Lausanne Appoints New Senior Associate for Stewardship


Dr. Stan Toler named
Lausanne senior associate
for stewardship.

The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization has named Dr. Stan Toler as the Lausanne senior associate for stewardship. In creating this new position, Lausanne executive chair Rev. S. Douglas Birdsall said that “biblical stewardship is an issue of paramount importance to the global Christian community. We must seek ways to use our resources more effectively to advance the cause of world evangelization.”

Toler is senior pastor at Trinity Church of the Nazarene in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma USA. He is also a best-selling author, international seminar leader and speaker and executive director of the Toler Leadership Center at Mid-America Christian University.

Lausanne’s treasurer, Dr. Roger Parrott, president of Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, USA, says Toler is passionate about helping Christians understand the worship and the joy in giving. Parrott added, “Stan is especially gifted in connecting the best ideas of stewardship across the distinctives of cultures and denominations in order for the whole Church to join in the blessings that come when our resources are committed to God’s purpose. His high level of expertise and gentle humble spirit will be an encouragement to the Lausanne network of leaders as we help guide the Church in the critical, and often complex, issues of stewardship.”

Toler’s passion is holistic stewardship, a term he uses to include more than stewardship of money but also stewardship of life. Toler says, “The world has used the term stewardship almost more effectively than the Church. We need to reclaim the word because stewardship is discipleship.” Discipleship, Toler adds, includes the appropriate use of what God entrusts to every person—time, talent, treasure and touch, which he defines as stewardship of relationships.

Toler believes stewardship is critical to helping Christians be effective witnesses for Christ because it involves the daily living out of a relationship with Christ in connection with others and the world around us. The ultimate stewardship, emphasizes Toler, is “redeeming the times,” recognizing the urgency to tell others about Christ. Stewardship is not just a Western concept, stresses Toler. Christian leaders worldwide recognize the importance of stewardship and he has had the privilege of traveling to dozens of countries to share a vision of the “cycle of victorious giving.”

Toler has written or co-written over sixty books, including Building Kingdom Stewards: A Complete Plan for Developing a Giving Church and Cycle of Victorious Giving. He and his wife Linda have two sons and live in Oklahoma.