Well, good morning. Today, we continue on with our four core values of worship, discipleship, outreach, and community. Today, we swing back around to the value of outreach. Implied in the value of outreach is this idea of service. Service basically means just being available to serve to take care of the needs of others. As I began to think about this idea of service, I began to think about what would be a good example of service. Then I realized, we have these firefighters here, and they are actually great examples of service. In fact, I would say they epitomize service because they take service to a new level. Most of us serve, but they basically serve over and above. They take things back to a willingness to serve. They go beyond the basic levels of service all the way over to what I would call passionate service. I was thinking about it. If we had a group of firefighters and we had a group of people in the church dedicated to performing that same level of service, not only would the community be protected from things like house fires, they would be protected from other fires. The fires that would seek to destroy family, that would seek to destroy finances, that would seek to destroy health, and even faith. What I want to look at in the next few minutes is what I call passionate service. The six ingredients of passionate service.
The first area of service or the first ingredient of passionate service is what I refer to as a willingness to serve. Willingness to serve is basically the idea that you are available. I know some of these guys very well, and I doubt that any of them had to be strong-armed, convinced, or coerced, or forced into service. They were all willing to serve. Likewise, Christians are called to be servants. It is very clear, if you’ve done any reading in the Bible, you know there are passages after passages that speak of this idea of service. Some speak directly and some speak indirectly. One passage that I think really speaks of this idea of service comes out of the Book of 1 John 4:19 which says “We love because He first loved us.” We are talking about God’s love to us. We are not talking obviously of a romantic love. We are talking about a sacrificial-type love. A love that was a passionate love that basically involved Jesus Christ being crucified on the cross. We see in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” That is the kind of love we are talking about. That is the kind of passion that we are talking about. Likewise, Christians are called to sacrificial service. Obviously, we can’t die on the cross, but we can die to ourselves. We can die to our own self-interest or our own self desires at least long enough to be available and willing to serve others. Unfortunately, there are Christians who do not allow enough margins in their lives to serve others. They fill their lives with so many things. They fill it with hobbies and sports and technology and work and all these things that tend to take over their life so there is nothing left to serve. Finally, when they do serve, a lot of times what happens is they serve out of a sense of dread and obligation and drudgery. When they do that, they zap the life out of service. Christians are called to serve, but they are called to joyous service. When Christians are serving, they are supposed to feel a sense of fulfillment. They are supposed to feel a sense of satisfaction. Why? Because they are doing what God has wired them to do. In other words, they are operating within their area of giftedness, their skillset, and their talents, which is really the next thing I want to talk about.
The next ingredient of passionate service is knowing your gifts, your skills, and your talents. I suspect there might be a few of you people here who know this, but probably very few know this, is the fact that I am actually a firefighter. Did anybody know that? One person is raising their hand. I’ve got proof that I am a firefighter. I’ve got my helmet. Actually, I’m not a firefighter, I’m a fire chaplain. There is a bit difference there because you notice that my helmet is nice and shiny and clean. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean I don’t just take care of the helmet. It means I don’t go to many fires yet and that suits Debbie perfectly fine because she is afraid I’m going to get hurt. I have been actually on three responses. One was a false alarm. The second one was some sort of a gas leak. The third response was probably the most dangerous. I was asked to help escort Santa Claus on the Christmas parade through 200 screaming kids down to the Light of Light Night. That is tough stuff. The bottom line of what I am trying to say is that the helmet does not make a firefighter. One thing I know by hanging around the firehouse is that it takes a lot of skills to be a firefighter. Before I started hanging around at the firehouse, I used to think like many of you how tough can it be. The fire goes, an alarm sounds, you slide down the pole. You grab your helmet. You grab your hose. You get your coat and you get on the truck and you go. Simple as that. Well, the first thing is I haven’t found the pole yet. I am still waiting. You have to walk down steps really fast over there at Bellevue. Really, it is very complicated, and it is requires a lot of skill to be a firefighter. Everything is complicated. Something as simple as hoses. I have learned a lot about hoses. I learned there are long hoses and there are short hoses. There are different colors of hoses. There are different diameters of hoses, and they are all designed to accomplish different things whether it is a trash fire or a structure fire or somewhere in between. I learned that you have a lot of pressure gauges to regulate the amount of water that is going to go through the hose. That is an important thing. The poor guy up on the third floor wants to make sure when he is fighting a fire that he is going to get enough water there and that he’s not just standing there and all of a sudden the water just dribbles out. Or if there