a vision for being a servant leader

as the second week of orientation has wrapped up, God has already blown my pride away, and now that the campers are here, a whole new spiritual period of my life has begun. don’t be mistaken, however, the campers that are at TPP right now are high schoolers here from other churches “on a missions trip for this week”…whatever that means. they are not the campers that i will personally be teaching. i will be teaching the fourth and fifth grade boys from around the area.

i feel like i am not being very articulate, and that i haven’t been in the past few posts, and for that i’m sorry. look past the lack of eloquence and into the heart of the writing. but anyways, orientation has been a wild ride for me, even though it has been really low key (ironically enough). it is a difficult thing for me to understand what it means to fit in to the spot that God has for me this summer within the dynamic of the other staff members that are here, but i have found that the answer is much simpler than i imagined. my position here is a paid position (entitling it the name of “job”, if you will), and though i know the reality of college expenses and the much needed money, it feels so wrong to view my investment in this community as supplemented by such a stipend. furthermore, the fact that this is a defined “job” (i am using the term very loosely because i feel that there is a distinct difference between a job and ministry) allows for us staff to view it merely as such, and not something radical. we have defined hours. we have defined responsibilities. we have defined coworkers. so it is easy to get into the mindset of being “off” and not looking for ways to serve. moreover (<—i know it sounds repetitive, but at least i didn’t use “furthermore”, right?), it is also easy to forget this concept of integrity.

what does it mean to truly be the same person in any situation? granted, different occurrences hold different appropriate reactions, but do the values that we hold so dear out in the open mean as much to us when nobody else is around? i must say that i have struggled with grasping this within such a ministry environment because of the job-like appearance. when i went on barnabas, ministry engulfed the entire time that i was away. it was natural. it made sense. and we never really had too much time to be tested on integrity because we were within a team environment and active almost nonstop (maybe that is why there is such a difficult transition afterwards?). this is different. i have weekends off. once the actual day camp begins (on the 15th), i will end my day around 4. i have abundant off time. and as i have seen how others use this time i have been frustrated, because i feel that especially in such a ministry-based leadership position, not seeking God’s face constantly (on and off the “job”) seems to discredit any leadership that has already been given by the position. it’s a farce. a trick. “the oldest one in the book”. a focus on living consistently has seemed so evidently important to me, even though it is quite possibly the most difficult task to accomplish.

and that being said, who am i to evaluate anyone else? i am the most wretched of sinners, and i have absolutely no room to proclaim judgment. that, my friends, is what is being knocked into my head. as kuch once talked about, “plank-eyed pride” (referring to matt. 7:3) is so ridiculously present in my life. so what do i do with that? simply stated, as a good friend of mine here at the project told me, i have to understand that the only person that i can control is myself, and that i need to be enveloped in trying to glorify God so much so that i do not ask for fire to rain down from heaven to smite those who aren’t trying as hard as i am, but that i rather look for opportunities to pick up where others have left off.

as i’m sure you might have heard once or twice before, in this burning building that we call life, Christians are the ones that are going around and straightening the pictures that are hanging on the walls. who’s guilty of that? i sure am. so putting all judgment aside and knowing that i am definitely no better than anyone, and that i would argue that i am the least of the least, i then look to what it means to be a servant leader. Jesus uses the illustration of the mustard seed in relation to Christianity, something very radical because the Jews at that time saw the mustard seed as a weed, something banned from the garden, but still something that grew quickly but subtly. and this little mustard seed, being very small in size, grows to envelop entire areas, but is the smallest of things…like the acorn that becomes a tree. how should this pattern be reflected in my life? (note – this observation of the mustard seed should be accredited to shaine claiborne. sp? read one of his books…irresistable revolution. it’s fantastic.)

and with this desire to become like the mustard seed: small, subtle, and considered ugly, i then turn to look for such servant opportunities. if i am ever “too good” to help anyone in even a simple, everyday task like cleaning up after dinner, i need to look into my spiritual fitness and evaluate if i’m really as “in shape” as i think i am…because 11 times out of 10 (yes, you read that right), i will find that the pride bug got to me and that i need to pop my self-inflated baloon. to be a servant is to be emulating some of the exact same characteristics that Christ Himself emulated. the scriptures talk about Jesus coming not to be served, but to serve. and then the question arises, in what situation do we become better than Jesus and able to focus on being served? the resounding answer is always “never”, and knowing this gives me such comfort because i can see that i don’t have anything, and therefore should simply throw everything that comes at me upon Jesus, in dependence on Him.

i only feel like i have scraped the tip of the iceburg, and i don’t even know if i made a concise point, and as God continues to teach me, i’m sure i will figure out inadequacies and the immaturity in my viewpoint, but such is my walk.

until next time.

ben

“I feel so useless on my own/You’re always waiting just in time to save me/I’m not so usless, I’m not alone.”