The priority of serving

I'm reading, on and off, a book called Quick to listen Leaders by Dave Ping and Anne Clippard. I've mentioned it before when I blogged about the miracle question. Here's another quote:

The "barefoot pastor" [a name given to missionary pastors in India] name comes from the unique way they've found to multiply themselves. Once a leader establishes a church with more than twenty-five members, he selects a few of his disciples, usually ordinary villagers too poor to afford shoes, to become missionaries to the next village down the road. They walk to the next village and meet the people. Then they begin serving, sharing the story of Jesus, and praying until they have made enough converts to establish a church. When that church is ready, it sends its disciples on to the next village. (p41)

Hidden away in this description is one really key thought. There are times when have in the past defined evangelism as parts two and four of this process-the preaching and converting. We do pray, but don't often see service as a key aspect of outreach.

Last night I was at he members meeting of a church I serve as moderator. We got talking about one particular group that uses the church premises, that once was part of the ministry of the church, but is now run by folk from outside the church. There was talk about how to bring it back into the life of the church.

My solution? To get in there and win it back by serving. Rather than just a take-over bid, I believe that the way forward is through serving. As people experience the love of God as we serve them I believe that it will open doors to sharing the gospel.

I guess it's summed up in the concept of loving people into a relationship with God rather than trying to talk them into it.

The other thing that attracted my attention was the size at which the church was expected to multiply. Can you imagine most UK Christians being happy to send out missionaries when they reach 25 people? To most of us, we're not even sure we want to multiply our housegroup when it gets the 25 because won't that mean we'll no longer be together, and anyway, if not everybody comes there might only be 15 of us!

We have an opportunity coming our way in Cotton End that I think will challenge how we see church planting. To begin with small groups that can multiply quickly and move on to new areas may be key to our ability to impact the new housing developments that are coming our way. I know we're not going barefoot, and we probably won't walk too far, but we will serve and pray to earn the right to share the good news about Jesus.