Here’s today’s offering from Jim Wallis’ Rediscovering Values for Lent on the Sojourners website:

Today, instead of statues, we have hedge funds, mortgage-backed securities, 401(k)s, and mutual funds. We place blind faith in the hope that the stock indexes will just keep rising and real estate prices keep climbing. Market mechanisms were supposed to distribute risk so well that those who were reckless would never see the consequences of their actions. Trust, security, and hope in the future were all as close to us as the nearest financial planner’s office. Life and the world around us could all be explained with just the right market lens. These idols were supposed to make us happy and secure and provide for all our needs. Those who manage them became the leaders to whom we looked, not just for financial leadership, but direction for our entire lives. That is idolatry. (page 29).

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The following is my latest article for Acton Commentary:

Stewardship and the Human Vocation to Work

By Rev. Gregory Jensen

Paying the bills and contributing to the collection basket are laudable. But Christian stewardship is significantly more than these; like prayer, fasting, and the sacraments, it is an essential part of our Christian life. More than what we say, the way we use our time, talent and treasure, reveals what we value, how we understand ourselves as men and women of faith, and what we believe it means to be human.

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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Feb. 1, 2011) — A new survey of 5,500 organizations by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania ranked the Acton Institute among the best global social policy organizations and in the top 50 think tanks overall in the United States.

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James 1:27 states:

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Last week I had the chance to meet up again with Tom Davis, CEO of Children’s Hope Chest. Hope Chest works with orphans in various countries around the world including South Africa, Swaziland, and Russia. There mission is

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Rev. Jerry Hoffman, Director of the Center for Stewardship Leaders at Luther Seminary, reviews the NIV Stewardship Study Bible. “What I found was a remarkable resource that leads one to see how strong the stewardship thread exists throughout scripture…. I anticipate using this resource in my writing, preaching and teaching,” he says.

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A recent Fox News piece on President Obama’s “science czar,” John Holdren, makes for spooky reading, dramatizing where well-intended intellectuals can end up when they take a zero-sum view of our planet’s resources.

First posted on the PowerBlog by Brittany Hunter, and picked up by a number of other prominent blogs, the “How Not to Help the Poor” Acton video short has collected over eight thousand YouTube hits. The video has only been on the YouTube site for just over a couple of weeks. The clip is from the Acton Institute’s Effective Stewardship Curriculum titled “Fellow Man.”

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Here’s another new production from Acton Media – The Effective Stewardship Curriculum. The Effective Stewardship Curriculum is a series of five video lessons, geared toward church small groups or other faith-based educational settings exploring how Christians live out the call to be stewards of our talents, the environment, our fellow man, institutions, and our finances.

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