Eden Prairie United Methodist Church
Connect with Us!
  • Home
  • Being Church
    • Crops For PROP
    • Serving Our Neighbors
    • Fellowship >
      • Women's Retreat
      • Church Directory
  • Children | Youth
    • Nursery
    • Sunday School (Preschool through 7th grade)
    • Especially for Families
    • Rooted (3rd - 4th grade)
    • Vacation Bible School
    • Middle School Youth (Grades 7-8)
    • Confirmation (8th-9th grade)
    • Higher Ground (10th-12th grade)
  • Music
    • Adult Music Opportunities
  • About EPUMC
    • Worship
    • Staff
    • Notes from Pastor Becky Jo
    • Lay Leadership
    • A Reconciling Congregation
    • Tumbleweed Newsletters
    • Videos
    • Annual Report
    • Sermons
    • Calendar
  • Prayer
  • Online Giving
  • Contact Us

Weekly Memo: Service  Can  Change  us

3/15/2018

Comments

 
Service is the spiritual practice we are considering this week as we prepare for Easter, which is only two and half weeks away.  At church when you say the word “service,” most of us think about one-time service projects like Feed My Starving Children, Simpson Shelter, Meals on Wheels, The Sheridan Story or adult and youth mission trips.  Service is any activity in which we intentionally go out and “do” something for someone else. 

I’ve led a number of service projects and mission trips. The first thing you learn is that you have missed an important point if all these experience are just about what you get done. Being in service to another is also about how your view of the world is affected by the position you put yourself into. 
 
The clearest example I can think of this is how we encourage our youth who are 8th graders and older to attend a weeklong experience where we travel to an unfamiliar part of the country. Through these experiences, we hope to expose youth to a different culture.  When you are a Minnesotan and you travel to Tennessee, and you discover that you are the one with the funny accent (I cannot count the times I’ve been asked to say Minn -es- soooooota in Tennessee), you can’t help but feel odd and thus see the world differently.
 
Being out of step with the surrounding culture is a good experience in itself, and when you add on the layer of being a servant of people who are of a different economic class, the experience can be a formative spiritual experience. When your eyes are opened to how different you are in one context, you have the opportunity to see how our differences often unfairly divide us. Somehow when you are the one being called out because of your accent, you are more open to stand with someone who is being called out because they are poor.
 
Jesus in his life and at his death teaches us that being a servant is not just doing, it is developing the courage to put yourself in a position to see the suffering of the world, the suffering around you and then to enter it…to do something about it… to redeem it.
 
This week in our worship I’m asking you to read the scripture in John Chapter 13 of Jesus modeling how to be a servant by washing the disciples’ feet. Here Jesus not only does something for others; he literally puts himself on his knees in front of another which is metaphorically a position of attentiveness and compassion.
 
As you consider how you practice service, choose a time, event or a person where you have attempted to serve as Jesus modeled.  Now ask yourself the question, what did that person teach me?  How do I view the world differently because of that experience? Come to church having reflected upon that, and let’s allow God’s light to shine deeper into our lives revealing the presence of Jesus in our world.
 
Keep the Faith,
 
Pastor Dan
 
Comments

    Archives

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    October 2012

    RSS Feed

Connect with us!
office@prairiechurch.org
(952) 937-8781

15050 Scenic Heights Road
Eden Prairie, MN 55344
Picture
Picture