Committed to Christ – Serve

Committed to Christ – Serve
Sycamore Creek Church
April 13/14, 2014
Tom Arthur
John 13:3-15

Peace friends!

How’s your serve?  I don’t mean your tennis serve.  I mean your commitment to serve God in the church, community, and world?

Today we wrap up a series called Committed to Christ.  For the last six weeks we’ve been preparing for Easter by looking at our commitments to follow Jesus.  Today we look at our commitment to serve.

Back in February we took an anonymous survey asking you about your various commitments.  We asked you about your commitment to serve and here’s what we found:

Do you serve the Lord with your time and talents?

2 – No, I’ve never given any time to serve God.
14 – Yes, I do give my time, but only when directly asked to.
22 – Yes, I take the initiative, searching for opportunities
14 – Yes, about one hour a week
9 – Yes, about three to five hours a week.
12 – Yes, I give time to serve God every single day.
2 – Yes, I give a tithe (10%) of my time to serve the Lord.

Today it’s my hope that each one of us would take a further step in faithfully serving God and others in our church, community, and world.  One very practical opportunity you’re going to have to serve is this Thursday.  This Thursday is traditionally called “Maundy Thursday.”  Maundy Thursday is the day before Easter when the church remembers the mandate, thus “Maundy”, that Jesus gave his disciples to love those around them in service.  He not only told them this but he showed them what this looked like by washing their feet, a dirty nasty job in a day and age when there were no socks or pavement and everyone walked around in sandals, here’s the story as Jesus’ follower, John told it:

John 13:3-6 & 12-15 NRSV
Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.  Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him…

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. 

Today it doesn’t make a lot of sense to wash people’s feet.  So to celebrate Jesus’ washing his disciples feet we’re going to gather at the local Quality Dairy Laundromat to hand out free quarters and laundry detergent to wash people’s clothes.  It’s a simple but powerful witness to Jesus’ command to love one another through service.

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve looked at serving with our treasure, testimony and temple.  Because next week is Easter, it’s worth just taking a moment and asking this question: how is investing and inviting three people to Easter going?  That’s part of what it means to serve  through your testimony.  You share with others how you have encountered God in the resurrection and worship at SCC and how that encounter has changed you and sent you in mission to the world.

Serving with your Time
What about serving with your time?  We talk about tithing our treasure or money to God or giving 10% back to God.  What would it mean to tithe your time?  Have you ever considered that?  That would be a big commitment, right?  2.4 hours/day in service to God in our church, community, and world!  Or maybe you just want to count waking hours.  If you get seven to eight hours of a sleep a tithe on your waking hours would be about 1.5 hours/day.

Below is a list of all the ways you can serve the church, community and world at SCC.  When it comes to giving of your time, I’d like to suggest you take an experimental approach.  Try something out for three months.  You don’t have to commit your entire life to it.  Just give it a try and see how it goes.  Reevaluate and then readjust your time commitments.

Serving with your Talents
What are you good at?  What talents has God given you?  One way to explore that is through an online assessment tool we use called Assessme.org.  Assessme.org gives you four inventories to help you find how God has uniquely gifted you in your personality, leadership style, spiritual gifts, and skills.  Take about twenty minutes and learn something about yourself here:
www.assessme.org/2364.aspx.

Here are my results.  When it comes to my leadership style I’m highest in administration, strategic, and pioneering leadership.  I’m weakest in team, encouraging, and pastoral leadership.  In other words, I tend to be pretty task oriented rather than relational oriented.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are the results of my epersonality test.  I’m a planner.  My personality leans toward being independent rather than social, I am an abstract thinker rather than concrete, I lean toward my head or intellect more than my heart, and I’m a systematic thinker rather than an adaptive thinker.  This makes me a good “planner.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When it comes to my grace gifts, I’m gifted in stewardship which is not just about money but also about people.  I like teaching.  I also am a giver and a leader.  I’m gifted with the talents of administration and making disciples or followers of Jesus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What are your talents when it comes to your personality, leadership style, and grace gifts?

A Service Autobiography
I’d like to put some flesh on these graphs by sharing with you my own service autobiography.  How did I end up right here right now?  How did I end up serving Jesus by serving the church as a pastor?  How did I end up with the unique set of talents and passions that I have as a pastor?  Here’s my story, or at least part of it.

Growing up in what is sometimes called the “holiness tradition.”  In the holiness tradition there’s a particular emphasis on avoiding sin.  “Sin” in the holiness tradition means personal purity.  So we were encouraged not to curse, smoke, drink, use drugs, have sex outside of marriage, listen to secular music, date non-Christian girls, or do anything “unedifying.”  Christian maturity in the tradition I grew up in was primarily about avoiding personal sins of impurity.

