Servanthood

A sheriff’s corporal in St. Johns County, Florida, responded to what sounded like a routine call: an animal loose on a county road. After 25 years on the job, he had handled horses, cows, pigs, goats, even turkeys. This one, he assumed, would be no different. The animal was an emu.

The corporal admitted he underestimated the situation. Agricultural deputies usually handle escaped livestock, but they were unavailable. “I figured I can handle something like this oversized turkey,” he said. Instead, he found himself in a 45-minute chase with a bird named Tina.

Body-camera footage shows the emu calmly strolling down the road as the corporal tries to coax her closer. At first, his voice is upbeat. As the minutes pass, his sighs grow heavier. When he finally gets his hands on Tina, she breaks free and runs again. Emus can’t fly, but they are fast, powerful, and capable of serious damage with their legs. Tina tore holes in his uniform and forced him to improvise.

Eventually, the corporal put handcuffs on the emu’s legs to stop her from kicking. Only when Tina’s owner arrived did the chase end. The bird immediately calmed down, accepted food, and became gentle again.

The corporal later reflected that he thought he knew what he was dealing with, but all his experience had not prepared him for and emu chase.

Preaching Angles:

So many things in the Christian life–serving, discipleship, obedience, loving others–are like chasing an emu. They are way more challenging than we ever imagined.

A British man has unintentionally become a viral sensation after undertaking a meticulous repair of a McDonald’s sign that had become a running topic in the Dull Men’s Club Facebook group. The McDonald’s location at the White Rose Shopping Centre in Leeds, England, featured a sign with a missing inner section of the letter "D," leaving it as an incomplete silhouette.

Steve Lovell decided to fix it. Drawing attention from social media users, Lovell carefully researched McDonald’s branding guidelines and used a 3D printer to replicate the correct design for the sign. His initial repair gained traction online, and when he noticed a second sign at the same location with the same issue, he repeated the process.

Lovell’s dedication was widely admired, even as some joked that his actions made him "too interesting" for the Dull Men’s Club. He acknowledged the humor in the situation: "I think it's the whole pointlessness of this that has caught people's attention. Not many people would notice a sign missing bits from it. Fewer still would be bothered by it and practically no-one at all would bother to spend time and effort actually rectifying it."

The White Rose Shopping Centre joined in celebrating Lovell’s quirky mission by naming him their tongue-in-cheek "Employee of the Month." In a post on social media, the mall wrote, "Thank you Steve, our March employee of the month, for your selfless work — we're lovin' it."

Lovell emphasized that his actions were driven by personal satisfaction rather than corporate loyalty or fame. "The fix wasn't even for the benefit of McDonald's as some people claim," he said. "It was for me, and anyone else that would have noticed. Sharing it was just about the mundane absurdity."

What began as a simple desire to correct a minor visual flaw has turned Lovell into a symbol of endearing dedication to detail — and maybe, just maybe, a bit too exciting for the club that celebrates life's most uneventful pleasures.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Dedication; Humble Service; Perseverance – Many Christians work quietly behind the scenes – living for God's glory and eternal gain, not for recognition.

The ex-head of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Masao Yoshida, 58, died at a Tokyo hospital of esophageal cancer on July 9, 2013.

When the tsunami devastated Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011, Masao Yoshida worked to control the damage caused by the failing reactors. He disobeyed a company order and secretly continued using seawater, a decision that experts say almost certainly prevented a more serious meltdown and has made him an unlikely hero. He chose to place himself in danger, exposing himself to extreme radiation. And his story is just one of many at the plant.

Remembering the disaster, he said "The level of radioactivity on the ground was terrible…but the workers of the plant leaped at the chance to go trying to fix the situation with the reactors…. My colleagues went out there again and again."

Possible Preaching Angle:

What a beautiful picture of sacrificial, Christ-like love.

Recently, a community of around 5,300 residents came together to move a local bookstore — literally one book at a time. On Sunday, nearly 300 people formed a human chain in downtown Chelsea, passing all 9,100 books from Serendipity Books’ original storefront to a new location just a block away. The effort, dubbed a “book brigade,” involved people of all ages linking up along the sidewalk, carefully handing off each book until it reached its new shelf on Main Street.

“It was a practical way to move the books, but it also was a way for everybody to have a part,” said bookstore owner Michelle Tuplin. As titles moved hand to hand, participants chatted about the books: “As people passed the books along, they said ‘I have not read this’ and ‘that’s a good one.’”

