This morning, I want to convince you, who are believers, to serve your unchurched friends with the intention of sharing the gospel with them. I want to see you make an impact on those closest to you through a simple campaign we are doing called Prayer, Care, Share.
Find John 13 with me, if you will.
Many of you already have this insert. If you have this with you, would you just lift your hand and hold it up? Prayer, Care, Share is a simple plan to reach anyone with the gospel.
The goal of prayer-care-share is to create natural relationships with people in your life and then find a way to tell them how Christ has changed you. The process begins with you choosing someone you want to introduce to Christ. This is likely someone who is already in your life – a family member, coworker, or friend. Then, you pray for discernment, direction, and love toward that person. On the back of the card, you’ll see a schedule that you can follow for the entire emphasis. Notice Prayer Care Share culminates on Easter Sunday, when you would invite the person you’re praying for to church with you. For now, focus on the small card inside.
This morning, I want to focus on serving your unchurched friends and neighbors. I want to introduce you to servant evangelism.
Today’s Scripture
“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (John 13:1-5, 12-17).
There are 3 layers to Prayer, Care, Share. You might think of them as three lanes or three stages. First, you pray for your unchurched friends and loved ones daily. You call out to God to bring the people closest to you close to Him. I’m happy to report that our church is praying for a little over 1,000 friends and family members who need the love of Jesus Christ. You’ll have an opportunity to add your loved one to this growing number today through your BFG.
Second, you actively show love and serve those closest to you. You can serve in a thousand ways. You cook a meal for neighbors or invite them over or out to eat with you. It’s offering to help with yard work or give them a ride – whatever is needed. You are watching for packages when your neighbor is away. All this builds trust.
Trust is the invisible but vital piece of any relationship. Trust is at historically low levels in American society, while cynicism is at historically high levels. We care and love to build trust.
Third and lastly, you share the gospel with those you love the most. Prayer, Care, Share combines two of the greatest commands Jesus gave to us: the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.
In the moments to come, I want to develop YOUR SERVE for your unchurched loved ones.
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3. It’s Fueled by Humility
2. It’s Tailored to Needs
1. It’s Motivated by Love
1. It’s Motivated by Love
“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1).
Jesus was motivated by love. I love how verse 1 describes Jesus in that He “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1b).
1.1 What is Servanthood Evangelism
I want to introduce a concept that could be life-changing for many of your friends and family members: Servanthood Evangelism. Servanthood Evangelism is motivated by love. Servanthood evangelism is a combination of simple acts of kindness followed by intentional personal evangelism. It’s where you practice acts of kindness with the intention of sharing the gospel. Many of you do all kinds of acts of kindness. But these are specific acts of kindness that are done for the purpose of sharing the gospel.
1.2 Love Motivates Us
Less than twenty-four hours from His death on the cross, Jesus washed the Disciples’ feet. He wants to show His followers how we are to live. Just as Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, Christians are to do the same for a hurting world that is dying to see authentic examples of a loving Savior. You are living proof of a loving God for a watching world!
1.3 The Holy Spirit Opens the Door
Again, these are specific acts of kindness that are done for the purpose of sharing the gospel. It’s when you are kind to someone as a way of saying, “I am doing this to show you the love of Jesus in a practical way.” Let me say that again: it’s when you are kind to someone as a way of saying, “I am doing this to show you the love of Jesus in a practical way.” After you serve your unchurched friends and family members, the Holy Spirit opens the door. Often, they will ask you, “Why are you doing this?” When you perform one act of service, you may want to share your conversion testimony coupled with a brief gospel presentation.
We will talk more about evangelism in depth in a couple of Sundays. Again, when you perform one act of service, you proceed to share your conversion testimony coupled with the gospel presentation. If they are not open to a discussion, your gospel conversation goes no further. You can leave a gospel tract or simply ask to pray with them. Experience reveals that Servanthood Evangelism leads to a presentation of Christ more than twice as often as when servanthood is ignored.1 People often need a heart-to-heart gospel presentation over “head to head,” if you will.2
1.4 British Atheist
British atheist Matthew Parris grew up in Africa. When he returned to his native Africa when he was in his forties he wrote this in The Times: “Travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my worldview, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.
