Be a Servant in the Church, Not a Consumer - Clint Leiter

No one is meant to be a mere fixture

in a church meeting,

just like a piece of the furniture,

a spectator,

a consumer.

You know, as Americans we develop

kind of naturally to fall into

this consumer mentality,

where we in the case of a church

or a congregation,

we arrive, we hear a sermon,

and then we go home

and there's no thought about:

what can I do to serve?

What can I do to help?

It's a consumer type of mentality.

I'm there to be fed.

I'm there to be cared for.

And you'd be surprised how many people

leave churches in bad ways

because they think that they're not

being cared for

or they're not being fed

and it's all about them.

But I say beware of negligence.

Let yourself be served by God.

You don't have to be able
to fill a pulpit like this

or have a grand ministry

to be used by God in the church,

to be gifted to be used
by God in the church.

Spurgeon said, as only he can say things,

he said, "Good wheat
grows in little fields."

In Missouri, we've got little fields.

Here you've got ranches

that take up a whole mile.

Good wheat can grow in little fields.

He says, "Little pigeons
can carry great messages."

And you know, in the past history

of the world wars,

there were wars that were turned around

on the message received
by a carrier pigeon.

Little pigeons can carry great messages.

He says, "Even a little dog

can bark at a thief
and wake up the master

and save the house."

And it's true.

A spark is a fire.

And a sentence with
truth has heaven in it.

Now, the way our congregation works -

it might not fit in here in San Antonio,

but we have what's called

an open-participatory type of a meeting

in which during the song singing

anyone can offer a comment on a verse

or give a brief word, a testimony,

or something they read in a book.

And you would be surprised -

maybe you wouldn't be -

I was surprised at how frequently

those little interjections

that the Spirit moves on a person to say

have turned out to be more important

in my estimation than anything I said

for the whole 45 minutes I preached.

God uses people that way.

And we ought to let
ourselves be used by God.

Serve the church.

Serve God. Serve the church.

The household of faith.

We're told to do good to them.

I was having a conversation

around the table with Kenny Lee

over at Tony's house.

I asked him where he
saw himself in the future.

He just made a comment off the cuff

about how he just wanted to

through trial and error figure out

what God's gift is for him

and try and use it in the church

however he could.

That fits right here.

Yesterday, I got a text from Raoul

and he wanted to know

what my sermon notes might be

because he's going to try and interpret it

to the Spanish-speaking ones that are here

and I thought there is a perfect example.

Here is someone who's been gifted.

He's got something to do

and he's anxious to do it,

desiring to do it.

Regretfully I had to decline

because my notes are all in hard copies

and he probably couldn't make
heads or tails of them anyway.

But I like the attitude there -

an attitude of serving,

wanting to serve.

Romans 12, Paul said,

"All the members don't
have the same function."

He said, "We have gifts that differ

according to the grace given us."

But the implication is everyone -

not just apostles.

In fact, he says, "Each of us

is to exercise them accordingly."

And he gives just a few examples.

He says, "If service, in his serving."

And that word literally
just means helping.

Do you realize you could be gifted

just to help people?

When Tony went to move down here

to San Antonio,

Matthew McDonnell took time off,

took his own vehicle,

drove from San Antonio

all the way to Sedalia,

so that we could load
up Tony's belongings,

hook up a trailer on the back,

and three days later, two days later,

he turned around, drove all the way back

to San Antonio,

gave Tony the service of moving here.

Now you see, some might say -

we have a tendency to
overlook those things

as not being gifts of the Spirit,

but you might be surprised,

there's something that you can do,

something you can help with,

and it might just be that the Holy Spirit

has gifted you that way.

That's serving.