Slacking in Service?

            This past week I have been thinking a great deal about people who are “servants” or “members in ministry” in the church.  As we approach the start of our fall programming at Faith UMC, I am encouraged by the great number of individuals who are Falling Into Faith and serving in their local church.  These individuals are willingly giving of their time, energy, and resources to be a blessing to someone else, for which they need to be commended.  Serving others is sometimes a challenging thing to do as it may make us uncomfortable, present challenges, or cause us to simply sacrifice our time.

            With that in mind I was thinking about a story I heard one time from a great speaker.  He shared a story about how an individual went into different levels of schools asking the same question.  They started their experiment by walking into a kindergarten classroom and asking the students “Who of you can draw?”  Every student in the classroom raised their hands.  “What can you draw?” was the next question.  Every student began shouting out their answers, excitedly claiming that they could create the largest masterpiece.  “How many of you like to sing?”  Again every student raised their hands and eagerly tried to outdo the other students with what they could sing.

            Next this individual traveled to a third grade classroom, asking the same questions.  When the question arose about who could draw, he noticed fewer hands were raised.  When asked what they could draw, specific answers were given, such as, “I can only draw horses.”  The question about singing rendered the same results, as students stated they could only sing a certain style of music.  This raised a level of curiosity in the individual asking the questions who then traveled to a high school classroom.

            He asked the students the same two questions, “Who can draw?” which seemed to fall on deaf ears as only a couple of students in the classroom raised their hands.  When asked about what they could draw their answers were extremely specific limiting their creativity.  The question about singing rendered the same results as only a couple of students acknowledged that they could sing. 

            After thinking about this for a great deal of time, the individual surveying asked the question, at what age did we stop believing we could do the impossible?  At what age did we lose our creativity?  At what age did we die?  Thinking about these questions causes us to question, why is it that the older we get the less we are creative and able to dream?  Thinking about this I think the same is true with where we serve.  As young children we believe that we can accomplish anything, serve anyone, and do anything.  However, the older we get the more limits we put on things based on our own level of comfort. 

            I know that I have been guilty of this throughout my life as a youth director/pastor.  I often times find myself thinking that I can only work with teenagers and their parents, however recently I was presented with an opportunity to work with the parents of younger children, which caused me a little discomfort at first, but then I thought of this story.   Why do I limit my area of service to one specific category?  Could I not be used in another avenue with more people?  When did I stop dreaming about the impact that I could have?  Am I willing to be stretched and used in this way?

            As you think about your own life and the ways that you are serving, I challenge you to dream “God-sized” dreams and think about the numerous ways that God desires for you to be utilized in serving His Kingdom!