Church: Being a Servant Community

When you ask people what church is you hear different responses. Depending upon one's experience, church might be seen as something good or something that has created pain. In attempting for church to have influence in society too often we have opted for images that control, regulate, or focus on privilege.

I have been wondering what it would look like for church to be seen as "servant community" in the world. As we emulate Christ in washing his disciples' feet, how might we live out our lives as community in the world, so that we are a servant community in the world -- perhaps first of all a servant community to Christ, and through our serving him, we follow his lead in serving the world.

A servant community does not exist for itself, but exists for serving God -- the one who has called the community into being. It seeks to serve, whether there is recognition or not, it seeks to serve, whether there is success or not, it seeks to serve, whether there is recognition that we excel at being servants. A servant community seeks to be incarnational, missional, being present to people in ways that enables the Spirit of God to connect with the hearts and lives of people whom God is seeking. As a servant community, we are the "hands of Christ" washing other's feet, discovering what it is God wants us to do. It is not about what we want to do!

As a servant community then, we need to spend more time not in figuring out how we are to be in the world, but to hear what God is saying to us and seeing what God is showing us so that we can be about what God is about in the world. It is a matter of discerning God's purposes and desires, rather than figuring out how we can attract more people, or how we can develop the right program that will have the most relevance. A servant community exists so that God can have his way in the world -- we are to be salt and light, not to bring focus upon us, but upon the purposes of God. We are called to be servant community to reveal the one whom we serve.

Someone once stated, that a church that seeks its own ministry or its own agenda ceases being the church in the world. We can only be church as we yield ourselves to the redemptive purposes of God in the world -- being used of God in fulfilling God's mission. The only way the church can fulfill this calling is for it to be a servant community.