"Inasmuch as they receive more than is needful for their necessities and their wants, it shall be given into my storehouse; And the benefits shall be consecrated unto the inhabitants of Zion, and unto their generations, inasmuch as they become heirs according to the laws of the kingdom. Behold, this is what the Lord requires of every man in his stewardship."
The Church of Jesus Christ has very few paid positions. For those with full-time callings which prevent them from carrying out their worldly occupation, there is a stipend paid from the tithing funds of the church for their ministry. It's enough to live decently, but not opulently. At the local level, on the other hand, ministries are voluntary. The time, energy, travel, and other means is donated over and above what adults earn by labor for the support of their own families in their various professions. This follows the biblical pattern of Peter who would not exchange money for the Priesthood, and yet who was supported by saints through voluntary hospitality in his ministry after the Lord's ascension, rather than through any salary.
And yet, the church does have business affairs. Printing, real estate and its maintenance, travel agents, corporate holdings as is wise to administer the tithes (which are channeled centrally, then used locally by allotment) and offerings (which are used locally, and with only excesses being routed centrally), and historical and genealogical monuments and tools for public use, even educational institutions--all of it to fulfill the missions of the Church. In all cases, there are appointees hired for services, chosen for expertise or interest, not always specifically called by the Lord, and they operate under a principle of stewardship.
Stewardship is an awkward concept for modern folks, especially in the West. We like to think of ourselves as egalitarians with rights to private property and responsibility only to ourselves to pursue happiness as we see fit under such guarantees of life, liberty, and equal opportunity as our democratic institutions can provide us. What I earn, I earn; what I spend, I spend, what I risk becomes my return and my just desserts. Individualism and free enterprise can procure prosperity as long as I supply the work--the action on resources. But the profit motive is terrestrial at best. It doesn't conform to celestial law. In the heavens, the economy of God is utopian, but not because it agrees with Marx on the fundamental goodness of the proletariat seizing the means of production. Instead, it balances individual freedom to freely act on resources with an Accountability Node of perfect wisdom, or a duly authorized representative holding Priesthood keys to that calling. In other words, as we consecrate our all to God, we recognize that it's all His, and we covenant to grow closer to Him by acting on His resources with more care than we would even for our own property--not thinking of it as ours to abuse and destroy as we see fit, which all ownership ultimately means--out of gratitude, out of love, out of care to use it for the best application to others that we can.
Stewardship leaves us free, but adds accountability to a covenant judge to what would otherwise be naked capitalism. It keeps us tethered to the collective benefit each individual effort adds by profiting from their own activity, but through voluntary structures rather than taxes, compliance officers, or politburos. We act for ourselves, for our own growth, on our own hook if we fail, so that we see to our own needs and that of our families under real conditions of incentive to do our best. And if there is surplus, we are free to donate according to our own management decisions rather than according to arbitrary quotas from people who might mean well, but don't live in our homes or skin. It's not the capitalist caricature of "catch as catch can" profiteering, but it's not the incentive-free utopianism of the socialists, either. There is private property that voluntarily contributes to the collective, not a collective administered centrally. There is an incentive to work, and there is a duty to return and report on what the work accomplished. Yet the benefits of the work aren't all in the profit itself, but rather in the growth in character along the way--the closeness to Christ one receives when blessed for doing as He would.
The above passage is taken from a specific charge to a specific group of trusted Church leaders being tasked to form the first publication "firm" to fill a need to get printed copies of the Revelations given to Joseph Smith into the hands of as many members as possible--along with other publication projects, like pedagogical materials for children. The appointees in question were familiar with the business, familiar with literary production, and familiar with the Prophet, and were either men of means themselves, or men with experience managing means. The Lord had brought them together and given them a charge, and they nearly all impoverished themselves in the risk it took to get the publishing enterprise off the ground. The press they purchased and the copies of its first printing of its core mission text--the Doctrine and Covenants--were nearly all destroyed by arson at the hands of a mob angry at the arrival of strange beliefs and people in their frontier territory. Their consecration came at the cost of great sacrifice.