Tuplin announced the move in January, and excitement grew quickly. “It became so buzzy in town. So many people wanted to help,” she said. What might have taken much longer with a professional moving company was accomplished in under two hours by the community — with the added achievement of shelving the books alphabetically upon arrival.

Tuplin has owned Serendipity Books since 2017. She employs three part-time staff and has kept the spirit of the store grounded in community since it opened in 1997.

Chelsea, located about 60 miles west of Detroit, is known for its close-knit atmosphere. “It’s a small town and people just really look out for each other,” said Kaci Friss, a bookstore employee and lifelong resident. “Anywhere you go, you are going to run into someone you know or who knows you, and is going to ask you about your day.” Reflecting on the event, Friss added that the brigade reminded her “how special this community is.”

With care, cooperation, and a shared love for stories, Chelsea’s residents turned a routine move into a meaningful celebration of connection.

Possible Preaching Angle:

When people come together for a common cause amazing tasks can be accomplished and society takes notice. Local churches can also give a powerful visual testimony when they come together to serve the community in the name of Jesus.

In the fall of 2023, singer Oliver Anthony got his big break in the music industry with his song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” a scathing criticism of wealthy politicians and other movers and shakers. And now that he’s gotten a taste of the music industry in Nashville, he’s decided to live out his convictions.

Anthony revealed in a recent YouTube video, “I’ve decided that moving forward, I don’t need a Nashville management company. I don’t even need to exist within the space of music. So, I’m looking at switching my whole business over to a traveling ministry.” He added, “Our system is broken.”

The singer, whose real name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford, says his vision is not to participate in the system, but transform it. "I have this vision for this thing that I’m calling the Real Revival Project, and it’s basically going to start as a grassroots music festival. But hopefully it grows into something that can literally change our landscape and our culture and the way we live.”

Anthony says he wants to create something that exists parallel to Nashville that circumvents the monopolies of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, and it goes into towns that haven’t had music in them in a long time. And he insists he’s not doing anything revolutionary. “I just want to help bridge the gap between millions of people who all believe in the greater vision of us all just getting back to living a normal life.”

Anthony sees the decline of the industry as part of a larger pattern that discouraged his interest in pursuing the traditional path to music stardom. He said:

At the very beginning, our focus was just trying to figure out what we felt like God’s purpose was for our lives and trying to figure out how to pursue that. I think it was just being around all those people that weren’t of that mindset. There’s no way to create something that’s focused around God when you’re working with people who are just focused around making money.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God’s purpose for life is more than just seeking fame and fortune; God calls us to make a positive difference in whatever space we’re called to inhabit.

It's always interesting listening to some folks who are trying to make sense of Christian virtues. For example, The Journal of Positive Psychology ran an article with the following headline: "Humble persons are more helpful than less humble persons: Evidence from three studies."

Humble people are helpful. Wow, you don't say? How shocking! The abstract for the article reads: "Humble participants helped more than did less humble participants even when agreeableness and desirable responding were statistically controlled." In non-technical language, this means in situations where people wanted to help for unselfish reasons, people who weren't full of themselves were more likely to actually lend a hand. The article also reports that humble people even make better bosses and employees.

So how do you explain this strange virtue? Well, not to worry. The researchers tried to examine the evidence "for the evolutionarily predicted connection between humility and helping." Christians have a simpler explanation for humility: It comes from Jesus.

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.”

In an article in Scientific American titled, "Rx for Teen Mental Health: Volunteering," Lydia Denworth writes that "helping others might help depression and anxiety." She gives three examples:

● An early experiment found that 10th graders who volunteered in an elementary school for two months showed fewer signs of harmful inflammation and lower levels of obesity compared to students who didn’t volunteer.

● A group of 14- to 20-year-olds who had been recently diagnosed with mild to moderate depression or anxiety participated in volunteer work at animal shelters, food banks, and other community organizations. They experienced a 19% reduction in depressive symptoms.

● A 2023 analysis revealed that young people who participated in community service or volunteered in the past year were more likely to be in very good or excellent health. They also tended to stay calm and in control when faced with challenges and were less likely to experience anxiety. Why? Helping others improves mood and raises self-esteem. It provides fertile ground for building social connections. It also shifts people’s focus away from negative things and can change how they see themselves.

“The first duty of every soul is to find not its freedom but its Master” (P.T. Forsyth, 19th-century Scottish Theologian).

