Servant Church

Many American Christians believe they can achieve Christ's kingdom on earth through political means, by dominating the culture. Author Tim Alberta, in his 2023 book The Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory: American Evangelicals In An Age Of Extremism, attempts to get to the core of the issues involved.

He spoke to Pastor Brian Zahnd of Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri. Zahnd told him:

Christianity is inherently countercultural. That's how it thrives. When it tries to become a dominant culture, it becomes corrupted. This is one major difference between Islam and Christianity. Islam has designs on running the world; it's a system of government. Christianity is nothing like that. The gospels and the epistles have no vision of Christianity being a dominant religion or culture.

Tim Alberta elaborates:

The Bible, as Zahnd pointed out, is written primarily from the perspective of the underdog: Hebrew slaves fleeing Egypt, Jews exiled to Babylon, Christians living under Roman occupation. This is why Paul implored his fellow first-century believers - especially those in Rome who lived under a brutal regime - to both submit to their governing authorities and stay loyal to the kingdom built by Christ. It stands to reason that American evangelicals can't quite relate to Paul and his pleas for humility, or Peter and his enthusiasm for suffering, never mind that poor vagrant preacher from Nazareth. The last shall be first? What kind of socialist indoctrination is that?

Pastor Zahnd considers that the kingdom of God isn't tangible for many Christians: "What's real is this tawdry world of partisan politics, this winner-take-all blood sport. So, they keep charging into the fray, and the temptation to bow down to the devil to gain control over the kingdoms of this world becomes more and more irresistible."

Alberta concludes:

Pastor Zahnd told me he was offended by what the American Church had become. God does not tolerate idols competing for His glory and neither should anyone who claims to worship Him. He said, “You can take up the sword of Caesar or you can take up the cross of Jesus. You have to choose.”

A fistful of black letters flicker atop the pale-yellow background. The sign is broken, but few care. Because they are broken too. There is a place, like God and grandmother’s house, where the door is always open. You may find better food elsewhere, but you won’t find better food for the money. They have a menu, though I have never needed it.

When you sit down at the table or the bar you will likely be greeted by someone who calls you “honey,” or “sugar,” or “baby,” or sometimes “boss.” But you will be greeted, and usually with a smile. And by someone who knows what it means to work long and hard for very little.

Some of them are working their way through college. Some of them are single parents trying to pay the rent and keep the lights on at home. Some are ex-cons trying to hold down a job by wiping tables and desperately trying to believe the rumors of second chances.

On any given day there might be a family of five seated near you with three small children scarfing down jellied toast and scrambled eggs. They’re here because the food is cheap and sometimes dad doesn’t want mom to have to cook after working twelve hours at the shirt factory. On one side of you will be three bikers and a war veteran swapping stories. On the other side will be an elderly couple who come every Thursday night. They come just to hear the voices. Their own kids have long since stopped visiting, and they’ve already buried all of their other friends.

It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or where you’ve come from, you are welcome here. Strait-laced or strung out, drunk or sober or in that fuzzy place in between. In blue jeans, a business suit, or pajamas. No one is turned away.

Waffle House may not be a church, but many of our churches could stand to learn a few things about open arms and second chances from this wild, wayside diner.

Some come with track marks from years of drug abuse. Others come with children in tow. Some are struggling through a bad week. Others, a bad decade. All bring their dirty laundry. They wash it and dry it for free at church-run laundry services throughout the United States. “Christ said we should feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and I think those clothes should be clean,” said Catherine Ambos, a volunteer at one such ministry in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Churches have been washing clothes across the US since at least 1997, when a minister at First United Methodist Church of Arlington, Texas, started doing a circuit around the city’s coin-operated laundries, passing out change. There may well have been others before this. Today, these ministries exist across the country, run by churches of all traditions and sizes.

Belmont Baptist Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, has one of the older laundromat ministries still running. The church started helping people clean their clothes in 2010, when pastor Greg Anderson heard through another ministry that poor people in homeless shelters and long-term-stay motels would regularly throw away their clothes.

Anderson said, “It was just easier to go and get new clothes at a clothing-center type of ministry as opposed to being able to launder them.” The church decided to install five washers and dryers in a building on its property and open a laundromat. Today, volunteers estimate that they save people upwards of $25,000 per year. This is money they didn’t have, or if they did, they could now spend on food, gas, or medicine.

19.25 million US households are without a washing machine.

38% of US households earn less than $50,000 per year.

In his latest book, In Search of the Common Good, Jake Meador writes:

Love also must be faithful because when we love we do not simply will the person’s good a single time and then stop. We see this in marriage and parenting, of course, but friendship should be faithful as well. In the aftermath of my father’s injury, one of the qualities we most appreciated in many of my parents’ friends was their fidelity. One woman from the church is still mowing their yard once a week over three years after Dad’s injury. We could depend on them not simply on the day of the injury but a month later, a year later, three years later.

A man goes into a store to buy some razor blades. They're locked up. He tries to get in, but it's like robbing Fort Knox. No one is around to help. He tries harder, which sets off alarms that lead to him being assaulted by the staff. Blow darts, punches to the stomach, and so forth. Then the tag line: "It's like they don't want you to buy razor blades."

