A Heart of Service

Author: Janet Mease, wife, mother of three grown children, and grandmother to three beautiful grandchildren, who is now enjoying doing full-time “Kingdom” work with her newly retired husband Rick.

As I read Kate's article A Second Home this past week, I noted how similar that her upbringing was to my own. I also attended the same church from birth until I attended college. My grandparents had started this church in their home back in the early 1900’s. The church’s second building facility had my birth date on its dedication plaque and I thought it belonged to me when I was little. Yes, I spent my years from “cradle roll” through my teens taking part in V.B.S., Pioneer Girls, Youth for Christ, socials, potlucks, Young Life, and summers at Hume Lake. During those years I was taught to love God and serve others by those who were part of our body. I learned outreach and service through actively helping in Vacation Bible School, teaching toddlers Sunday school class, and in preparing for outings and parties for both children and youth. In my junior and senior high years, I participated in our church’s outreach program for mentally handicapped children. Watching these children act out Bible stories and love everyone unreservedly, taught me so much more than I could have ever taught them. Years later, I wrote a poem about my experiences called “My Hometown Church”. At the close of my poem I said:


You see, it’s not a building and a steeple,
That makes a church.
No, it’s the people.
And those people invested in my life.

To me they modeled Christian love
Bearing fruit from God above
And doing good works—God prepared for them to do.

And I know, I could never pay,
For what they’ve given me today;
A childhood filled with blessing and God’s love.

My husband and I felt that daunting task that Kate spoke of when we were transferred up to the Bay Area. Not only was it a different culture than we were used to, but we left behind both our family and our church family—all those whom we loved and who supported us. Honestly, it took us around three years to really feel this was home. It was during this time of readjustment that God began to remind me that “it not a building and a steeple that makes a church” (there’s not many church with steeples in Benicia!) No, it’s us, believers that make up the Church, not the building. Yet, over the last several years, I’ve seen our Christian culture take on a “consumer mentality” towards church. We want our church to serve us the right type of worship, the right message (not too long or boring), the right type of music (not too loud or too outdated), and the right programs for us and our children.

As parents, we had to deal with this issue years ago when one of our sons heard about another youth group in town and told his father that he wanted to start attending there. My husband’s response was simple. He told our son that this was our church—our family. When you don’t like something about your family you work to change it for the better; you don’t walk away. You here to serve not be served. He also said that you are either part of the problem or part of the solution. To be part of the solution you can first pray about God changing your attitude and perspective, and then, if needed, talk to leadership about possible solutions and ideas. The results were that both our son and our youth group grew and matured.

This past year, I’ve watched many new people come into our church body, yet two new couples stood out. My husband and I asked each of these couples out to lunch, one while they were just visiting and still checking out churches in our area and the other shortly after they began attending. Both couples shared during our lunch that they were looking for a place to serve. They wanted a place where God could use their gifts and talents. Noticeably, they did not ask, “What can this church give me and my family”, but instead ask, “God, which church could use my gifts within their body?”

Mark 10:44-45 states:

And whoever would be first among you must be a slave to all. For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve…
Fellow believers aren’t we to follow His example? Christ, who could have demanded to be served, came to serve. He demonstrated what we all need to have as part of His body—a heart of service.

Next week's Author: Liz Edwards

A Second Home

Author: Kate Bayless

I attended the same church until I was 18 and left home for college. I am told that I even attended in utero as my parents were active members of the same congregation during the early years of their marriage and their entry into parenthood. In fact, my parents had attended this same church since before they were in high school. So you could say that our family was pretty well connected to the church having had multiple generations of my family sitting in its pews. The church’s walls were a second home to me, its members, a second family.

I valued that aspect of my upbringing and benefited from seeing my parents’ faith in action through the outreaches and ministries of the church. Theirs was not a dead faith or even a Sunday faith, but a personal relationship with Jesus that lived itself out daily in how they served, gave and demonstrated sacrificial love for God’s people.

When I became a parent, I wanted to offer that same experience to my children––for them to grow up in a church family, for them to be nurtured by a youth ministry, for them to be able to see faith in action through my participation in the church. The one thing that was missing? A church.

Finding a church to call home can be a daunting task. Can you really judge a church based on a single Sunday visit? But if your initial visit was a poor experience, do you really want to go back again? Since we have been married, my husband and I have visited nearly two dozen churches in the area, some garnering enough of our interest to return a second or third time, many leaving us disgusted and wondering about the direction of the Christian church as a whole. Though we each have personal preferences about music style and congregation demographics, ultimately we both long for one thing: a place that teaches God’s unadulterated truth. Should be simple enough to find. Right?

This all became much more complicated when we had kids.

Suddenly, there was another factor to consider––the children’s program. Sure Church A had a great pastor and decent music, but their kid’s program with little more than babysitting. Or there was Church B that had a dynamic, active children’s program, but the sermon teaching left us questioning if they were reading the same Bible we were. My husband and I had long since given up on finding the “perfect church” and had settled on our one, no-compromise element that our church home had to have. But now….what was more important: choosing a church where my husband and I were fed? Or one where our children would be?

We still haven’t found an answer to this yet. I know that church isn’t the only place my children will receive Christian values and spiritual encouragement, yet I find it hard to attend a church that has no potential for them to participate in an active youth group or have strong spiritual mentors outside of our home. Likewise it’s hard for my husband and I to attend an uninspiring church, even in spite of a stellar children’s program.

Fortunately, God has blessed us with an amazing collection of Christian families amongst our friends, and so in spite of not having found the perfect church to call home, our children are indeed being raised by a community of believers and have a variety of Christian adults in their lives to watch, learn from and get showered with love and godly guidance. I still long for a church to call home, but in the meantime, I can rest assured in the knowledge that God is good and has infinitely more wisdom than I have capacity to worry about this.

Have you had to balance the spiritual needs of your children with those of you and your spouse? How have you handled this issue?

Out of a Heart of Love

Why do your children listen to and obey you? Why do they treat their siblings with kindness? Is it because of what might happen if they do or don't or is it because they desire to do what God wants them to do?

I've been thinking about this lately. I so much want and desire for my children to have their own personal relationship with Jesus. I want it to be "theirs" not just something their parents believe and shared with them, but something that is real to them and affects how they live. When they were three and four, I had them memorize Ephesians 6:1 "Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right." They had already asked Jesus into their lives and I told them that this is God's command for them. I know, though, that often they chose to obey or be kind because they didn't want to be disciplined or because they liked the praise and affirmation they received when they did. Even when I disciplined or praised them, I know I focused more on obeying me (rather than God).

Why should we obey God's commands, though? What should we be focusing on? Shouldn't the reason be because we love God and desire to please Him? Our actions should be motivated out of a heart of love for God.

Lately, I've been trying to be more conscious of encouraging and helping my children to learn more about God and to foster their own personal relationship with God. I have them spend their own time with God each day reading the Bible and praying. We memorize God's word. We talk about how much God loves and desires the best for them and what we can do to please Him.

I know that as they spend more time with and learn more about God their love for Him should grow. It is my hope and prayer that they grow to be more like Him and that their desire to serve and honor Him increases as well. I pray that they will take ownership of their faith and that it will make a tremendous difference in their lives. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we knew that the reason our children are listening to their parents and putting their sibling first is because of God in their life? It's never too early to start training and praying! :)