We’ve been talking about what is Essential to our life–worship, prayer, Bible study. We cannot be Christian–disciples of Christ–without these. But Jesus didn’t say they would make us great. He only said that about one thing–being everyone’s servant (Matthew 20:26). This isn’t a gift. It isn’t a special role bestowed on a few. It is an expectation the King of the Universe has of his subjects!
Service is simple–doing things for others. In our spiritual health assessments, we ask each person to consider two aspects of service. The first is what we call “internal service”. “Internal” refers to the body of Christ, so internal service means serving within the body. We are also called a family in the Bible, so we can think of this as our family chores. Part of this is using the specific gifts we are given faithfully. If you don’t “know your gift” don’t try to discover it–no one in the Bible ever tries to discover their gift. Instead, they just started serving. As they did, God moved them if he wanted them moved.
So service starts with a heart to serve in the body. Our pastoral staff is extremely gifted, each in different ways. But we all share several job assignments. One of those is picking up trash. Why? Because it needs to be done. We need to look at our local congregation, see what needs to be done that we’re capable of doing, and start serving.
But service can’t end with our service in the body. If we are the body of Christ, and the body of Christ only serves itself, we are presenting a selfish Christ to the world. That can’t be. So, we also need to serve externally–to serve those outside the body of Christ. We can do that on our own–in our neighborhood or with community organizations. Or we can partner with others in the church–whether our congregation or para-church organizations.
We assess service separately. I recommend we begin with the expectation that each of us serve both internally and externally. I believe all of us can devote at least five hours a week to each if it is a priority. Of course, some of us can devote far more. Some of us are even fortunate enough to get paid for service–teachers, police, counselors–even ministers. Our self rating should be based on how much time we are able to devote to service (to whom much is given, much is required).
Service has one major benefit we need–it takes our focus off ourselves and puts it on another. Maybe this is why God created us to need to serve.
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