So when someone came along and offered a different way to buy razor blades, it struck a chord. According to the Wall Street Journal, web sales of razor blades through such companies as Dollar Shave Club. They've gone from no slice of the market to nearly ten percent, with little sign of slowing down.

So how did a company like Dollar Shave Club storm onto the scene and take such a big bite out of a company like Gillette that has been in existence since 1901? That's easy. Gillette and its distributors looked at things from the inside—from their perspective—not the consumer's. They made the experience of buying blades negative for shoppers. So when someone came along and listened to the consumer and then thought like a buyer, not a seller, they got a lot of buyers flocking to their side. You can only imagine the Dollar Shave Club people thinking, "Okay, people hate the way razors are sold, but stores don't want them stolen … let's just rethink how to get them in people's hands!" And they did.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Church; Outreach—As James Emery White argues, "Too many churches look at things from the inside." But as Christians we can take the time to look at things from the perspective of those who don't know Christ. As a result, people won't come to our churches and say, "It's almost as if they don't want you to accept Christ." (2) Listening; Communication; Conflict; Marriage—How often do we take time to look at issues, events, conflicts from the other person's perspective?

In the film The Monuments Men, a woman named Claire Simone (played by Cate Blanchett), lives a very ordinary life in Paris under the oppressive Nazi regime. She's an art enthusiast who was forced to facilitate the pillaging of the great works of art of Paris. But despite the seeming hopelessness of her situation, Claire carefully cataloged each piece of art, and marked it with a small colored sticker (a "seal" you could say). She kept this catalog without knowing whether it would ever be useful or just a dusty record of art—or if it would be confiscated and destroyed. She kept meticulous records without any hope that it would come to anything. Not until James Granger (played by Matt Damon) shows up asking about these pieces of art, does an opportunity arise for her risky bookkeeping to pay off.

But up to that point, during the majority of her record-keeping, she had no idea that the Monuments Men would come along. She had no idea that anyone else cared. She was one woman in a city occupied by one of the most powerful militaries on the planet. She was one woman battling against the whole Nazi-engineered system. And for all the time before James Granger arrived, she kept working subversively and systematically, without any assurance that her work would ever be put to use.

In a similar way, Christians live in territory occupied by the Enemy. It's tempting to give up hope that our work for Christ—our small deeds of compassion and kindness, our faithfulness to our families and jobs and churches—will come to anything. But unlike Claire, Christians have an assurance of hope. Christ's resurrection guarantees our future. Our service to Christ may feel insignificant, and yet Claire exhibits for Christians an inspiring example of how to live faithfully in Enemy-occupied territory.

In ChurchLeadersOnline.com, Kevin Miller recalls a lesson he learned about leadership from his father:

Dad and I padded through the tall pines, our feet quiet on the carpet of brown pine needles. We had come to New Hampshire, just the two of us, something that had never happened before. I knew then that I, a full 11 years old, was becoming a man.

We placed our net, tackle boxes, and rods in the canoe, then slipped it quietly into the Ossipee River. As Dad paddled from the back, I cast my trustworthy Mepps lure near the lily pads. Father, son, canoe, water, fish, pines—this was boyhood heaven. I desperately wanted to show Dad I was worthy of the confidence he had placed in me by inviting me on this trip.

Two nights later, I awoke, painfully sick to my stomach. I feared I might throw up. I needed to get to the bathroom now. But the cabin was cold and dark, and I would have to climb out of my warm top bunk. Suddenly, I threw up over the side of the bunk.

My dad heard the awful splatter and came running in, flicked on the light, and surveyed the spreading mess. "Couldn't you have gotten to the bathroom?" he asked.

"I'm sorry," I said, knowing I deserved every angry comment that would come. I had done something foolish, messy, embarrassing—and worst of all, childish.

But my dad didn't yell. He didn't call me names. He shook his head a little, then left and came back with a bucket of sudsy hot water and a scrub brush. I watched, amazed, as he got on hands and knees and began scrubbing each pine board clean again.

When Dad died suddenly, he left me with that picture.

As Christian leaders, we face many awful and embarrassing messes. Our people may often let us down. But Jesus has already shown us what we must do in that situation: "Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet" (John 13:14).

Our pastor was organizing an evangelistic outreach using small acts of kindness to demonstrate Christ's love. He phoned several neighborhood grocery stores and laundromats for permission to do specific services.

On one call, the employee who answered the phone hesitated, then said, "I'll need to ask the manager, but first, let me make sure I understand: You want to clean up the parking lot, retrieve shopping carts, hold umbrellas for customers, and you don't want anything in return."

"Yes, that's right," our pastor replied.

After disappearing for a moment, the employee returned to the phone. "I'm sorry," he said, "we can't let you do that because if we let you do it, we'd have to let everyone else do it, too!"

For many years, I have attended midweek Eucharists at St. Bede's Episcopal Church in Santa Fe, New Mexico. One thing I love is the hand-lettered sign that hangs over the only door into the sanctuary: SERVANT'S ENTRANCE. There isn't any way in or out of that church except through the service door.