Category: Serving Others

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Serving Others

Short Unoriginal Post #1 – Lowering Yourself

a blank note with a pen resting on itSo this is a short post. I won’t be wordy (or at least not “too wordy”). And I won’t even use my own words. Thus the title – Short & Unoriginal! Here is a quote today from Matt Chandler’s Book “Creature of the Word.”

“…because we have always lived in the chaos of sin, the kingdom of God feels backward and counterintuitive to us. In the kingdom, the hungry are full. The poor are rich. The mourning are blessed. And the powerful are servants.

He said to them, “You’re right in calling Me Lord and Teacher, because I am.”

Jesus was addressing Peter’s prevailing view that serving would cause Jesus to lose His stature as the Holy One. “I am beyond you. I am the Alpha and the Omega. I have always been, and I will always be. I can tell it to stop raining, and it will. I can tell it to start raining, and it will. I can tell dead people not to be dead, and they’ll listen. I can tell sick people they’re no longer sick, and any illness will leave them. And yet I do this to set an example for you—that in the kingdom of God… we do not use our power or influence selfishly. We do not use our position to keep from serving those under us. Rather, we use that power, position, and ability to actively lower ourselves and serve those under us and around us.”

Short & Unoriginal – but good stuff!

So go out today, intentionally plan on lowering yourself, and serve those around you.

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Serving Others

Your Mission, If You Choose To Accept It…

“It is the duty of all men to repent and believe the gospel, therefore it is also the duty of those entrusted with the gospel to carry it to the whole world.” (William Carey)

Have you completed the first duty? How about the second?

(Begin humming the Mission Impossible Theme Song)

Over 200 years ago, William Carey wrote about five main objections that people had regarding missions to the “heathen” lands (today we might call them “foreign” lands). The five main objections people had were:

1. The long distance that must be traveled,
2. The barbaric nature of the native peoples,
3. The danger that would be incurred by those going,
4. The difficulties of raising and maintaining support, and
5. The unintelligible languages the native people would speak.

We might still want to raise some of these same objections as to why we are unwilling to fulfill this second duty or mission of ours. Carey’s general answer to all of the objections: the merchants of his day were willing to take these same risks in the hopes of making money. He said: “It only requires that we should have as much love for the souls of our fellow-man, and fellow sinners, as the merchants have for the profits arising from the sale of a few otter skins, and all these difficulties could be easily surmounted.”

Wow. Exactly.

Many people (including some of us) have been more serious about the mission to make money than we have been about the mission to take the gospel message to those different than us. Willing to face more risks. Willing to tackle difficult obstacles.

God, forgive us for being so willing to overcome many difficulties for our finances (and for our pleasures), while being so quick to give You insignificant excuses for why we won’t obediently take Your message to others.

Help us choose to accept our Mission.

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Serving Others

The Workplace Pastor

I’m gonna spend one more day on this idea of us as workplace pastors, since I think it is so very important. It is necessary that we begin believing that we are called of God to be the chaplains of our offices and companies.

Many people want to feel used by God, but haven’t been freed to understand that their place of employment is the mission field that God has sent them into. It might seem a bit strange, but think about if a missionary or pastor was hired for your office/company – what would they do to meet the spiritual needs of the people there? Pray with people, reach out to them during crises, talk to them about God? What if God has placed you in your office for that specific role? In fact, I think that is EXACTLY what God has done. Let me remind you that after Jesus’ death, the veil of the Temple was torn. No longer does God reside in a building built by human hands where we have to come to Him in one location on earth, but rather He now dwells within each Christian, so that His church is to leave the one location and take Him outside the church building to people everywhere.a church building symbolizing the fact that we need to leave the building and become a workplace pastor

“[We feel] incomplete inside the church walls – we want to be equipped by our church to find kingdom significance and purpose where we interact with culture, outside the church walls…. I’ve come to understand that there are millions of us who feel disconnected from our true purpose at work. Maybe you’ve had feelings at times that are similar. You sense your job or career has something critically important to do with God’s bigger story, and yet no one seems to be there to help you understand how it really works and why it is so biblical.” Have you ever felt like this? Have you ever felt that God wanted to use you, but weren’t quite sure how? Well, the workplace is where you spend a large portion of your day, and He wants to use you there!

“God has placed us into that workplace for a specific purpose. Paul explains that this task is not to be done just on Sunday or a few times a week, but this is a 24/7 ‘all-the-time’ assignment from God.”

“[Too many of us believe that] the pastor, the missionary, and the church staff workers are chosen, gifted, and paid to do the professional ministry…. [We] do not realize that we will come into contact with and influence more people in one day in the workplace than the “professionals” will encounter in a week or even a full month…. Yes, YOU are in full-time ministry for Jesus Christ, but you get your income from your employment in the workplace and not from your church. What a bargain for God’s kingdom work! We are paid by the secular world’s system yet are placed there in strategic positions for His purposes.”

This is the mindset that we must take. Why is this mindset so important? Why does God want us to represent Him in our workplaces to our co-workers who do not know Him? Because “Most of them will not seek out our churches, but every day they are at the next desk to us in the marketplace.” So you have to begin seeing yourself as the pastor there – praying for each person, looking for ways to speak God’s love into their lives.

Look for opportunities to speak God’s life and love into the lives of the people around you at work today. Some of them are hurting and need an encouraging word. Some of them are experiencing crisis and need your prayers. Find ways to meet their spiritual needs as their workplace pastor.

How have you seen people you know be effective in the role of “workplace pastor”?

(Businessman Kent Humphreys wrote a small book titled Christ at Work Opening Doors about us being on mission in our places of employment. The quotes above are from his book.)