But who wants a master? The answer is: You do if you know what’s good for you. Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson (not yet a Christian) has 40,000 hours of counseling under his belt, and here is what he says he learned from all that listening to people:

You don’t get away with anything. You might think you can bend the fabric of reality … and violate your conscience without cost. But that is just not the case; you will pay the piper. When you pay, you might not even notice the casual connection between the sin and the payment. People’s lives take a twist, and they go very badly wrong. And when you walk back though people’s lives with them, you come to these choice points where you meet the devil at the crossroads, and you find out that you went left, let’s say, and downhill, when you should have gone right and uphill. And now you’re paying the price for that.

When people at Onecho Bible Church talk about “the mission field,” they mean the many places around the world where Christians are sharing the love of Jesus. But sometimes, they’re also talking about a literal field in Eastern Washington, where the congregation grows crops to support the people proclaiming the gospel around the world.

The 74-member church, smack-dab in the middle of a vast expanse of wheat fields, has donated $1.4 million to missions since 1965. They’ve funded wells, campgrounds, and Christian colleges. This year, they want to provide food and shelter to asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border. Brian Largent, Onecho’s volunteer farm manager said, “Being as isolated as we are, it’s our missionaries and this mission field that keeps us very focused worldwide. This church is a very mission-oriented church—always has been.”

The church started with Mennonite migrants in the 1890s and Methodist farmers 20 years before that. But the unique fundraising program started in the 1960s. One of the church elders passed away at age 65 and bequeathed 180 acres to the church. He supported missionary work his whole life and considered that his legacy. He asked Onecho to use his land to continue the work of spreading the gospel.

The church decided it wouldn’t sell the field but would farm it with volunteers. The proceeds from the harvest would fund various missions. The first year, the harvest yielded $5,500. Revenue fluctuates, based on the success of the harvest. In 2021, the field earned $39,000. Last year, it was $178,000. “We just put the seed in the ground,” Largent said. “Then . . . it’s all up to the weather and what God’s going to do to produce the money.”

Pro quarterback Patrick Mahomes had just limped his way through a last-minute, game-winning drive in the 2023 AFC Championship when he gave the credit for his performance to someone that even the biggest Kansas City Chiefs fans had never heard of. “Julie WAS the reason I was the guy I was on the field today!” Mahomes wrote to his millions of followers on Twitter that night. Her full name is Julie Frymer.

Who is she and why is she so important to the team? She’s the assistant athletic trainer. Frymyer had one of the NFL’s most important jobs in the 2022-2023 season: She was in charge of putting Mahomes through rehab for his injured ankle and getting the star quarterback ready to play for a spot in the Super Bowl.

Hobbling through a nasty sprain that often requires weeks of recovery, Mahomes wasn’t just able to play against the Cincinnati Bengals. He was fantastic. He was clearly gimpy, grimacing through several plays, but he was mobile enough to make several key plays, including a crucial run setting up the last-second field goal that sent the Chiefs to the Super Bowl to face the Philadelphia Eagles.

Mahomes going out of his way to praise her was the first time most people in Arrowhead Stadium had ever heard the name Julie Frymyer, but the Chiefs knew her value long before the guy with a contract worth nearly half a billion dollars, might as well have given her the game ball.

Navy Seal Admiral, William McRaven, talks about an important lesson Seals learn: Think first of others. In an interview with AARP, he said:

I like to tell the story of Sgt. Maj. Chris Faris, my right-hand man in Afghanistan. One day, I did a Zoom call with my doctor, and she told me I’d been diagnosed with cancer. I needed to go back to the States immediately to have my spleen removed and start chemotherapy. She added, “Your military career is probably over.”

When I got back to my office, Chris was there, and he noticed something wasn’t right. After I told him, he said, “OK, boss, we’ve got the morning briefing coming up, and you need to be there. The troops are counting on you.”

So, we did the video teleconference with thousands of our team members around the world. And before I could say anything, Chris asked someone to put up a list of the people who’d been injured in combat the night before. Then he gave me a look, and I knew what it meant. I had a problem, but it paled in comparison to what these young men and women were going through. That was exactly the right thing to tell me at the time. It helped put my minor problem in perspective.

