SERVING: Fill the Gaps
by Kyle Baker
Serving in church can be like a buffet line, people rush to get the good stuff while it’s still around. It’s second nature to snatch up the job we know we would enjoy or be great at, and it’s just as natural for us to avoid things we feel unqualified for or simply don’t want to do. Holding a crying baby when you want to be sitting in service, waiting around to lock up the church while members finish a long conversation, cleaning a toilet when it’s getting late and you want to go home – these are all areas where Godly joy can be hard and grumbling can be easy. But when we understand our call to serve for the sake of exalting God alone, it becomes a great joy to fill our plate with the scraps, pick up the leftover job, and fill the needs of the church with joy in our hearts.
Paul writes, “Whatever you do, do it from the heart, as something done for the Lord and not for people” (Col 3:23). Paul provides us this formula:
[doing it from the heart + doing it for the Lord – doing it for people = wholehearted service for God’s glory]
What usually gets in the way of solving this equation? Pride and selfishness. I know that in my own heart, many a menial task has been conducted joylessly due to my own selfishness. At times, I have evaded helpful ways of serving the body and instead used my time selfishly. For many others, the same may be true. And in total honesty, many people don’t want to serve the church at all. As the saying goes, “90% of the work is done by 10% of the people.” Unfortunately, this can be seen in many churches. Just as unfortunate, is the collateral damage that comes with the ‘90/10’ rule. Our brothers and sisters who do the most work, might be the least fed members of the church. Serving often takes being absent from sitting under the preaching of the Word. Monitoring the hallways, walking the parking lot, children’s ministry, janitorial works - these are areas where volunteers are pulled away from Sunday morning worship. To share the load with others is to look out for their spiritual wellbeing. Care for your brothers and sisters by partaking in the tasks that pull them away from corporate worship.
A church that shares the burden with the intent on serving the Lord first will fill the ministry gaps with happy hearts. In this, the ‘strangeness’ of Christianity will shine in the community. Those on the outside look in and see something that may make little sense to them: people lovingly serving one another, not wanting any of the glory, but instead fixing their eyes on Christ for the purpose of exalting His name above all. The world may have no use for honoring the lowly chores of life. But in the church, people carry these often-tedious burdens joyfully. But why? Why are doctors donning rubber gloves to scrub pots and pans? Why is the single young man driving his rickety 96’ Corolla 30 miles out of the way to bring an elderly person to church? Why is the wise old professor learning a new skill like advancing slides for a worship service? It’s not the power of people working together to create the world’s smallest utopian civilization, but God’s sons and daughters who seek ways to modestly serve others, to be more like their selfless savior who bled for them. They do it because Jesus did it.
Learning from the Humblest of Servants
Our tendency to look at the needs in the church and let a gap go unfilled because we won’t enjoy it or because we don’t siphon enough satisfaction from it, doesn’t align with Christ’s example of serving humbly in the hardest of ways. Worthy of perfect imitation is the example Jesus gives us when he washes the disciples’ feet in chapter 13 of John’s Gospel. John tells us Jesus gets up, clothes himself with a towel, pours water in a basin, and washes his disciples’ feet (John 13: 4-5). But something that challenges every bit of our understanding of humble service happens in the verses just before this. John tells us that “the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas – to betray him,” and “Jesus knew that the Father had given everything into his hands” (John 13:2-3a). D.A. Carson helps us think about this, “With such power and status at his disposal, we might have expected him to defeat the devil in an immediate and flashy confrontation, and to devastate Judas with an unstoppable blast of divine wrath. Instead, he washes his disciples’ feet, including the feet of the betrayer” (The Pillar New Testament Commentary).
Not only did he wear the clothing of a slave, not only did he reverse the roles his disciples were accustomed to in such unnecessary fashion, we are told the almighty, all-powerful God of the universe knelt before the one who would betray him and washed the dirt off of his feet! We are the beneficiary of this truly humble lesson. When we recognize our pride and selfishness leaking into the way we serve the local church or our willingness to perform some tasks but not others because they are ‘below us’, we must reconcile any of our self-serving tendencies with the truth about how Jesus picked a task at the absolute rock bottom of the list: washing the feet of the man who betrays him. Jesus knew that serving was a heart issue. He loved God perfectly, and therefore he loved his people. Serving wholeheartedly and to God’s glory is the only way to put off our own pride, to put off bitterness, to worry less about being appreciated, and to lift our working hands to the Lord. And by giving glory to God alone, we can do the jobs that others don’t want to do, we can serve those who may seem ungrateful, we can step down from the position of prominence, and meet the church where the needs are the greatest.
Back to our ‘buffet’ analogy. For some reason, at the end of the line, there is always an available slice of humble pie. Transcending high above the simple topic of serving in the church, God calls us to replace our selfishness and pride with a hearty slice of humility. True, Christ-exalting humility changes our hearts. As we desire to grow closely in Christ-likeness, prayer and petition uncover just how self-centered we really are, and at the same time, how much more merciful God is to His people who struggle with self-glorification. For each of us, pride (in some form) will be the life-long war. But we serve a God who hears our requests to be brought low in order that we may be more like Him. In being more like Christ, we start to solve Paul’s equation for God honoring service. To God’s glory alone may we work with a joyful song in our hearts.
“For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen” (Romans 11:36).
