Service or self-absorption? The connections can be complicated

By Mark A. Taylor

Summertime was recruiting time when I worked as a local church education minister. Even the relatively small church I served part-time several decades ago required dozens of volunteers to keep the program going. We offered classes and activities for all ages three times every week: that’s a lot of teachers, helpers, nursery workers, greeters. These days many churches recruit children’s teachers to serve maybe only once each month. But then we asked teachers to serve every Sunday for a year, or at least a school year. And we found many folks willing to do so.

But usually not quite enough. I remember standing in the back of the auditorium during Sunday-morning worship, scanning every row with the hope of spotting someone we hadn’t thought to recruit. I admit the knot of panic I felt every August because the next term for those yearlong commitments began with the new school year, and inevitably several slots were still open.

Back then I valued senior citizens still serving as Sunday school workers. And I resented the implied (or sometimes spoken!) excuse of “I’ve paid my dues!” among older folks no longer willing to serve.

Now I’m afraid I’ve joined their ranks. I don’t have the energy to face a room full of four-year-olds. I’ve forgotten most of what I knew about how to keep kids at least engaged, and hopefully even learning something. My hat is off to those inside those noisy classrooms week after week. And I’ll echo a wry comment E. Ray “Cotton” Jones made. “When the saints go marching in,” he said, “the parade will be led by ranks of nursery workers waving changed diapers over their heads!”

The questions

I do still find ways to serve, but I’m thinking a little differently about service these days. The pressing question is, “Why serve?”

While younger people may serve out of guilt or duty (“I should help provide the program my kids enjoy”), older people are looking for a way to remain relevant and useful. With the world seeming to move on without us, we want to feel as though our efforts will help keep it spinning. Programmers looking for volunteers do well to find ways to touch that need. But that leads to my introspection.

Should service be about what I enjoy? I realize it’s not wrong when satisfaction accompanies service. Indeed, this almost always happens. After all, Jesus did promise, “It’s more blessed to give than to receive.” But what if the service is difficult or unpleasant? Can we find joy in that? Will we stick with it?

For example, I volunteer at a ministry for the under-resourced called the Healing Center. I enjoy the workers there and I’m glad to do something that may benefit others. They get food and clothing, and I get to feel good about helping them. A similar satisfaction comes from writing a check to the church or visiting in the hospital. I believe I’m a good person to do such things. But if I’m secretly proud of my sacrifice, is it really a sacrifice at all? If my service didn’t make me happy, would I still do it?

And then comes a thought that cuts even deeper. Do I serve out of a latent desire to try to prove to God (and to myself) that I’m one of his? Intellectually, I believe I can’t earn points in Heaven by editing a blog or leading a Bible study, but has my upbringing created a cloud of works righteousness that hovers over me even though I may not see it? Would I feel secure in my salvation if I turned away from my volunteering to travel the world or perfect my golf game?

Unchosen duties

I’m deciding the answer to such questions is seen in the lives of those embracing unchosen duties. I think of a Christian minister’s wife learning to navigate mealtime after her husband’s cancer-ridden stomach was removed. I watch families in the church parking lot unpacking a wheelchair and lifting their child into it, and I know they perform this service every day. I see gray-haired parents at the restaurant accompanied by their twenty-something child with Down syndrome, and I think about the retirement plans they were never free to make, the wedding reception they will never attend, the empty nest they dreaded and dreamed about but never had the chance to experience.

Do people in such situations think of their daily life as service? Do they realize the sacrifices they are making?

I suspect most of them would not use service or sacrifice to describe their lives. True sacrifice seldom sees itself as a victim. Indeed, even in situations like I just described, those serving have a choice. (A friend told me about a relative who divorced her husband when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She walked away because she didn’t want to face the years of loss likely before her.)

Today’s conclusions

So far, I’ve settled on two conclusions. First, to avoid a paranoid, self-centered desire to “please God,” I should relax and see how I’m already serving. Parents can’t succeed without serving, for example. Marriages won’t survive without mutual service. True friends help one another. Those accomplishing the most at their careers do more than the job’s minimum requirements.

But second, for me at least, I need to seek opportunities to serve. My life is so full, and the needs in the world are so great. If I find satisfaction in my service, that’s not a sin, especially if my activity offers at least as much benefit to the recipient as it does to me.

So, while I’ll not be volunteering to teach first graders at my church this fall, I do plan on writing another blog post next week. It’s one way I’ve chosen to serve.

Photos by Anna Earl on Unsplash, by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash, and by RODNAE Productions from Pexels

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