is too much pressure, then what happens is they can’t keep control of that hose, and it could kick them back if it is too strong. There is a lot of skill involved in that. There are all sorts of equipment to learn about. They have all these tools for making sure that you can force your way into some sort of a structure. Knock down a door. Knock a hole in the roof or possibly use those Jaws of Life to extract somebody from a car following an accident. They have to know about different types of vehicles. Here is a question that I didn’t know. How many of you know there is actually a difference between a fire truck and a fire engine? I used to think there wasn’t a difference. The fire truck is the one that carries the ladder. The fire engine carries the pump to pump the water. That is the difference, but it took me about three months to learn that. There is a difference. There is a lot of skill that is involved in trying to be a firefighter. The more skilled that you are, like anything else, the more prepared you feel and the more fulfilled you feel in doing that particular occupation. You feel equipped, so you have a sense of joy to what you do.
It is the same way with Christians. I repeat this over and over again. Christians have all received some sort of what we would call spiritual gifts or talents or skills or whatever you want to call it. The Word says that when Christ went up, he gave gifts to men and women. We are talking about spiritual gifts. Those gifts can be anything. Things like hospitality. The gift of leadership. Things like the gift of prayer and mercy and those types of things. Some people know intuitively what those gifts are because they just know it or those gifts have been affirmed by other people. You look at that person and you say that person actually has the gift of hospitality. That person you can tell has the gift of prayer. That person I know they have a gift of leadership. When you take those God-given skills and you begin to match it with their personality and really their interest in life, what you have is what I refer to as a ministry sweet spot, which is basically a place where you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are operating in accordance with God’s will. You are operating in a way that you know that you are doing what God has wired to do. Because you know you are operating in that ministry sweet spot, you know that you have to use those gifts. You have to use it on a regular basis. In fact, there is a passage in 1 Peter that speaks of this. It says “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others; faithfully administering God’s grace in various forms.” I said that before that the word administering is where we get the word minister. Everyone is called to be ministers. To administer the gifts that they have been given by God. They know that. Someone who has a passionate level of service knows that they have the gifts. Know that they need to use them. And also know that they need to continue to develop them.
That is my third point. People that have a passionate level of service have a desire to engage in ongoing training. I know that a lot of these men and women that spend a lot of time in the fire house. A lot of the time it is kind of down time. It is hanging around, eating a meal together, watching a movie, just enjoying each other’s company, but they do a lot of training. There is ongoing training. It is learning new methods on how to fight a fire. Learning how to handle certain pieces of equipment. Creating new possible situations. Possible things that they can encounter on the scene so that when they get there they are prepared for any number of situations. So they do a lot of training. The church shouldn’t be any different. Christians shouldn’t be any different. Christians need to involve themselves in a regular habit of ongoing training. I know that is hard because it is hard to make the connection between church and training. I guarantee that for a lot of people that is such a foreign concept. When we think of training we think of obviously a fire house or a work situation or possibly at school where you are getting training and education. Those are environments where, yes, you need training and you need education but also people in the church need to have ongoing training and education. Some of you know that I spend a regular amount of time educating myself to be able to do my job better. I think most of you appreciate that. I appreciate you because you have set up an allowance in the church budget for me to do that. But training is not restricted to the paid guys. It can’t be. Training has to go all the way down to the volunteers. All the volunteers need to be just as trained as the paid people. It’s the same way in the church. The volunteers in the church need to be trained as much as the paid staff. We had a workshop yesterday on how to read the Bible, and there were 50 people there. It was awesome, 50 people that would sit for six hours learning how to read the Bible is amazing but they were being trained in how to read the Bible. It was awesome. It was great to see such a turnout. They were training themselves to learn how to study the Bible. To learn how to disciple to others. But it really doesn’t stop there. Not only should we study the Bible, but we need to study about our ministry. We need to understand, okay we are gifted in this area so we need to be the best we can in this particular area. It means we have to involve ourselves in whatever training is available out there. There are a lot of training aids out there. There are books. There are websites. There are DVDs. There are all sorts of things that will train people on anything from how to be a better greeter to how to build a water purification system in Africa and everything in between. There are all sorts of training aids out there that will help people be better at their giftedness. As I think the firefighters know, the best training happens in kind of a mentoring relationship where you have the people that have the experience and are able to go out to the fire and bring somebody alongside and show them exactly how to do their job. They learn by experience. They learn by being mentored by somebody. That is an important thing for firefighters, and it is an important thing for people in the church. As you grow in your area of ministry, and many of you people are leaders here, you need to be looking out for somebody to bring alongside to teach them how to do your ministry. The question is, can’t I serve without being trained? Yes you can. But what we are talking about here is what we refer to as passionate service. In order to have passionate service, you have to be equipped to do your job when you are called. In other words, you have to be equipped to be able to respond appropriately to the need at hand.
