Service...what a boring word.

I’m sitting in Starbucks, busting my brains, trying to understand what service is all about. i mean the whole Christian thing. Doing stuff for God. I’m speaking tonight about it and I’ve thought about it a lot but I’m struggling to make sense of it.

I love how some people can make Christian service sound so straight forward but I’m not sure that it is. i’m not sure it should be called service. In my crazy, post modern, unrational thinking when i think of the word service i think of slaves, I think of being forced to do something. Or if you think about the “services” you’re talking specialised jobs that not everybody can do. It almost alienates certain people.

Think about missionaries, people think it’s a specialised job, I’m not so sure. Yes you have to be called to go to other countries but it’s not for the chosen few. Is service just doing something in church? Is it a once a week thing and every other Friday or Saturday?

Jesus threw out a lot of stuff about going into the world, preaching the Gospel, doing miracles, ripping it up. That was to his disciples. Does that mean it was just specific to a chosen few? I don’t think so. He told a young guy to throw his life away and follow Him. Just a normal guy. “Give it up and follow me”. That’s scary. maybe that’s service. maybe we can try to rationalise and compartmentalise how we fit into a Christian sub-culture. Maybe we hide behind “service” so that we don’t get close to God.

I’m quite sure Paul’s life wasn’t boring, or compartmentalised. He just seemed to live life for God. He threw Jesus at people, he made them think, he prayed like crazy, argued brilliantly, even his day job was to facilitate his ministry for Jesus. We have this backward. We are part time Christians. We’re saved. Going to heaven. Yippeee dooo daaah! But how do we live? Do we hide from “service” because it’s old fashioned and makes us feel caged? I don’t like the word. It’s culturally uncool. Life start’s when we trust Jesus. It’s a life of listening to God and doing something about it.