Featured Articles

Rubbing Pennies Together

by Merle Herr | May 2010

Lending is a very old economic activity. The Old Testament even contains some guidelines and stories about lending. Long before lending was organized into lending institutions, individuals with capital needed some way to keep their money working.
 

Keeping Cash Working
The parable of the talents, along with the principles of stewardship, calls us to be prudent and productive with the assets that God places within our care. This applies to many types of talents and valuables, not the least of which is our cash. Burying your talents or hiding your cash is quite foolish. However, it is even more foolish to place your money into the hands of the imprudent. Rarely do you hear about anyone guilty of hiding significant sums of money under their mattress or in a household safe. Yet stories abound of foolish individuals that unknowingly entrusted their savings into the hands of the imprudent. Nonetheless, there are ways to invest cash without committing the sin of hiding your cash or losing it to the imprudent.
Risk aside, deep within the human heart is the desire to participate in something that...

To be Forewarned is to be Forearmed

by Richard Shank | August 2009

The following story is a composite of several situations. Names, locations, and other facts have been changed to illustrate and simplify the case.
Keith tried to change his position in the hospital bed to lessen his pain. He tried to recall what had happened. He remembered seeing the blinding lights and hearing Sally’s screams, but there his memory stopped. Sally told him yesterday he had been unconscious for fifteen days. When he asked how soon he could leave the hospital, she had evaded his questions, so he knew that probably meant it would be a long time.

His mind drifted to his business. How were his 12 employees fairing in his absence? Were his customers being serviced adequately? Were the bills being paid in time to earn cash discounts? Was there adequate money in the bank to operate? Were customer quotations being calculated profitably? What was the situation with the big Hamilton contract? His body jerked as he remembered what Jack told him about his experience. He’d had brain surgery, and by the time he was discharged from the hospital, his business was in such bad condition that Jack couldn’t salvage it. A few...

Stewardship Connections with Integrity

by Richie Lauer | November 2009

Stewardship Connections with Integrity serves as the common motto for Anabaptist Financial and Anabaptist Foundation. It is carefully designed to define who we are, why we exist, and how we should operate—and we intend it to be more that just an attractive sounding platitude; we intend it to be a practical standard and a measure of our organizational vitality and success.

Stewardship Connections with Integrity

As conservative Anabaptists, we hold to a biblical view of stewardship. God is the Creator, Sustainer, and Owner of all that is, and, in His goodness, God entrusts us with a relationship with Him and use of His things. He calls us to an intimate Master-servant relationship and provides us with resources, principles to follow, unlimited amounts of one-on-one conversation, and freedom to “exercise dominion” in making decisions.
I find it quite humbling to personalize God’s trust in me: He has entrusted me with knowledge of His Word, the gift of salvation, Christian parents and parents-in-law, a wife who is truly a “help meet for me,” three teenage boys who have given their...