system]...The most critical shortcoming is the failure of the banks to perform their principal function as financial intermediaries--to attract deposits and lend funds to credit-worthy enterprises throughout the country.

Interesting.

Discussion

At Home Group Wednesday I led a discussion on places where we've blown it in faith. Times we could've done something big for God and didn't. What made it weird was that this concept is novel.
What other endeavor to we engage in where we don't occasionally have a frank and earnest discussion about how we got whooped. That's silly. We should excellence in faith more than commerce or sport.
Another thing I've been pondering. Our church has dome some pretty cool stuff recently. We've helped some families who lost their job, helped out some kids, helped out lots of sick people, and done the regular stuff churches do. A buddy of mine is very consistent to point out, "It's not us, it's God."
I'm not convinced that's biblical.

Hear me, I'm not saying that his broader point--"we're not deserving of the Glory, god is" is fine. His other point should be "none of our stuff is really ours, we're given stuff by God and told to steward it." Also a biblically unimpeachable point.

My problem is that at some level EVERY resource owned by us or anyone is God's. I don't know if his approach WORKS as a matter of practical ecclesiology. The line of scrimmage for transformation is desire "I want to" and choice "I choose to." Therefore when the Church acts like we're supposed to I think we celebrate that as directly as possible by saying something like "God transformed our hearts so that we wanted to" not merely make ourselves the direct-object of some spiritual abstraction.