A quick note: most of my theology, including everything I write on RPC, is rooted in the imperative to "walk as Christ walked." One of the ways churchianity has failed at this is in the area of service.

Most congregations take the view that it is up to the various congregations to seek out opportunities to serve. To get their people serving, they organize group outings, solicit opportunities within the community, and look for chances to help others. Let me be clear: there is nothing inherently evil/wrong/bad about doing this.

However, I don't see Jesus doing this.

Instead, I see Jesus making disciples. Those disciples became so excited about how they were growing under Jesus' leadership that they brought more and more people to follow him. As his following grew, many of these people needed help, so they asked and he gave it. This seems to be the prevailing framework for how Jesus helped people. He didn't seek people to heal or cast demons out of; they found him while he was out and about doing what Jesus does: make disciples.

The dynamic difference here is that Jesus focused on his mission and helped when needs found him. Churchianity focuses on service in the hope that this will somehow lead to a fulfillment of its mission. This is backwards.

This is also why congregations today fail so heavily at building up true spiritual leaders. In stead of making leaders (by discipling them), they are making push-overs in the hope that eventually they'll met leaders who can help. Result? Natural, godly male leaders out in the wild are like unicorns who don't actually exist on their own, so they either (1) find and steal away someone that was trained up by someone else, or (2) we get leaders who only understand a weak, unbiblical framework for ministry that consistent with how they found churchianity and not necessarily consistent with how Jesus meant to run it.

  • Should we serve? Absolutely.

  • Should we make the search of service opportunities a higher priority in our lives than Jesus made it in his? Absolutely not.

  • Should we raise up leaders so gifted that their following naturally invites those in need of service to ask for it? Of course - and then is when we should respond.

But also note that Jesus COULD NOT do many miracles in his own hometown. Did he lose his divine power due to some mystical force in that place? Of course not. The Bible says it was because they did not believe. The implication here, then, is that Jesus was serving those who believed, not those who did not. Or he served those who would believe because of his service, not necessarily anyone and everyone regardless of their disposition toward him - and the evidence of his hometown shows that God intentionally withdraws his assistance from those who aren't oriented Christward in the first place. And how will we know if those we serve are oriented Christward if we do not first give them an opportunity to demonstrate their heart toward Christ? By making service the forefront of ministry effort, we are abandoning our filter in exchange for an "anyone and everyone, whether they ask for it or not, and regardless of their disposition toward Christ" model of ministry vastly disparate from what Jesus showed us.