Sermon Illustrations

A STUDY IN SERVICE

As a student in seminary, my roommate had a job as a custodian with the school. After the first day on the job, he told he had been assigned to work on the first floor of a four-story building. "Basically there are four guys responsible for their own floors. I take care of the rooms, and my responsibilities are to empty the trash, dust the place, mop the floors, clean the restrooms and sweep the corridors."

One particular night at the end of the first month, Lucas returned home later than usual, in fact near 11 p.m. When I asked him why he was home so late, he answered, "We had some problems at work. Someone from the office filed a complaint. The supervisor was very unhappy and called all the four custodians to a special meeting."

I asked him out of curiously, "Oh, what is so important that you guys have to hold such a late nigh meeting? What was wrong?"

My friend grinned sheepishly and said, "A dead roach was left on the staircase for a few days and no one swept it away." How could that happened? He explained, "All the four of us just work on our own floors No one was responsible for the stairs."

A Russian proverb says, "When two shepherds guard a sheep, it gets lost."

(From a sermon by Victor Yap, "Built to Serve" 1/22/2009)

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