Most men who are involved in men’s team ministry to their widowed and single parents deeply appreciate being able to minister on a team to people with long term needs. For them, “No task too small” is a motto.
But every now and and then I hear of someone who gets disgruntled.
One example was a retired Marine colonel in California who joined a team ministering to a widow in his church. His pastor told me that one day, while he and his team were cleaning their care receiver’s carpets, he just up and quit.
“I can hire someone to clean her carpets!” the colonel told him in disgust. “This is a waste of my time. I have better things to do.”
The Goal of Christian Service is not Efficiency, but Love
Of course, the goal of this ministry isn’t necessarily efficiency. The goal is love. True, we could hire someone to do most or all of the things we do for our care receivers. But just getting things done isn’t the point.
Rather, we want our care receivers to know that we care for them, that we understand their need in a deep and profound way, and that we are committed to them, even to the point of sacrificing anything for them.
In this sense, then, no task is too small. Even giving someone a cup of water can convey love. Jesus himself said as much.
Pride Hinders an Attitude of “No Task too Small.”
But if we have an exaggerated sense of our importance, as the Marine colonel apparently had, then some things can seem too small. The colonel was used to ordering his men to do cleaning, not actually cleaning things himself.
Maybe we’re used to having things done for us. If we are, serving others can be excruciatingly painful. It can seem like we are being unnecessarily humiliated.
When I married Patti, I swore I wouldn’t clean the toilets. I’d been a janitor for five years while I was in school and I had seen enough of toilets! For years my blessed wife put up with my arrogant attitude. But eventually Patti started commuting to work five days a week and I worked out of our home. So guess who cleaned the house – including the toilets!
Humility Facilitates an Attitude of “No Task too Small.”
Serving others may be humiliating, but such humiliation is not unnecessary. In fact, humility is a prerequisite Christian virtue. We cannot follow Christ without washing each other’s feet the way he did.
Humbling ourselves with small and unimportant tasks in service to others doesn’t mean we ourselves are small and unimportant. On the contrary, in Christ’s economy, it means we are great.
Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North America and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt widows, single moms and fatherless children in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church at newcommandment.org.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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