That is the next ingredient: a willingness to respond. The firefighters are on 24/7. There is always somebody at the fire house. You can go to sleep. You can go out of town, and you know that your home is going to be protected 24/7. They are ready to respond. So when that alarm goes off, they don’t sit down and say, well, I know the alarm is going off but I think it is time we sit down and have another meeting really quick. Let’s sit down and bring the coffee out and talk about it. Talk about should we really respond to this one or should we not. How should we respond. By the way maybe we need some more training because we really don’t feel ready to respond, so we are going to have some more training. No, they go. It doesn’t matter what they are doing. They just stop and they go because that is what they are there for. That is what they do. Everything they do up to that point came up to basically be willing and ready to respond to the call when it came. I got an email from the chief this week because I wanted to know how many calls they get a year, 933 calls a year, which is about three calls a day. That is really a lot of calls. Those calls can be any number of things. It can be as simple as a trash can caught on fire. It could be obviously a house or a structural-type fire. It can be a car accident or the possibility of a car fire. It can be some sort of a hazardous material type call. It could be some sort of a rescue or some sort of a medical call. They have a lot of things come in that they have to be trained, ready, and willing to respond to at a moment’s notice.
Likewise, Christians are supposed to be doing the same thing. There are a lot more calls than that that we get. When I talk about responding to the call, I am talking about the call that comes late at night when a husband or wife decides to leave the house and not come back. I’m talking about the kind of calls you get when suddenly someone’s child has died or a spouse has died. I’m talking about the calls you get when somebody has lost their job or are really struggling with their finances. I can go on and on and on. There are dozens and dozens of calls that come through throughout the day. Unlike the firefighters, unfortunately, we don’t have a very good system to get those calls. Sure, we have a thing called a prayer chain so some of the calls come through that. You watch Facebook and you can definitely see that people have certain needs so some come that way. Obviously some come by email or some come through the telephone, but it’s really a small percentage of really the ongoing needs in the church and outside the church. There are so many needs that there is really not enough time to respond to all those needs especially if you rely on the paid staff to do all the work. I have said this before. If you rely on me and Debbie and Ramsey and Sandy to respond to all the calls, just the ones that we get, it’s impossible. You are going to have a lot of things fall through the cracks because it’s not up to the paid people. It’s up to the volunteers. It’s up to the front lines to be the main responders to the call. In many ways, the Christians, all of you, you are in a position to field the calls. You hear about this stuff every day. Stuff that never makes it to the phone or email or Facebook or that sort of thing. The idea that we have to respond especially during the day when you guys are at work and that sort of thing, we should be part of the responding, but really our primary role is that of equippers. Many of you are familiar with the passage that comes out of the Book of Ephesians Chapter 4. It says “And He gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service.” How clear can you get? Granted, he is using some ancient terms like apostles and prophets and evangelists, pastors and teachers, but those terms up there are basically just ancient terms for modern day leadership roles. Do you get that? We are to equip. Yes, we have to be examples. Yes, we have to know how to serve. Yes, we need to serve, but our primary purpose is equipping the saints, which I think would be everyone here, for the work of service. People that understand passionate service, not just mediocre service but passionate service, understand when that call comes in, they respond. Whether it is a call on a telephone, whether it’s a pastor asking you to do something, whether it is a call late at night or someone in a casual conversation or something on Facebook, when those calls come in, it’s the saints that are called to respond. What does that look like? It could be anything. Today, we had a need for more food because we were bringing in guests so people that had the gift of hospitality – no brainer, I’ll just make some food. People that have the gift of leadership, when they see a hole somewhere in the bulletin or wherever and we want to do a project or something but we don’t have a leader, they say I can do that because I know I have the gift of leadership. When there is a hole somewhere in a class where we need a teacher to teach and somebody has the gift of teaching, they step up and do it because they know that is their gift. They know how to use their gift and consequently, they know they are supposed to respond.