I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.”3
It wasn’t arguments that caught this atheist’s attention. It was love coming from transformed lives that caught his attention, as seen through acts of service. It was hospitals started in the name of Jesus. It was wells dug in the name of Jesus. It was schools started in the name of Jesus.
1.5 The Ladder of Yes
Let’s step back to Texas for a moment. In Prayer Care Share, the authors talk about the “The Ladder of Yes.”
[Hold the ladder up as you explain this.]
Maybe your friends aren’t ready to surrender their lives to Jesus Christ as Lord and be saved. But they might say “Yes” to you planting some flowers for them in their yard. They might say “Yes” to you when you get their mail or their trash cans. After that, they may be ready to say “Yes” to coming over for some dessert. Or for you to pray over their dying mother. Each rung of the ladder requires a higher level of commitment. Eventually, they will be ready to say “Yes” to visiting your church or your Bible study. Eventually, they will be ready for you to share your testimony with them. This isn’t as big of a jump to them saying “Yes” just yet. Trust is at historically low levels in American society, while cynicism is at historically high levels. We care and love to build trust.
1.6 Servant Evangelism Works
Servant evangelism leads to a full presentation of Christ much more often than if the concept of service is ignored. Whether it’s cleaning out someone’s gutters or mowing their lawn, it’s serving with the purpose of sharing the gospel. When simple acts of kindness are coupled with an intentional and prayerful attempt to share the gospel, it powerfully enables the Holy Spirit to convict and to draw people to Himself.
1. It’s Motivated by Love
2. It’s Tailored to Needs
“Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him” (John 13:5).
A servant or a slave normally carried out foot washing. What’s unusual about this story is the one who washes everyone’s feet. I’ll come back to that in a moment.
2.1 It’s What You Needed
You needed to wash your feet in Jesus’ day. People needed this done in this hot and dusty culture where everyone wore sandals. Today, we need gas in our cars. We need to pick up prescriptions from the pharmacy. We need to drop our kids off at school. Back then, you needed to wash your feet when you entered someone’s house. It’s just what you needed.
2.2 Tailor Your Strategy to Their Needs
Jesus saw a need, and He met a need. Our church family is praying for around 1,000 people who have not embraced Christ. Develop your strategy by specifically selecting a way you serve them based on what you perceive they need. What are their physical needs? Are they isolated? Can you pick up their prescriptions? Are they lonely? Can you invite them to your house for coffee or for dinner? Go ahead and tell them, “If you are looking for a spic and span, we can eat out. But I want to have you in my messy home. Would you come over?” Aging, develop your strategy by specifically selecting the way you serve them by what you perceive they need. Jesus saw a need, and He met a need.
2.3 Personally Tailor Your Gift
You have to pay attention. I’ve learned this through the years of being married. Imagine a young husband getting his wife a tricked-out four by four with those huge tires where they are kicked out, and you have to have a ladder to step into the truck. Can you imagine that sitting in the driveway on her birthday, and he says, “I was just thinking about you, babe!”
Or you come home with a new bass boat to tell your wife, “I remembered how much you love fish on our first date.”
Or how about buying a vegetarian friend a BBQ grill?
Don’t be like these guys. Tailor your service to the person you’d love to come to Christ. There’s nothing random about this. Instead, you tailor your service to their needs. You study them. You analyze while you pray for them. You leap to serve.
Again, Jesus saw a need, and He met a need.
2.4 Love is a Verb
Circle back to verses 4 and 5 with me, if you will. Have you ever heard the expression “Love is a verb?” Look at all the verbs in those two sentences in verses 4 and 5. See if you can count the verbs: “[Jesus] rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him” (John 13:4-5).
