Driven To Serve 7-22-01
DRIVEN TO SERVE
Mark 9:30-37
30 They left that place and passed through Galilee. Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were,
31 because he was teaching his disciples. He said to them, "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise."
32 But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it.
33 They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the road?"
34 But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.
35 Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, "If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all."
36 He took a little child and had him stand among them. Taking him in his arms, he said to them,
37 "Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me."
I want to turn to the world of business for some of our inspiration today. Someone has described their company like this:
It is a beautiful summer day in corporate America.
v The sales people aren’t back from lunch yet.
v The programmers are playing DOOM
v The executives are on the golf links.
v The secretaries are scheduling their weekends.
v And the Human Resources people are in another all day meeting, asking each other, “What is our Mission?”
Obviously such a description does not apply to most successful companies. One of America’s most respected companies is Johnson & Johnson. Many of us grew up on their baby lotion and their Band-Aids. Johnson & Johnson’s credo, formulated decades ago by President Robert
Johnson lists its corporate priorities. I thought we might profit by knowing how a major corporation sets its priorities:
ü Service to its customers comes first.
ü Service to its employees and management, second;
ü Service to the community comes third;
ü Service to its stockholders comes last.
(Don’t you enjoy going into a department store where the salespeople are standing around talking to each other and you have to interrupt their conversation to get waited on? (Sic)
In the last few years, the economy of the United States has been shifting from one that is driven by industry, to one that is driven by service. Of the millions of new jobs created in the last several years, we are told that most of them come from the service-related field. It is amazing how the technology field has dramatically changed our lives and world. Think of it—in a few years, most of our work will be in other countries and we will all be working for Lynn Christian at McDonald’s.
But my message is precisely about service!
I wonder how the list would look if a business consultant came in and looked at our church. Would it be said that we put our customers first and our stockholders last or would that consultant determine that we put our stockholders first and our customers last? Jesus said, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.” Let me rephrase what he said in the light of today’s discussion. “If anyone would prosper in today’s economy, he or she must be driven to serve.”
It might interest you to know that our church has done just that—for the past several months, this Pastoral Staff has been going through a grueling, painful at times, look at our ministries, our church, our mission, our values, and many other aspects of the work of God in Auburn. We, in fact, are trying to determine our priorities. We are trying to get the cart behind the horse.
Understand this:
JESUS INVENTED SERVICE! Johnson & Johnson didn’t invent service. Wal Mart didn’t invent service. Jesus invented service. His life was totally devoted to serving those he had been sent to seek and to save. Corporations ought to be studying us to learn about service. We are the body of Christ. Service is our whole reason for being. If that is true, who are we to serve? Who is our customer? Who is our neighbor? (As in the story of the Good Samaritan?) Good question!
1) WE’RE HERE, FIRST OF ALL, TO SERVE CHILDREN.
a) Surprised? Then read this text again. Jesus took a little child and had him stand among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me . . .”
i) How are we doing serving our children? Now children are a challenge, I will admit.
(1) Paul then five years of age, wondered about his pastor’s theology. One Sunday morning, he was seated near the front with his parents. The pastor was “preaching away,” as they sometimes say, exhorting people to a deeper understanding of God and to a stronger commitment to Him and to His church. In an attempt to sound profound, the pastor paused, leaned forward over the pulpit, and raised a rhetorical question: “And God—who is God?” In the hush of that moment the little boy looked up at his dad and asked loudly enough to be heard by half the congregation, “GREAT DAY, DAD, DOESN’T HE KNOW?
(2) Four-year-old, Meagan, had been asking a lot of questions about death. During a recent trip, her Dad promised her they would stop at McDonalds. Although they frequented the golden arches about once a week, it was always a thrill to her. As they began their much anticipated lunch. Meagan asked one of her profound questions. “When you die does Jesus take you to McDonalds?” Good question!
(3) Children are a challenge!
ii) How are we doing, our business consultant might ask, in serving children?