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Serving Others

Your Role As The Office Minister

Yesterday I encouraged us to start believing that we are all ministers, no matter our occupational setting. If we would start thinking of ourselves as the “chaplain” or “workplace pastor” of our office or school or neighborhood, we might begin to change how we operate in our occupation.

a clock symbolizing it is time to step into our role as office ministerGod wants you to be a minister. I don’t mean that He wants you on a church staff payroll – but rather He wants you to consider yourself as the office minister in your workplace on their payroll! God doesn’t want you focused on YOUR job. What He wants is for you to be focused on HIS job.

I think as Christians we could reword a quote about our professions (from early American entrepreneur Charles Kettering) as if was from God speaking to us about our Christian Vocation to serve Him. Maybe it would look something like this –
“I don’t want any fellow working for me who has tried to put his Christianity into his occupation. What I want is a fellow whom the Christian Vocation has taken hold of. I want the Christian Vocation to get the fellow and not the fellow to try to work Christianity into His occupation. And I want the Christian Vocation to get hold of this person so hard that no matter where he is the Christian Vocation has got him for keeps. I want the Christian Vocation to have him in its clutches when he goes to bed at night, and in the morning I want that same Christian Vocation to be sitting on the foot of his bed telling him it’s time to get up and come work WITH ME. And when the Christian Vocation gets a fellow that way he’ll amount to something.”

If we could reorient our thinking so that our occupation is not what we are getting up to do each day and trying to put some of our Christian life into, if we could instead think about life as “today I am getting up to go minister and I will pray, counsel, teach, preach, study, & communicate the gospel to those who around me at work or school” then we would have a better grasp on the Christian life…this Christian vocation. So today I am getting up to go minister in the factory where God has placed me, in the office God has placed me, in the neighborhood God has placed me. I am first and foremost a minister, and wherever God places me in whatever occupation or situation, I never lose sight of the fact that God has CALLED me to be a minister first.

Even if you never asked Him about your occupational ‘calling,’ your vocational calling has never changed from the moment you call Him Savior & Lord – your calling is “minister,” “missionary,” “messenger of His gospel!” The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of each of us considering ourselves the God-appointed chaplain for our workplace, school, family, and neighborhood.

God is calling us to live out the Christian vocation and to change our minds to look at ministry as not just the church pastor’s role, but our role. Pastors just do their chaplaincy in the church building while you are the chaplain at the bank or the office or with your clients or on the golf course.

The world’s model says to chase your dreams, go after your goals, reach for the stars. But here’s the truth from God’s word – If your goals are not God’s goals, then you are never really going to be a success in His eyes – and isn’t how we are viewed by God really the only thing that matters?

Start viewing yourself as your office’s pastor and chaplain. Because they might never step into the office of a church pastor. You become the pastor that they need! What roles do you expect your pastor to do for you? Do the same for them! Start today.

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Serving Others

Something’s Got A Hold On Me

We hear ministers and missionaries talk about a calling –
“God called me into the ministry.”
“I sensed God calling me to missions.”
“The Lord called me into church work.”

There is truth to this, but there is also a danger here of misconstruing the truth – the danger of making those who are not church staff members feel that their occupation is somehow not on the same level in God’s eyes. And nothing could be further from the truth. God is calling you, too!close up picture of a phone symbolizing our calling from God

It is true that God calls some to be church staff ministers. But scripture indicates that every one of us is called to be a minister – and only a few will be on a church staff. However, there will be many School Teacher “ministers,” and many health care “ministers,” and many business-world “ministers.”

We church staff ministers developed a bad habit of calling our occupation a “vocation,” thereby implying that everyone else just has an occupation. But here is the truth – for every single believer, you have a vocation as minister. There is a difference between our occupation and our vocation. Our occupation is the job we do that gets us a paycheck this month. And that occupation can change, and probably will change, throughout your life. But our vocation as Christians is to be the same for each and every one of us – to be a minister no matter our occupation. We are to use our relationship with God to point others in the direction of Jesus Christ so that they can come to a right relationship with Him and grow in their spiritual maturity.

I don’t want your mindset to end at “I am a Christian and I should not be ashamed of that fact at work and should live out a Christian example at the office or the plant or the school.” That’s not a bad place to start, but I want us to go further. I am talking about an entire reprocessing of our understanding of life itself and why we are here.

According to the Bible, life is about being a minister of God’s gospel message. Period. Everything else in our lives is to be used to share this message with those around us.

So if your occupation is in the health care field as a doctor or nurse, your vocation should be a Christian minister sharing the message of God and His love to others and while you are at it be as good of a doctor as you can be and use that position to share Christ’s love with patients.

Life for a teacher is to be a Christian minister sharing the message of God and His love to others and while you are at it be as good of a teacher as you can and use that position to share Christ’s love with students and fellow teachers.

Life for a business person is to be a Christian minister sharing the message of God and His love to others and while you are at it be as good of a business person as you can and use that position to share Christ’s love with your clients and fellow workers.

Your vocation is as a minister of the gospel no matter where you are with your occupation. My vocation is to minister, presently through my church staff position. But what if my position changes? What if I go to work in another field? Well, my occupation would change, but my vocation would not. It remains the same – minister of the gospel.

Life for each of us is to be a Christian minister. You are to use the occupation that God presently has you in to fulfill your vocation of sharing Christ’s love with those you are in contact with every day. Start thinking in terms of being the minister for your workplace – for that is what you are. You have been placed by God in your specific field to minister to those around you. Are you lifting those around you up in prayer? As their minister, you should be. Are you sharing with them how to know Christ? As their minister, you should be. Are you helping believers around you know how to grow in spiritual maturity? As their minister, you should be.

As you go to your occupation today, consider how you will live out your vocation as a minister to those around you!