I counted seven verbs in those two verses. Servant evangelism is more than good intentions and warm feelings.4 It is love in action.
2.5 Examples of Service
2.5.1 Quan in Prayer Care Share
For those of you reading Prayer Care Share with me, you may remember the story about the Chinese believer in Christ who was jailed for evangelism. Quan was the believer’s name, and he requested cleaning the filthy jail cells of everyone around him for the Chinese guards. His menial service broke through the stiff resistance by the guards, where three of them came to Christ.5 They didn’t need a head-to-head explanation as much as a “heart-to-heart” explanation.
2.5.2 Pastor Moses’ Story
Or how about the North Korean who spoke just a few Sundays ago? Moses was a former North Korean soldier who had been imprisoned for murder. He escaped to China because communist North Korea was starving many of its people. There, Moses met a Chinese believer who shared food with him, shelter, and the gospel. Shortly afterward, other North Koreans arrived at the Chinese Christian’s house starving. Only they stole the man’s food. Moses wasn’t going to have any part of this. So, he took off after the Koreans, beat them, and tied them up. He proudly told the Chinese believer what he had done. It was then the believing went to those who had stolen his food and asked forgiveness for beating them. Moses said it was right about then that Christianity began to “click” for him. Again, He didn’t need a head-to-head explanation as much as he needed a “heart-to-heart” explanation. The Chinese man shared the gospel, but it didn’t click for Moses until the man showed the thieves this incredible kindness! Again, Servant evangelism leads to a full presentation of Christ much more often than if the concept of service is ignored.
2.6 “Isolation Tax”
Let me switch to right here in America. When you discuss your faith in a person, you do something remarkable, and even scientists are picking up on it. Get this: behavioral scientists Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder once ran an experiment on train commuters. They asked passengers to predict whether they’d enjoy their commute more if they kept to themselves or talked to a stranger.
Most assumed silence would be better. Maybe you think sitting on a commuter train in silence would be better. However, the people who held conversations with fellow passengers reported feeling significantly happier than those who stayed quiet.
Americans are now spending more time alone than ever. It’s changing our personalities.6 Much of our lives can be lived by clicking for something on our phones. In-person socializing dropped by over twenty percent between 2003 to 2023, with the decline surpassing 35% for unmarried men and young adults. Seventy-four percent of restaurant traffic comes from takeout and delivery, up from sixty-one percent before the pandemic. Solo dining has surged twenty-nine percent in just two years, according to OpenTable.
When my parents were born, around seventy-five percent of Americans were members of a church or a synagogue. Today, just 50% of Americans report being a member of a church or a synagogue.7 We’ve increasingly been living a “remote life” amid a complete restructuring of human interaction.
And we’re paying for it. Those same behavioral scientists I mentioned connected to the commuter train study call this the “Isolation Tax.” Isolation is the most expensive thing you’ll ever pay for. Isolation impacts our health. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General called loneliness an epidemic and said its mortality impacts were similar to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Isolation impacts our happiness.
2.7 What If?
What if, for twenty-four hours, Jesus wakes up in your bed, walks in your shoes, lives in your house, and assumes your schedule? Your boss becomes His boss, your mother becomes His mother, your pains become His pains? With one exception, nothing about your life changes. Your health doesn’t change. Your circumstances don’t change. Your schedule isn’t altered. Your problems aren’t solved. Again, only one change occurs. What, if, for one day, and one night, Jesus lives your life with His heart? Your heart gets a day off, and your life is led by the heart of Jesus Christ Himself. Again, what if, for twenty-four hours, Jesus wakes up in your bed, walks in your shoes, lives in your house, and assumes your schedule?8 What difference do you think it would make?
1. It’s Motivated by Love
2. It’s Tailored to Needs
3. It’s Fueled by Humility
“If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you” (John 13:14-15).
