Service is part of being missional
by Jim Schrag
Executive Director
Mennonite Church USA

Jesus served, without prejudice, both the faithful and those struggling with faith. - Jim Schrag, Mennonite Church USA

A couple in a congregation where I was pastor spent many of their pre-retirement and retirement years in Mennonite Disaster Service work. They gained a wealth of experiences and friendships, living a simple but comfortable lifestyle. They also supervised the construction of many homes and several church buildings.

My wife and I served in the Teachers Abroad Program in the late ’60s. We balanced these reasons for service: To perform alternative service during the Vietnam War, a wish to see the world, and a desire to use our college training in teaching for the benefit of others. Through service we received a larger worldview, many friends, some of whom we still correspond with today, and an understanding of the church and its work that, since then, has provided a useful foundation for our subsequent calling to church vocation.

At our rural school, located at the end of a rutted, muddy road, we taught with Peace Corps volunteers, teachers from another U.S. Protestant church body, teachers from England and Denmark and nationals. Was service on the minds of all those teachers? I would like to think so, though perhaps in varying degrees and for various reasons.

Service is not only a Christian idea. But when Christians serve in humanitarian efforts, they bring their Christlike values and witness with them. This is also true for the man who makes a clock to sell at a relief sale or the women who make comforters or roll bandages for people on the other side of the world. Service is a part of joining God’s mission — being missional.

Christ’s motives for service were distinctly unselfish. His was service to other people’s needs as he encountered them. He served, without prejudice, both the faithful and those struggling with faith. Among the multitudes touched by Jesus must be hundreds of untold stories of those who had no faith at all, or, at best, very mixed motives for seeking the Master.

Though Mennonites are sometimes lauded for our service, we know that we are the richest beneficiaries of service. We receive more than we can give. We do not serve only to receive God’s benefits, but the rewards are unavoidable, because we cannot out-give God.