I am going to share something with you, and I am not going to mention the name, but every Sunday morning when I get up, lately I’ve been getting up at 3:30 in the morning, I get up and the first thing I do is check my email. The first email that comes in is a prayer for me. It’s very humbling first thing in the morning that basically somebody took the time to find out what I was preaching for and formulated an email that would basically say ‘I pray for Chuck today. Chuck is preaching about passionate service. I pray right now, as he is continuing to prepare, that You would just prepare his heart. That you would prepare the people’s hearts to be able to begin to receive the message that Chuck has given.’ That is somebody who knows that she is gifted in prayer. That is someone who doesn’t have to be asked by not one person for a prayer. She just does it because that is what she does. Because that is who she is. Because that is how she is wired. She is wired as a person of prayer. I could name dozens and dozens of people. The people especially who work behind the scenes that do things you don’t even have to ask because they just do it because they know they are gifted. I know there are some people here that just say I would like to serve but I’m just nervous about it. It takes a little bit of confidence. It takes a little bit of risk, which is really my next point.
Someone who wants to engage in some level of passionate service eventually realizes they have to be willing to take a risk. It goes without saying that firefighters take amazing risks. You could see it in the slides. Especially the risk of being burned by the fire. I have learned a little bit hanging around the fire house, and correct me if I’m wrong, but there is a risk of what is called a backdraft and that is when oxygen comes in the room and really fuels the fire and so the fire really just all of a sudden gets large. Then there is a thing called a flashover. A flashover is when you have all this carbon in the air and all the stuff that is floating around in the air from the furniture and the chemicals and all that stuff when all of a sudden it gets to a certain heat, and it just catches on fire, and the whole room is on fire. They are in the middle of the room, and that is not a good thing. They can get burned really badly. It is not only the risk of fire. It is risk that they are in a structure and the structure collapses. It is a risk that they get hurt in a number of ways. It is a risk that they are exposed to dangerous chemicals that they breathe in. Even though it may not have affected them immediately, down the road they could have cancer from it. They are even exposed to the risk of violence. Does anybody remember last month, December 24, in New York? Four firefighters went out to respond to a fire. They were volunteers. And some lunatic out there shot at them. He hit four firefighters and killed two. There are a lot of risks to being firefighter. They all have a willingness. They know that risk. They know going into it that they are willing to accept that risk. Likewise, Christians who, again, engage not just in service but in passionate service, understand that there is a risk involved. Especially if you go onto a foreign mission field. Every day there are Christians being killed overseas in foreign countries. If you don’t believe me, I can give you some sources that speak of all of the persecuted Christians and all the Christians over there that are daily being killed for their faith. Here in America, we don’t have to worry too much about physical dangers when we are a Christian when we are going out there to serve. But there are other sorts of risks. There is a risk to your calendar that you may have to give up one thing to be able to go out there and serve. There is an emotional risk. There is a risk of stress. There is a risk that when you go out there and you try to serve somebody, you try to be generous to somebody, they actually may take advantage of your generosity. How dare they do that? But they do it all the time. There is a risk that you go out there, and you know what, they might not even appreciate what you do. You are taking off work and you are going out to serve somebody and they don’t care. There is a risk to that because it is damaging to your pride. There is a risk of violence. There are people who get violent when you try to help them. They get argumentative. Why don’t you give me more? There are all these risks. But really, the bottom line is the risk that is involved is the risk that they will not receive your passionate service. When it gets to that point, what you know is you are in good company. Not only are you in the company of the firefighters, you are in the company of Jesus. As you know, in John 1:11, one of my favorite passages, it says “He, being Jesus, came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” What he is saying is Jesus came to his own children, the ones that he co-created with the Father. He came on down and people said no thanks. Keep your passionate service. Keep your love to yourself. We want nothing to do with it. That is what happens sometimes. Again, when we go into a situation and try to give our passionate service, we may face rejection. That is okay. We can even expect it because that is what happened to Jesus Christ. We still do our job. And not only do we do our job, we do it with a sense of excellence, which is my final point for today.