One thing that was highly emphasized in the holiness tradition was reading your Bible.  Reading your Bible can be a dangerous activity.  As I began reading my Bible more and more I began to see that God wasn’t only interested in personal sins of purity.  God was also interested in social sins.  Or you could say that God was not just interested in personal holiness but also in social holiness.  Let me give you and example of this kind of thinking in the Bible. It comes from the prophet Isaiah:

Isaiah 58:1-9 NLT
¹ “Shout with the voice of a trumpet blast.
    Shout aloud! Don’t be timid.
Tell my people Israel of their sins!
²     Yet they act so pious!
They come to the Temple every day
    and seem delighted to learn all about me.
They act like a righteous nation
    that would never abandon the laws of its God.
They ask me to take action on their behalf,
    pretending they want to be near me.
³ ‘We have fasted before you!’ they say.
    ‘Why aren’t you impressed?
We have been very hard on ourselves,
    and you don’t even notice it!’
“I will tell you why!” I respond.
    “It’s because you are fasting to please yourselves.
Even while you fast,
    you keep oppressing your workers.
⁴ What good is fasting
    when you keep on fighting and quarreling?
This kind of fasting
    will never get you anywhere with me.
⁵ You humble yourselves
    by going through the motions of penance,
bowing your heads
    like reeds bending in the wind.
You dress in burlap
    and cover yourselves with ashes.
Is this what you call fasting?
    Do you really think this will please the Lord?
⁶ “No, this is the kind of fasting I want:
Free those who are wrongly imprisoned;
    lighten the burden of those who work for you.
Let the oppressed go free,
    and remove the chains that bind people.
⁷ Share your food with the hungry,
    and give shelter to the homeless.
Give clothes to those who need them,
    and do not hide from relatives who need your help.
⁸ “Then your salvation will come like the dawn,
    and your wounds will quickly heal.
Your godliness will lead you forward,
    and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind.
⁹ Then when you call, the Lord will answer.
    ‘Yes, I am here,’ he will quickly reply.

This isn’t one isolated place in scripture where God is interested in questions of justice and how we treat the poor.  It’s all over the Bible!  God is interested in our service to him in personal holiness but personal holiness doesn’t mean much to God if we’re not also interested in serving our neighbor in social holiness.  So what is social holiness?  Social holiness is serving God by serving both the spiritual and physical needs of others with our time, talent, treasure, testimony, and “temple” in the church, community and world.

Who do we serve?  We serve God, but we do so by serving our church, community, and world.  What do we serve?  We serve spiritual and physical needs.  How do we serve?  We serve with our time, talent, treasure, testimony and “temple” (our bodies).  Let me give you some examples from my own life.  Watch for some common themes.

In early elementary school I began a hamster breeding business.  It turns out that I was pretty good at breeding hamsters but not necessarily selling them.  Later on I found a better way to make money. I started a lawn mowing business.  I created little business cards and went around to my neighbors and passed them out.  I got three good clients and mowed their yards throughout middle and high school.

While in high school my creativity began to bloom.  I started a Christian radio show on my high school’s radio station, WBDG.  I also won the state competition in radio documentary-making with a documentary I led my team in making on the topic of gangs in Indianapolis.  So began my interest in creative use of media production and communication.  While in high school I also took several classes in photography.  I began to learn how to create images that would communicate to our culture.

Meanwhile my leadership skills began to bloom as I led a before-school prayer meeting.  I would pick up three to five fellow students who would gather at our church to pray for revival in our school.

I graduated 29^th out of almost 1000 students in my class.  I enjoyed learning and that expressed itself in the college I chose.  I went to Wheaton College, a small Christian liberal arts school outside of Chicago because it had a strong emphasis on faith and academics.  I began as a Christian education major but switched to psychology.  During a summer internship, I realized that I wasn’t interested in being a counselor and was more interested in the research field of Community Psychology, the arm of psychology that focused on intervention and prevention.  While at Wheaton I also took all the photography classes that Wheaton offered and picked up a photography minor.

During my sophomore year I began to volunteer in the Dearborn Boys club in the projects on the south side of Chicago.  By my junior year I was leading the group of students from Wheaton who went down weekly to build relationships through sports and games with boys in the projects.  The projects on the south side of Chicago are massive.  I learned that if the projects were made their own city, they would be the second largest city in Illinois next to Chicago.  This exposure to poverty was ultimately where I experienced a call to racial and economic reconciliation.  This meant for me helping build friendships across racial and economic barriers.  Rich and poor and black and white becoming friends.

When I graduated from Wheaton I moved to Petoskey, MI and began working at Petoskey United Methodist Church.  While in Petoskey I somehow ended up leading the local ministerial association even though I wasn’t an official minister.  I also ended up founding the Northern Michigan C.S. Lewis Festival.  In its first year, the C.S. Lewis Festival consisted of 19 events put on by 14 groups over the month of November and was attended by 2500 people.  All of this was in a town of 7000.  Even though I am no longer involved, the C.S. Lewis Festival is now in its 11^th year and still going strong.