On January 15th, 2009, US Airways flight #1549 departed New York City’s LaGuardia’s Airport. Within a few minutes, the plane collided with a flock of geese, taking out both engines. Captain Sully Sullenberg made an emergency landing in the chilly waters of the Hudson River. Before he left the plane and got to safety, he walked the plane twice to make sure no one was onboard. As the captain, he knew that he must be the last person on the plane. “Sully” became a national hero.

Three years later—almost to the date—on January 13th, 2012, a massive Italian cruise ship called the Costa Concordia crashed into the rocks and started to sink. An investigation would determine the cause of the crash: the ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, was trying to impress a younger female dancer on board when he veered too close to danger. The ship started sinking with its 4,000-plus passengers on board.

In the confusion and chaos, Schettino escaped on to a lifeboat before everyone else had made it off the ship. A coast guard member angrily told him on the phone to “Get back on board, d--- it.” Schettino later claimed that he fell into a lifeboat because the ship was listing to one side. But the court didn’t believe that story. Instead, he was found guilty of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, and abandoning the ship with passengers on board. He was sentenced to ten years in prison.

The 150th anniversary of Canadian missionary George Leslie Mackay’s arrival in Taiwan was celebrated in 2022. Perhaps the country’s most beloved 19th-century Westerner, churches have reenacted his arrival, and several books are being published about the missionary. The Taiwan government even has a bio of him on their website. So, what made this foreigner worthy of this level of affection more than 100 years after his death?

In 1872, the Canadian Presbyterian missionary arrived in northern Taiwan (then called Formosa). Over the next 29 years, Mackay planted more than 60 churches and baptized more than 3,000 people. He started a college and a graduate school of theology. Mackay Memorial Hospital, named in his honor, is now a large downtown hospital in Taipei.

He also provided medical treatment. He and his students would sing a hymn to patients, extract their teeth, and then preach the gospel to them. Over the years, Mackay became known for having pulled thousands of teeth.

He insisted on identifying with Taiwan and the Taiwanese. Mackay spent more than half of the 57 years of his life on the island. Upon his arrival in Taiwan, he immediately began learning the language from the local boys herding water buffalo. Unlike most Western missionaries, he married a local woman, and they had three children. Embracing Taiwan as his adopted homeland, he touched the hearts of many Taiwanese and contributed to the conversion of many to Christianity.

Before he passed, Mackay captured his love for the country by writing a still widely beloved poem: “How dear is Formosa to my heart! On that island the best of my years have been spent. A lifetime of joy is centered here … My heart’s ties to Taiwan cannot be severed! To that island I devote my life.”

Robert Samuel is a 46-year-old former mobile phone salesman who now gets paid to sit in line for others. If a client wants something but can’t stomach a long queue, they pay him thousands of dollars to do it for them. Samuel sits, standing, or sometimes sleeps, in lines: waiting for theater tickets, iPhone releases, limited edition hoodies, and more before either relinquishing his place to his customer or buying them tickets. This has been his work for nine years and before the pandemic, he was earning over $86,000 a year. The toughest gig was Hamilton where the inside of his tent frosted over.

He said, “You can get people to literally do everything for you. They can watch your kids, they can watch your pets. They can clean your home. They can pick you up from A to B, or bring you your food. So, this is just an extension of that. You can get people to do just about anything, within reason, as long as it’s legal and you want to pay.”

Old Testament scholar Peter Craigie explored the Bible’s view on the brevity of human life. At one point in his career, Craigie wrote, “Life is extremely short, and if its meaning is to be found, it must be found in the purpose of God, the giver of all life.” He claimed that recognizing the transitory nature of our lives is “a starting point in achieving the sanity of a pilgrim in an otherwise mad world.”

Craigie wrote those words in 1983, in the first of three planned volumes on the Psalms in a prestigious scholarly commentary series. Two years later he died in a car accident, leaving his commentary incomplete. He was 47 years old. Craigie’s life was taken before he and his loved ones expected, before he could accomplish his good and worthy goals. Yet in his short life he bore witness to the breathtaking horizon of eternity. He bore witness to how embracing our mortal limits goes hand-in-hand with offering our mortal bodies to the Lord of life.

The largely unknown Franz Mohr once claimed, “I play [the piano] more in Carnegie Hall than anybody else, but I have no audience.” Mohr, was the Chief Technician for the world-famous piano makers, Steinway & Sons. A New York Times obituary from Sunday April 17, 2022, described how Mohr worked:

Sometimes a string would snap or a pedal would need adjusting during a concert, and he would step into the spotlight for a moment. But he did much of his work alone, on that famous stage and others around the world. He might have been mistaken for a pianist trying out a nine-foot grand for a recital — until he reached for his tools and began making minute adjustments, giving a tuning pin a tiny twist or a hammer a slight shave.