Passionate service involves serving with excellence. Again, I have been around these firefighters enough to know that they joke around a lot. They have a good time together, but when they are on, the professionalism goes way up. There is no room for sloppiness when you are going to a fire. There is no room for lateness. When the alarm goes off, someone can’t sit back and say I’ll be there in about 20-25 minutes. I have to go check my mail. No, they never allow that. They don’t allow sloppy behavior. They don’t allow anything sloppy to happen at the scene of the fire because, at a minimum, it’s going to disrupt the teamwork. At a maximum, there is the possibility that somebody may die. They absolutely have to serve with excellence. I have seen enough to know that is what they do. So if firefighters are called to serve with excellence, why would Christians not be called to serve with excellence. I have said before, something about serving in a church or serving in a community, sometimes we lower our standards. I know a lot of you are professionals and you have great jobs out there. When you are at work, you are on and you’re a professional. But somehow, when you get to the church or you get into a service project, you lower your standards. You show up late for a practice session. You are assigned to work in the nursery or downstairs or anywhere and you say I can’t make it today; they’ll do fine without me. Or it doesn’t matter if you’re 20 minutes late and there is a line waiting out there when you get there. That is not service with excellence. That is mediocre service. It’s not anywhere near passionate service. We are called for passionate service. We are called to excellence. We are called to service excellence not simply to impress people to do a job, but we are called to excellent service because we know who ultimately we serve. The last passage I want to look at comes out of the later part of Ephesians. Ephesians 6:7 says “Serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord, not men.” See our service is motivated by love, but it also means that we perform our service because we know ultimately who we serve. We serve the one who created us. We serve the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is who we serve and so we should serve with excellence. When we begin to serve with excellence what happens is the light of the One who created us, the Excellent One, comes down through us, and we begin to shed God’s light and God’s glory out into the community. That is what is happening in excellent service. As I close, as I think about these firefighters, as I recap why I believe that they demonstrate passionate service, think about it. Think about the fact that they are willing to serve. They are not forced into the situation. Think about the fact that they know their skillset. They know that they are gifted in what they do, but they don’t want to stop there. They know that they have to continue to develop themselves, continue to equip themselves to be better at what they do. So when that call comes in, they don’t just sit back, they go forward because they know that ultimately their call is to respond. They respond. They also know that when they do respond when they do their job that there is a risk that they may be burned. There is a risk that they may even die, but they don’t care because all they care about is doing what they have been called to do and doing it with excellence.
So my prayer for everyone here today that would call themselves a saint, that would call themselves someone who is born again by the spirit of God, someone who would call themselves servants of the Living God, that you get away from the mediocre service. Don’t do it to please Chuck. Don’t do it to please the person next to you. Do it to please God. If we would learn to be not just servants but we would learn to be passionate servants, just imagine what the church would be like if we had a roomful of passionate servants.
