Why do we want to create a culture of service in Venture? Is it because Danny or Suzanne doesn’t want to do their job? I mean, what’s wrong with just coming to church to grow spiritually? Why can’t I just show up, worship, hear teaching, see my friends, and leave?
Well, we want to create a culture of service at Venture not because we as the staff want to do less work, but because of three other very important reasons. The reasons are: church is supposed to function by serving, serving brings spiritual growth, and the world desperately needs us to have a culture of service.
The Church is supposed to function this way.
-The fact that the church functions with a culture of service is clear for two reasons. First, Jesus, the church’s head, was a servant and he called his followers to serve. Look at this passage from Mark 10:41-45:
42 Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions use their authority over them.
43 But it is not this way among you. Instead whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant,
44 and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of all.
45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
So Jesus, our savior and head, himself modeled service, and he called his followers to serve.
Also, the church itself is designed to function with each member serving. Some passages to refer to for this concept are 1 Corinthians 12:12-31; Romans 8:3-8; and Ephesians 4:7-16. In these passages the church is depicted as a group of people who work and serve together, each playing different roles empowered by Christ and his Spirit, to do the work of the ministry.
For these reasons, it is clear that the church is supposed to function with a culture of service. The church in general today is very consumer oriented. People expect to be given a product (and a very well-packaged and enjoyable product at that) to consume. Christ, however, by his own example, calls us to serve. Like the members of a sports team, we all have a part or a position to play. In a culture of service everyone understands this and sees service as doing the work of the ministry and the call of God upon their lives.
Spiritual Growth of the Body
To a great extent the spiritual growth of individual Christians actually depends on other Christians who serve. This is clear from a passage in Ephesians 4:7, 11-16. It reads:
7 But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ.
11 It was he who gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,
12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, that is, to build up the body of Christ,
13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God– a mature person, attaining to the measure of Christ’s full stature.
14 So we are no longer to be children, tossed back and forth by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching by the trickery of people who craftily carry out their deceitful schemes.
15 But practicing the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Christ, who is the head.
16 From him the whole body grows, fitted and held together through every supporting ligament. As each one does its part, the body grows in love.
Several phrases in this passage point to the fact that we depend on one another for spiritual growth. Specifically, it is our service “as each one does its part” (16) that causes the body of Christ to grow together.
When we serve, we have great opportunities to grow spiritually. Serving involves loving others, sacrificing ourselves, out time, our resources, etc. It causes us to depend on Christ when we serve in areas that stretch us. And we learn from ministering to one another and being around one another. So a culture of service, as Ephesians 4 states, causes the body of Christ to grow in maturity.
The World needs it desperately
Again, Ephesians 4:11-12 states:
Namely, he gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry
The reason we serve is not just to minister to the church itself, but also to love and serve the world around us. In general, people look to churches to serve and not simply to fend for themselves. I think the average Joe on the street sees the church as a place that should be helping the world, not just itself. Therefore a true culture of service is one that extends to serve the world around us.
This involves everything from outreaches to the poor and homeless to serving your neighbors in some way. It involves taking the initiative to do the more difficult and tough tasks at work. It also involves going to other parts of the world to bring clean water to people who don’t have it. It can look so many different ways, depending on who you are and where you are.
For us at Venture, we are beginning to try to do this. We have done the feed-the-homeless thing in D.C. and we have done the clean water trips, but some thing tells me we still have a long way to go in this. We still have a lot to learn about how to serve the world around us. Yet, even though we don’t have all the details figured out, one thing is for sure: a true culture of service will extend beyond Venture and will impact the world around us.
So for these three reasons, we do need to develop a greater culture of service in Venture. Not because the Venture staff want to do less work. No. A culture of service comes from the model that Jesus gave us, the model that we have in Scripture for how the church should function. It results in spiritual growth for the church, and it extends to the world around us.
Now that we understand why we need a culture of service, we now need to think through the following question: what does a culture of service look like? That is what the next post will discuss.