By Laura Springer with Jeff Barnhart
Key Passages: Ephesians 4:7-16; 2 Timothy 3:16-17
Key Idea: Service training that equips the church toward maturity in Christ, God-honoring culture, and service excellence develops capacities to serve well, forms a culture of truth and love, and teaches believers to value Jesus, siblings, and others.
We are surrounded by many needs and supplied with much knowledge and skill, yet fitting all this together can be tough. Sometimes, we group needs into categories to the neglect of specifics. Other times, we put ministry in the church-stuff box and forget about regular life. Both situations can hinder effective service. This is where practical training comes in. Figuring out how the truth of Scripture puts on shoes and heads out to serve helps the church to live love like Jesus. Serving and learning alongside one another strengthens family connections that honor God by prioritizing truth and love. Training while we serve others exposes gaps and highlights strengths, and working on both moves us toward service excellence.
Train as a community to become increasingly Christlike. As Paul teaches in Ephesians 4, Christians who are equipped for ministry work together to mature the church toward unity and Christlikeness. Unity binds us to Christ and one another. It forms us as one family of brothers and sisters who actively love one another. Unity lives out the fact of oneness in Christ through life together in harmonious, mutual understanding. Even more, Christlikeness sinks us deep in God’s truth, strengthening us against the deceptions of false spirituality and developing in us the capacity and desire to act upon God’s truth in love with boldness.
Train as a community to develop a culture of truth and love. When truth and love are at the heart of our community, we naturally proclaim Jesus through love-based actions and tend our hearts to the needs of others. Our life together remains centered on Jesus, and we design our events, practices, and structures to glorify him. He becomes the measure of our quality and the goal of our work. We confirm him as our one Head and most significant influence. We commit ourselves to being honest about our weaknesses and failures, giving Jesus all the glory while never downplaying our participation in his work. We become a people grounded in God’s Word and living it out in acts of love toward others.
Train as a community to develop the abilities we already have. We need not search for particular skills. We must not wait for our hearts to be moved to serve. We must serve. Let us train while we serve with the abilities we have, becoming ever more committed to excellent service that loves others through actions and words. Let us make the needs of others more important than how we prefer to use our knowledge and skills. Let us train to speak, live, and hear the truth more clearly and deeply. Let us train to be open about hard things without blurting them out in harmful ways. Let us train to help, share, and work alongside others for their good and God’s glory. Let us train so that our thoughts, actions, and affections align with God as we work from love.
The eternal value of Jesus, our Christian siblings, and others requires the best from us, so let us train to learn what is best and how to carry it out. Serving with our best puts people before tasks. It develops capacities and fits those capacities to the needs of others because we love people as we love God. Giving our best grounds our service in truth from both scripture and creation and fits that service to the practical needs in the everyday lives of regular people. So, let us continue to know God and others more deeply, understand contexts and cultures more broadly, and train as servants steadfastly on this side of heaven.
Who writes Academy? Laura has an MDiv in Christian Education, a ThM in Systematic Theology, and a PhD in Educational Studies. She also serves TFB as a guitarist (primarily) and singer in TFB's worship band. Jeff has a Certificate in Biblical and Theological Studies and is currently working on an MA in Spiritual Formation and Soul Care. He also serves as kitchen lead for TFB's Family Dinner and as TFB’s bookkeeper.