But the passage applies generally, not merely specifically. When we are entrusted with anything by the Lord, if we conform to the pattern of seeing to our "wants" (careful! this 1828 term does NOT mean whatever your heart desires, but rather your lacks) and needs through acting on the trust with the goal of serving the Lord, He magnifies our efforts, produces surplus that we can consecrate to Him and to His children, our fellows.
And the pattern is as merely temporal as are all of God's laws--which is to say that it's not at all. Whether we are blessed with dollars or experiences, whether we have offerings of time or of testimony, being accountable to our bishop to bring surplus to the Lord's storehouse which keys to administer he holds, he can supply someone else's wants and needs--the giver and the receiver both being blessed by the consecrated act, both sides drawing closer to the Lord because that's what covenant relationships do.
Stewards love their Lord. They report to Him without formal command or procedure. They don't merely hold, but act to improve. And they care about His approval more than his material, because the framework for growth is not a competition, it's a cooperative expression of faith. He is able to do His own work, but He entrusts to each a portion of His gifts so that we--through each other--may all feel His love and redeeming power expanding our potential. His Church is like family, not business. His stewardships are training for our celestial inheritance. The time to prepare is now in mortality.
And now, a few quick post-script notes on 70:12-14 which reads as follows:
"He who is appointed to administer spiritual things, the same is worthy of his hire, even as those who are appointed to a stewardship to administer in temporal things; Yea, even more abundantly, which abundance is multiplied unto them through the manifestations of the Spirit. Nevertheless, in your temporal things you shall be equal, and this not grudgingly, otherwise the abundance of the manifestations of the Spirit shall be withheld."
The referents in this passage aren't super clear because we don't have all the context that was clear to those on the ground at the time. It's possible that those "appointed to administer spiritual things" is a reference to Smith and his current scribe Sidney Rigdon, who were called to complete the Bible translation Smith was working on, which would remove them from the capacity to earn their own livings for a time. Smith was, indeed, living off the hospitality of the Johnsons at this time, with a room in their home donated to him, his wife, and their adopted twins. They weren't drawing a salary as far as I can ascertain, and weren't lazy or indulgent in their participation in help for their upkeep or requirements for food and shelter. But this reference may also apply to others who were not called like bishops to execute economic decisions, but were, instead, focused on spiritual ministry--like missionaries.
But while it certainly may, by the laws of antecedent scope, I don't think the dative pronoun in the next clause is intended as exclusive to those who administer in spiritual things--the "abundance" multiplied "more abundantly" can be for both those who administer in spiritual and in temporal things. The Spirit manifests through gifts that sometimes touch on the temporal anyway--gifts of discernment, gifts of tongues, gifts of being healed, gifts of administration, for example--so that it is hard to imply that those who have clearly spiritual callings get the better manifestations. Maybe so. I'm just pointing out that the language deployed here doesn't fully foreclose either interpretation: "unto them" might mean unto anyone with any calling.
On the other hand, the withholding principle is clearly exclusive--if people aren't being "equal" in temporal things, the spiritual things will wane as well. But even here, let's not assume "equal" means equality of result. Being "equal" in 1828 could, and likely does in this context, refer to being even-handed, or principle-based in applying rules to all without respect of persons, rather than to some modern woke version of equity in all matters of property. The rich man doesn't lose the Spirit because he's rich, but because he loves his riches more than his fellow humans or his God. Equality of opportunity predicts inequality of spiritual and economic result, but if we attempt by force to flatten the collective inequality of result, we'd surely lose the freedom and the Spirit that is required to produce any growth whatsoever. Because God's plan is one of moral agency, not compulsion. Instead, this part of the passage seems pretty clearly to target administrators for even-handed administration so as not to lose the Spirit either through fewer manifestations, or people in whom the manifestations occur, because they are driven away by the unfairness of the leaders. In either case, the account will have to be made.
And in any case, having an abundance of spiritual manifestations seems to be contingent upon principles of temporal fairness.
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