(1) Do we have enough pleasant, dedicated teachers? Are their classrooms bright and attractive? Do we have a first-rate music program for them? Are we providing them with adequate opportunities to learn what it means to be part of this church as well as to learn about the love of God? Are we giving them memories of having fun in church so that they have pleasant associations with the thought of being part of the family of God?
(2) Chuck Swindoll tells about going into a gift a shop at Christmas. The place was elegant. Lovely pieces of crystal, exquisite glass statuettes, and a wide assortment of imported china were beautifully displayed on freshly dusted glass shelves. It was one of those impeccable shops where you feel like holding your breath as you glide from aisle to aisle. Your greatest fear is to disturb the delicate balance or inadvertently bump the corner of a shelf holding several expensive patterns. Several small signs throughout the shop trumpeted messages like “Fragile!” and “Please Ask for Assistance” and even “Do Not touch.” And there were much larger signs that read “PLEASE TAKE CHILDREN BY THE HAND.” The dear woman who ran the place was nervous as a witch in church, says Swindoll. She seemed more concerned about PROTECTING HER STUFF than she was about SELLING it. Every child who entered—even though firmly in the grip of the mother—got a glare from the lady that would have stopped a clock.
(3) There are probably churches that make children feel just about that uncomfortable. How sad! A church that does not serve its children will not long be in business. Even more important, children who are not made to feel important in church will seek recognition and acceptance somewhere else.
(a) I hope none of our children grow up and turn to worldly pursuits to gain recognition that we could give.
(b) Several years ago, on the eve of his execution for a well-publicized crime, a newspaper reporter interviewed a convicted criminal. One of the things he said touched the heart of the reported: “If in my childhood I had been paid one percent of the attention I am now getting,” he said, “I wouldn’t be going to the chair.”
(4) Children—They are our first customers. But Christ has other customers equally as important.
2) WE ARE ALSO HERE TO SERVE PEOPLE WHO ARE IN NEED. (Community)
a) Those are our customers, too—anyone who is in need. Jesus said it this way in Matthew 25:35-37
35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,
36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
37 "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?
b) Now, you and I probably do not know many starving or thirsting people. They are around, but we are not likely to encounter them. We know there are people desperate for food and water in other parts of the world and through our mission programs we try to minister to their needs. But there are strangers all around us, aren’t there? There are people all around who feel unloved. “All of the lonely people,” asked the song by Eleanor Rigby, “Where do they all come from?”
c) Based on a landmark study of loneliness, sociologist Robert Weiss estimates that a quarter of the American population feels extremely lonely at some time during any given month. It is a condition that effects people of all ages, including young children, but researchers agree that loneliness soars during the teenage years and reaches its highest peak in people between ages eighteen and twenty-five.
i) Although it is seen in all cultures, loneliness occurs most often in societies, like ours, that emphasize individualism.
d) Lonely people appear in all vocational groups, but there is evidence that highly ambitious, “fast-track,” upwardly mobile people (including the much discussed yuppies and baby boomers) have an especially high incidence of loneliness.
i) The same is true among leaders who often feel alone at the top, workaholics consumed by activities that interfere with personal intimacy, and counselors who spend their lives giving to others but failing to build closeness in their own lives.
ii) If you think this is a lay phenomenon, you are wrong. One study found that pastors and their spouses experience significantly more loneliness (as well as burn-out and diminished marital adjustment) than a comparable group of Christian lay people.
iii) Our society is greatly afflicted with loneliness.
e) The new DIVORCE CULTURE, as someone has termed it, has added to the numbers of the lonely.
i) If we could simply reach out to all the lonely people in the area around this church and give them the love of Jesus Christ and the love of the church family, we would have to start construction next month on a new church building.
ii) Do we welcome strangers? Jesus says that we are to serve children and Jesus says we are to serve the “least of these”—anyone who is in need.
