#041 - Service - pt. 2

MARCH 2019

Godsmack.

Christians uphold a standard of service that is unparalleled. This standard is so excellent that some businesses and the United States Constitution are modeled after equality and others first. The “customer is always right” mentality supports this statement. Churches should become the model of this standard, and the communities they serve should represent this. A church service is called a service for the service they provide for the community. Lives would be changed if this was the go-to paradigm for modern Christianity. What service do you as a church provide your community?

Hot take time: Providing services to fulfill the great commission is not serving the community but treating people like soul commodities. Churches solely focused on salvations operate more like army recruitment centers than churches. It’s no wonder the younger military personnel flock to these great commission salvation factories. It is a form of carbon-copied Christianity passed down from generation to generation. Operating to shore up the numbers more than anything else, and pastors preaching to their own families their own inbred truths. This is why churches are dying out because of the lack of tangible services to the people they serve.

The level of service the modern church provides is much like the expected service of your favorite brand. Churches that get this concept flourish, while those that do not are stagnant. When this stagnation is sensed in these stymied churches, community isolationism prevails for self-preservation, and the core members are spiritually squeezed out of existence. Or perhaps, unfortunately, the lead pastor dies, and due to most pastors' overwhelming cult of personality, there is no more such and such church. A church that once was the crown jewel of morality and community influence succumbs to something minuscule and preventable. Bob Goff tells a story about not taking a 5-cent malaria pill and spending over $100,000 to treat his malaria after the fact. This is the state of the church in America! 

My outer fishbowl perspective makes it easy to relate and draw these conclusions. For non-Christians, brand reliability is something we as Americans hold so dear and near to our hearts because we are driven by GDP-engrossing consumerism. If a brand acts in a way inconsistent with its perceived level of service, the public outcry alone causes it to fix the problem. Public outcry in Christianity is met with a “hunker down against the haters” jeer. The name-calling begins, and the Bible becomes a defensive barricade. Centuries of this mentality paired with the aforementioned carbon-copied religion shake these biblical foundations, and the church reacts as Charleton Heston did in the 1970s movie Earthquake. Numbers decline, prayers for revival are shouted to no avail, and the doors are barred and barricaded as the core congregants hunker down for the ensuing “end of the world.” 

Eventually, the cycle will end, and someone will know how to sell the next generation on the great commission. The church is rebranded, and numbers recover until the next bust cycle—the bust happening only once it is discovered that this is merely a new paint job on a rusty, shaky foundation. The foundation is what it relied on during the hard times, and the foundation is what must be changed if we, as Christians, intend to endure future storms.      

In Calvinist Christianity, God chooses you!

In Soviet Russia, central planning was used for almost every decision. It was the epitome of the top-down model. Catholicism and Baptist theology follow this same model as most modern multicampus megachurches. Orders and instructions are given by the higher-ups, and as long as the lower leadership maintains the organization's status quo, they are given loose autonomy to enforce such orders. Often with less than pleasant results. It was hard for the Soviets to predict trends or supply chain breakdowns, and the system was horribly corrupt. As most people know, those at the top benefitted while millions of humans were sacrificed and starved to death to maintain the status quo. 

At the time, the ends justify the means, but eventually, the people realize they are being taken advantage of. By some estimates, Communism, more so Marxism and Stalinist ideals, have been the most deadly form of modern governance, with an estimated 80 million citizen deaths since the first communist government was established. (Source: The Black Book of Communism)

Some centrally moderated forms of Christianity are also causing their lasting generational damage. 

It took several generations to liberate the Soviet Union. The fall in 1989 was mainly due to social liberation or, more so, the revolt against the hunker-down efforts of Leonid Brezhnev. During the early eighties, Ronald Reagan began his All-American crusade against Communism and put the Soviets at the top of his list. The details are incredibly complex but know that a person can only take so much for so long before being pushed to their breaking point. Everyone has a breaking point; the same could be said about a closed economy and your local church. 

The USSR finally collapsed due to a social rebellion against a centrally planned model that had let them down—another example of an expected service that was not fulfilled. The ending broke apart one of the only examples of Marxist-Leninism ever attempted. The other is the PROC, but this is about service, not communism, and a centrally planned model for Christianity, not Government. 

Jesus was against centrally planned Christianity and also battled it in his ministry. Even though the foundation of the church was built on Peter, he never asked Peter, Paul, or any of his disciples to rule as kings. After all, the Christian kingdom is inherited in heaven, so worldly kingdoms are meaningless. Messianic Judaism had a similar centrally planned structure, and God was so against this in the end that he destroyed it and gave us humans the best option to replace it.