Look at the greatness of Jesus with me.
3.1 A Spotlight on Jesus Descending
The narrator’s detailed attention to how Jesus changes clothes in verse 4. When Jesus removes His outer garments and dresses in a towel, He puts on the garments of a servant. But He’s not your typical servant. He’s anything but your typical servant.
3.2 Unworthy to Untie His Sandals
All the way back in John 1, there’s the significant line that John the Baptist says when he compares himself to Jesus: “John answered them, ‘I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie’” (John 1:26-27).
John the Baptist says, “God is standing among you, and I’m not even worthy to untie his sandals.” In that dusty, hot culture, everybody wore sandals all day. At night, when you took the sandals off, it was really foul. It was considered unbelievably degrading to have to take somebody else’s sandals off. To take somebody else’s off was considered absolutely degrading. If you had servants, one of the rules was you could never make a Jewish servant take your sandals off. That would be too degrading to make a fellow countryman do. Rabbis were not allowed to ask their disciples to do this. It was beneath them.9 John says, “I am unworthy to even take off His sandals.” Now, if John the Baptist wasn’t even worthy to untie the sandals of Jesus, what is Jesus doing washing the feet of the Disciples?
3.3 The Depth Jesus Came
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5-8).
You and I have no idea of how high an honor it is to be equal with God. And we have no concept of how far Jesus descended to become human at Bethlehem.
We have no idea just how low Jesus stepped when He laid His glory aside for a little while. Before Jesus arrived that first Christmas, He was the pinnacle of the organization chart of the universe. He was God, and He enjoyed all the rights and privileges associated with being God. But at the end of His human life, Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins. He never pulled rank. He never asked to be first in line. He never demanded His rights. He never leveraged who He was.
3.4 Jesus’ Motivation
To say that Jesus humbled Himself is an incredible understatement! Jesus went from sitting on a throne, to laying in a manger, to hanging on a tree. He went from being a king with a crown, to a baby with diapers, to a criminal on the cross. Why did He do this? What was Jesus thinking? What motivated Jesus to do this? Because your soul was more important than His blood. Your eternal life was more important than His earthy life. Your place in heaven was more important to Him than His place in heaven. He gave up His place, so you could have your place.10
3.5 Invitation
I invite our musicians to come and sing over us now. Please stay in your seats. Join me in making this a holy moment. Would you prayerfully open up the card you were given to identify the smaller card inside? While music plays and people worship, would you (believers in the room) prayerfully write down the names of those loved ones God is moving you to pray for?
With eternity itself hanging in the balance for many, would you take this card seriously at this moment?
Would you ask the Father to draw your loved ones to Christ?
Would you ask the Father to write down the names of your loved ones in the Book of Life just as you write them down on that card?
EndNotes
1 David Wheeler, Servanthood Evangelism Manual (Wordsearch, 2018), 1-2.
2 David Wheeler, Servanthood Evangelism Manual (Wordsearch, 2018), 4-5.
3 https://www.thetimes.com/article/43239923-fded-40bf-88e4-f90e69a34938; accessed March 18, 2025.
4 Dave Earley and David Wheeler, Everyday Evangelism: Sharing the Christian Faith (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2010), 146.
5 Dave Earley and David Wheeler, Everyday Evangelism: Sharing the Christian Faith (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2010),
6 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/american-loneliness-personality-politics/681091/; accessed March 18, 2025.
7 This is per Gallup as reported here: https://contrarianthinking.co/the-most-expensive-thing-youll-ever-pay-for/; accessed March 18, 2025.
8 I owe this illustration to Chuck Swindoll. https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/an-interview-with-god-charles-r-swindoll-sermon-on-fulfillment-94815; accessed December 4, 2022.
9 Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012), 448.
10 I owe this illustration to James Merritt. https://www.sermonsearch.com/sermon-outlines/143732/christmas-doxology-3-of-3/; accessed December 4, 2022.
