Been Serviced Lately?

No, this isn't an x-rated post. Nor is it about my car or the oil furnace or anything else that 'get's serviced'.

This post is about going to a service in a church building. I used the term myself for several years without giving it any thought....

"How was service this morning?", "Did you go to service?", "I feel awful missing service!".....

According to Websters: service - to do maintainance or repair work on or for.

I guess if you look at it from the point of view that we are called to be servants to one another and we ought to desire a servants heart then we maybe do provide a form of 'service' to one another.

But I do not attend our fellowship gathering to "get serviced". I come together for the friendships found in fellowship, to hear what God is doing around me, to maybe find out the struggles and needs of those around me and find where I may be able to minister to those needs and sometimes even to share what He is doing with or through me.

When I hear 'service' I think of a building with a Pastor up front doing the preaching and everyone else being serviced. Sitting back, enjoying the music 'performance', taking in the message.

In our gathering, there is no Pastor, no preaching, no alter calls. There is, however, a tremendous amount of one-anothering going on. An abundance of intimate sharing, caring and loving. A strong desire to listen and share, to empathize and edify. A compulsion to be accurate in our motives and doctrine.

The Body of Christ is built upon relationships; Our relationships with Jesus and the Father and our relationships with the rest of the Body. I just couldn't go back to sitting and listening to one man do all the sharing as if he were the only one hearing from God. You simply cannot speak into another persons life unless you are in relationship with that person and have a working knowledge of their life, their heart and their circumstances. I absolutely need to operate in a give and take community of life. I need the Christ given freedom and liberty to be and say and do as I percieve God directing me.

This God driven journey we each are on is one of adventure and excitement, freedom and liberty, friendship and solitude, fellowship and wilderness. The journey to becoming all we are purposed to become in the full stature of Christ is all of this and more and we each need to walk out this journey in the way He directs us. Each working out our salvation daily with fear and trembling. Running the race in the same general direction, towards the mark, yet each at His own pace and as He directs.

For me, there is no other way. I believe a friend put it that 'we are our own compass checker guy'. ;^)

I'm a follower of One, leader to none.