Reflection

Remember as we reflect on our core values, we are considering the seeds that we sow in order to grow the garden of a heavenly culture. As we seek to cultivate these values in our personal lives and our life together, we co-create with our heavenly Father a culture into which people come and are transformed. Our third core value is all about Being Servants and the first descriptor for it is:

Following the example of Jesus, we choose to take the attitude and heart of servants, serving one another in the church family, and others in our communities.

We follow the one who came ‘not to be served but to serve’. Paul tells us that when he came down from heaven to earth Jesus ‘took the very nature of a servant’. We deliberately chose to write this value not as something we do but as something we are – being servants. This is to say something about our very nature. We serve because we are servants. Sometimes we can be concerned about chasing our ministry, our role, our position. We forget that the word ministry means service. A minister is a servant. And a servant is not concerned with his own interests but with the interests of those he serves. Servants are not self-promoting. They are self-denying.

When we develop the heart and attitude of servants, serving flows from us wherever we are. And so we serve one another in the church family, not waiting to be asked or instructed but seeing a need and doing whatever we can to meet it. We also get the privilege to do the same to people in our local community and in our everyday worlds. And what motivates us is love. We are servants not because we are forced to be but because God’s love has changed us. In fact Jesus said:

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.   

John 15:15

The love of Jesus and the revelation of the Father’s kingdom causes us to willingly choose to take the nature of servants. Nobody forces us. We are friends of God who choose to be servants because that reflects the very nature of his kingdom.

The best service comes from those who aren’t actually hired servants, but by intimate friends who take on a servant role as an expression of love.    

Bill Johnson

Prayer

Jesus, thank you that you came not to be served but to serve, and to give your life for us. Thank you that servanthood reflects the very nature of your kingdom and that you show us the example of it perfectly. Help us to so cultivate this value within us so deeply that to be servants is simply just something that flows from us. Amen.