While in Petoskey I volunteered at the local homeless shelter called The Nehemiah House.  While there I met a man named Alex.  Sarah and I had just bought a three bedroom house, and we were only living in one room of it.  We felt like God was calling us to share our house with Alex, so we did.  He still rents from us and lives in our house in Petoskey.

My work at Petoskey United Methodist Church eventually led to a call to become a pastor.  This was a fear-filled calling.  I was afraid that I would be appointed by our bishop to a traditional boring church.  That obviously hasn’t played out yet!  I chose to go to Duke Divinity School because Duke placed a strong emphasis on both personal faith and academics.  At Duke I started the Duke Socratic Club, a debating society that met weekly to debate what we were learning in classes.  We also held public debates between professors at Duke and other professors in the area.  Our first event, a debate between Richard Hayes and Bart Ehrman, got picked up by the state news and over 500 people attended!

When Sarah and I moved to Durham we had to choose a church to attend.  We decided to attend a church that I would likely never be appointed to, so we chose to attend the historically black United Methodist Church in East Durham, Asbury Temple.  At Asbury Temple we met David and Rebecca Arthur, who have the same last name as our family but are of no relation.  David and Rebecca had begun the Isaiah House, a “New Monastic” house in the ghetto of East Durham.  We decided to move into the Isaiah house and join their mission.  Living at the Isaiah house was like living in the local homeless shelter with your small group.  Besides becoming a parent after thirteen years of child-free marriage, there has been nothing more disruptive, challenging, and ultimately powerfully meaningful than living at the Isaiah House.

Before we left Durham, we began a new group called The Order of St. James (OSJ).  OSJ is made up of fellow pastors and their families who want to take the principles of New Monasticism and put them into practice as pastors.  We have three practices that we hold one another accountable to: Simplicity, Hospitality, and Evangelism.

During my last year at Duke Divinity School, I somehow ended up the co-president of the Student Council.  My co-president was a black woman named Nancy who taught me how the world looked from a black woman’s perspective.

Toward the end of my time at Duke, I received a call out of the blue one day from a woman named Barb Flory.  She told me that she had planted a church in Lansing, MI and was retiring.  She had heard about me and wanted to know if I was interested in being appointed by the bishop as the second pastor of Sycamore Creek Church.  I was intrigued by the idea and met with her and the leadership team and the bishop appointed me to be the pastor of SCC.  About a year later, she called me again and wanted to know if I was interested in joining the team of people in West Michigan who plant churches for the United Methodist Church.  I was intrigued and eventually joined the team.  Now I’m the leader of that team and involved in church planting all around the state.

I’m not sharing this story with you to make myself look good.  I’d share your story if I knew it as well as I know my own.  I’m sharing it to show you the common threads of gifts, talents, personality, leadership style and passions that runs through it all.  What common threads did you hear?

Do you see some common threads running through my story?  I see a mixture of these common threads:

1. Entrepreneurial spirit and impulse
2. Creativity
3. Leadership
4. Passion for justice and the down and out (racial and economic reconciliation)
5. Double interest in academia (learning and teaching) and practical living (doing)
6. Calling by God to live out all those things as a pastor of a local church

What are the talents and gifts that run through your life?  How can you use those unique mixture of gifts and talents to serve God by serving your church, community, and world?  Where is God calling you to serve?

Are you ready to grow in your hands-on service to the Lord? Check all that apply.

ð      No, I am not ready at this time.
ð      No, I am not ready yet, but I will be searching for ways that I can serve the Lord.
ð      Yes, I am ready to begin giving one hour each week.
ð      Yes, I am ready to begin giving two hours each week.
ð      Yes, I am ready to begin giving ______ hours each week.
ð      Yes, I am interested in exploring serving in the areas circled on the Serve Sheet.
ð      Yes, I will take the online inventory at www.assessme.org/2364.aspx.
ð      Yes, I am ready to serve weekly/monthly/quarterly in a missions opportunity in the community.
ð      Yes, I am ready to go on a Nicaragua medical mission trip this year.
ð      Yes, I am sensing a call to ordained service.
ð      Service will be a priority in my life, growing to include the following:
I will look for ways to give my time and strength to serve the Lord. I will serve with joy and gladness. When I feel the Lord inviting me to greater levels of sacrifice and service, I will answer, “Yes, Lord, send me.”

 

Serve the Church, Community & World Interest

 

Name:________________________________________________ Contact:____________________________

I am particularly passionate about: _____________________________________________________________

I have these talents/Spiritual Gifts: _____________________________________________________________

Circle the ministries in which you might have an interest in serving or are committed to serving again this year.  Someone from new areas of interest will contact you for further discussion.

Serve the Church: Worship