For years he went where the pianists went. He played before presidents and foreign dignitaries. He also attended to the world’s most famous performers’ personal pianos.

But he never begrudged taking a backseat to the stars. His boss, Henry Steinway, once said, “To understand Franz, one must understand … that his Christian faith is at the core of his being and affects everything he says and does.” Mohr claims that he loved being a “faithful plodder” who strove, in the words of Jesus, to be “faithful in little things.”

When Tate Morgan initially conceived of the event now known as the Gambler 500, it was nothing like what it is now. Back in 2014, Morgan had an idea for he and several friends to stage an informal race out in the woods with cheap cars. He figured that racing 500 miles around the Mount Hood wilderness in $500 cars would be a fun way to spend a weekend. Morgan said explaining the name, “It’s a gamble if you’re going to make it, it’s a gamble which way you’re going to go. It’s never a gamble if you’re going to have fun.”

But in 2016, it quickly threatened to spiral out of control. After a video from the event got 10 million views on Facebook, Morgan was inundated with requests from people to join. Law enforcement thought the Gambler 500 was a ring of racing outlaws, and Morgan was threatened with felonies if he didn’t shut the event down.

Still, the attention came at a time when Morgan needed a distraction. He’d recently quit his job after receiving a cancer diagnosis, and wanted to be intentional about spending time with friends and family. “What the heck,” he thought. “What happens if we just decide to let everybody come?”

So as a way of turning the event legit, he decided to turn it into a massive land clean-up. This year participants collected abandoned boats, hot tubs, burned hulks of cars, bags of household garbage, and a literal kitchen sink. By the end of the day, Gamblers had filled five large metal bins with trash.

Morgan now works full-time doing Gambler events, coordinating between the Bureau of Land Management and various partner organizations. Not only does the location change each year, but the attention on the original Gambler 500 has led to similar events all around the world. Morgan allows other groups to use the Gambler name as long as they don’t make any money from the event and adhere to the central tenets of the event--have fun racing, be inclusive, and rally people to help clean-up the area. And now all these years later, he has no regrets. “Six years later, I am cancer free, and we have thousands of people out here.”

Colin Powell, the great American military leader, was also a life-long fixer. According to an obituary in the New York Times:

Until his final days, Colin L. Powell remained preoccupied with fixing things. The former secretary of state and four-star general tinkered endlessly in his garage — sometimes with his welder and sometimes on a succession of [automobiles]. He was a regular at the neighborhood hardware store in McLean, Va., where he rummaged through parts for his house’s malfunctioning dishwasher or leaky faucets.

His plywood-and-wire fixes often left something to be desired aesthetically. But they satisfied his … compulsion to repair rather than discard what was broken. When he was fixing things, one longtime friend said, “there was a result at the end of the day. It’s why he was so happy as an Army officer: You take a platoon, and you make it better.”

But there were some things he couldn’t fix. In 2019, he was diagnosed with plasma-cell cancer. He died in October 2021. He also admitted that were a lot of things broken in this world that neither he nor the United States could fix. Once he told his assistant: “Going into the garage, I can see that the carburetor is the problem and fix it—unlike foreign policy, where nothing gets resolved. You’re just spending four years doing the best you can.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) Servanthood; Leadership—Use the first part of this illustration to show how servants or leaders take what they’re given and make it better. (2) Death or Brokenness—Use the full illustration to highlight how even someone as competent as Powell, a lifelong fixer, was powerless to fix death or to fix the world’s brokenness.

Teacher and author Paul Borthwick was on a visit to one of his friends who teaches in Beijing, China. He attended a church with four young men who were new believers thanks to his friend’s ministry. The service was in Mandarin, so Paul understood nothing, but he did think the pastor, a very senior man, seemed a little boring. He was soft-spoken, a little stooped over, and preached without any expressions of excitement or emotion.

At lunch after the service, Paul asked the four young Christians, “Is your pastor a good preacher?” They exclaimed, “Oh yes! He is a great preacher. He spent many years in prison for Jesus Christ.”

Their measurement of the sermon and the pastor’s ministry had nothing to do with oratory ability and everything to do with a life faithfully lived in the face of suffering.