(1) Milbre related an incident that happened to her (lady who needed a ride home)
3) BUT THERE IS ANOTHER SET OF CUSTOMERS—JESUS CALLED THEM
“THOSE WHO ARE LOST.”
a) Jesus says in the parable of the ninety-and-nine in Luke’s Gospel, “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” (15:7)
i) Just as we are surrounded by strangers, we are also surrounded by lost people—and we may not even be aware of it.
ii) In 1992 a Los Angeles county parking control officer came upon a brown El Dorado Cadillac illegally parked next to the curb on street-sweeping day. The officer dutifully wrote out a ticket. Ignoring the man seated at the driver’s wheel, the officer reached inside the open car window and placed the $30 citation on the dashboard. The driver of the car made no excuses. No argument ensued—and with good reason. The driver had been shot in the head ten to twelve hours before but was sitting up, stiff as a board, slumped slightly forward, with blood on his face. He was dead. The officer, preoccupied with ticket writing, was unaware of anything out of the ordinary. He got back in his car and drove away.
iii) Does that happen to us? We see people whom Paul called “dead in their sins” and we are not even aware of it. That is to say, we see people whose lives are empty, who do not know that God loves them, who are wandering around with no meaning to their lives—they are lost in every sense of the word—and we fail to see that they are our customers. They are the ones for whom the Gospel is intended.
(1) But we are live-and-let-live individuals.
(2) We have to get out of our comfort zone and share with them the love of Jesus. We have to understand that God may have put us there—we may be their only link to hope and salvation.
(3) There was a story in THE SATURDAY EVENING POST about a twenty-eight-year-old Australian man named Mark Marcelis. Mark was a typical sun-loving Aussie. Like his friends, he loved the beach and spent most of his teenage years on or around the water. Young, dynamic, and healthy, Mark paid no attention to the slowly changing mole on his lower back—until it was too late. The mole was a cancerous melanoma. In the early stages, melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, is completely curable. Mark had waited too long. The cancer had penetrated deep within his skin and had begun its slow spread into the bloodstream and vital organs. Mark was given two years to live.
(a) Unlike some who withdraw from life when faced with such a grim prognosis. Mark vowed that he would devote his limited time to educating others about the dangers of sun exposure. Pacing up and down beaches at mid-afternoon, Mark shared his story with beach dwellers. He talked to fathers and mothers about the need to check moles on themselves and their children, to lily-white Australian teens about the hazards of tanning and the benefits of sunscreens, and to all on the importance of self-examination and the changes to look for in moles.
(b) Australia’s “60 Minutes” profiled Mark’s courageous campaign in 1988. The producers introduced the segment by stating that too much sun on sensitive skin had turned Australia’s beautiful sandy shores into “ . . . beaches every bit as dangerous as a war zone.” Mark’s moving story stunned the nation, motivating thousands to visit their dermatologists to check out suspicious moles.
(c) The Australian College of Dermatologists estimated that the 20-minute-long segment on Mark Marcelis stimulated more awareness of melanoma than all of their public efforts combined, saving hundreds of lives. When asked what he thought it was going to take to make Australians wake up to the dangers of sun exposure, Mark prophetically said: “Certainly, I hope it’s not my dying, but then . . ..” Four months after the story aired, Mark Marcelis died.
(d) Mark Marcelis was a great evangelist. He was passionate that others would not suffer as he had suffered. He was out there seeking the lost— people who did not know what he knew.
iv) Christ does not expect us to comb the beaches as Mark did telling people that God loves them, though there are young Christians who do that every summer. Most of us have not been called to be that kind of evangelist.
v) But we are called to live out the love of Christ in our families, in the workplace and in our community and never to be apologetic about the difference Christ makes in our lives.
CONCLUSION
Does that mean we ignore the stockholders (you and me)? Absolutely not! When we get our priorities in correct order, the profit to the stockholders will be evident.
So, our question for the day is, how well are we serving our customers? In the business world, the companies that do the best job of serving their customers are the companies that are prospering. I have this feeling that if we, the body of Christ, served like our Master served, we would have the crowds thronging our doors (as Jesus did). If we are having less and less influence in the world, it is because we have forgotten our core values. We are here not to serve ourselves, the stockholders, but to serve the customer: little children, those who are in need, (community), and those who are lost. “If anyone would be first,” said Jesus, “let him be last of all, and servant of all.”
What are my priorities? Yours? Let’s get it right!