I recently listened to a pastor defend seminaries, which seems to be the root of some widespread theological problems. They are an excellent avenue for establishing the religious status quo and are centrally planned, too. He said that if the seminary system were to be abolished, it would only be a matter of time before it came back or was replaced with something similar. This is a thought fallacy and is used verbatim by many to support centrally planned religion. Central planning works in a static religion, and Christianity is far from that. 

Just like Soviet planners, it is hard to predict human behavior, and eventually, the people of the USSR rebelled, much like me, over a Biscoff—once again, because our human needs were not being met.

The Tenacious Beaver: an animated movie featuring Kirk Cameron.

I don’t think I’ve heard anyone talk about stagnation in a positive light. Maybe a beaver or a dam builder would beg to differ, but even those methods of stagnating water allow some water to be released to prevent such a putrid mess. A beaver is known to clean its pond meticulously and, when its dam is forcibly removed, is tenacious as it clings to its territory. Even nature’s dam builder knows water must constantly flow to maintain this pristine pond. You have to see where I’m going with all this. Get ready for a lot of beaver talk, I am on a beaver tangent after all (teenager giggle) so let us continue that metaphor. 

This is the sole occupation of the beaver, and it tirelessly repeats this cycle daily, constantly maintaining, repairing, and adding to this water stagnation device. Rural landowners with beavers find them a tiresome nuisance; every time a beaver dam is destroyed, one appears immediately afterward. Beaver dams tend to destroy and flood ecosystems, so landowners frequently disturb them. 

Pretend for a second that you’re a beaver and have a dam and one heck of a clean pond. This is your circle of influence, the people who matter to you, and the fishbowl you live in. Suddenly, someone or some circumstance comes and destroys your dam and tells you to move on. You’re a beaver, though, and you’re tenacious and stubborn. So you rebuild, you refresh, you recharge. The exact same location, same dam, and same idea. You rebuild your life and your dam. Then a flight attendant tells you they’re out of Biscoff, and your dam is destroyed because it was held together by twigs in the first place. Now you see the point.

When your metaphorical beaver dam breaks the water, your perceived influence can leave alarmingly fast and inundate the local villagers. This makes you panicked and emotional as you effortlessly try to prevent the now unavoidable. It is only a matter of time before this happens to you because everyone is susceptible to the dam breakers or dam-breaking circumstances. But what if we stopped building emotional beaver dams to begin with? What if we let the spirit flow freely through the world and our lives? But we will continue time and time again to build these dams because our ponds are safe, clean, and healthy. But also how fragile this existence can be and how exhausting its maintenance is.

All beaver talk aside; this ties into Jesus when you genuinely seek him daily. When waking up, say a short prayer, wear something, or write something to remind you of this fact. Jesus can stop most things at the source and has the power to do so. So why not ask for help with trying situations? Even if it was not preventable, having Jesus as your foundation can speed up the healing process tremendously and make your dam stronger for the next time. If you live a life filled with Jesus and God, always know that the storm can be weathered and God can shine through on the other side. Jesus is your Army Corp of Engineers, your dam maintenance guy.  

The level of service provided to any customer or attendee of a church should match the level of service that Jesus provided. As Christians, we must turn the other cheek and forgive one another, and that is the Jesus-centered philosophy of service. We need forgiveness through Christ to live a life of service to others. Abject generosity, which we may lose, is the best way to give back and love others, whether in time or money. Be a Christian with the services provided to you and the services you provide. There will be fewer encounters with Flight Attendants and more Biscoff to enjoy.

Resetting expectations.

When you pay for an expensive meal or stay at a fancy resort, the expected service level is more significant than that at a lower-cost or bargain place. This is a common-sense expectation based on cost, the idea that the more something costs, the more luxurious and exclusive it is. However, I have been let down by expensive things and surprised by inexpensive ones. The old idiom is that the best things in life are free, epitomized by public spaces and, in America, our National Parks. The world has such beauty at no cost other than waking up and opening your eyes.

So, with acts of service, even if it is someone's job and they are doing it poorly, they are still serving you, and you should be happy. Happy that you do not have to do the thing they are doing. Is the plane out of Biscoff? No worries; people let you down all the time. This is not a negative thought but a fact of reality or, more so, of the world we live in. I have always said that you should surround yourself with people who buck this trend, but the fact is that these are still good people even when they let you down. So when you look at someone in a position of service, be genuine, be nice, and most importantly, go with the flow. It's a practice in patience, and you do not know what the person on the other end of the encounter may be going through.

So yes, set your expectations at the ground level and take an unexpected trip to the top. Every moment will be a surprise, and every encounter will be meaningful. However, do not boast that you are doing this; instead, realize what emotional beaver dams you may have built and the situations that destroy them. More importantly, we are on this planet to serve one another, even the greatest among us. Matthew 23:11 says this, but the line I love is the next one, so I will leave you with that today.

12 Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

Until next time.