People generally want resurrection without cross. People want to see a great movement of God without personal sacrifice. But that’s not the way it works. When you study revivals and renewal movements throughout history, they have great healings, miracles and social reform, but they are also coupled with great suffering. And one thing that often accompanies those movements is the church being the church in the world versus letting others be the church FOR them. That was the move in the Reformation for instance. The church woke up and realized that they, not just the professional clergy, had been given gifts and a calling by God in the world.

Wayne Cordeiro says:

“People wonder what common denominators there are in those churches that for decades enjoyed the hand of God on their ministries. One quality in particular showed up repeatedly: the ownership that the people of the church took in the ministry. They didn’t wait for a professional or for someone ‘more qualified’ than they. Everyone knew they had a part to play, and they participated gladly. This marks the transition from attendance to ownership, from being consumers to contributors.”

I love that since the beginning of Village Church it has been a movement of people who serve. A church that doesn’t just sit around and consume ‘religious goods and services’ but who give of their time, talent and treasure to serve God in a myriad of ways from Kids ministry, to Community Group leadership to making meals for struggling people. For instance, my wife Erin told me about a Community Group in Village she knows which makes meals in a special way for other families. Once a month they choose a family, and each couple makes a meal for each day of the week for that family to cover 7 meals. That is amazing!

Of course, the serving spirit (which Jesus showed us most potently on the cross, and in his washing of feet in John 13-19) is not true about 100% of our people, which is why we stop every once in a while and do whole Sundays dedicated to laying out the ministry needs and calling people to Step up and Serve, but all in all we are really blessed!

It has been this way since day one when a team of 50 people decided to leave the comfort of the church they knew to start Village Church, where there would be early mornings, tiring and complex work, and a need to disciple new and undomesticated Christians.

I am so thankful for a church that recognizes that they are on a battleship not a cruise liner. Time is short. Life is fragile. People don’t know Jesus, and serving cultivates a reality where people can hear and be transformed by Jesus whether that is formal Sunday stuff or in the fabric of life on any given day in any given space.

Serving is not some safe trade off for the real work of disciple-making as some have said. It is disciple-making in and of itself. For oneself. In it we become more like Jesus who said, “The Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve” (Mark 10:45).