Two ways to get this wrong

Your team already serves. The clinic runs on Saturday. The meal goes out every Thursday. The English class meets Tuesday nights, rain or shine, and nobody on your team has ever doubted that this is worth doing. What nobody agrees on — what nobody has ever really talked through — is what happens after the plate is empty or the class lets out.

Serving and saying nothing

Here is the first way good people get this wrong, and it is the more comfortable one: you serve for years and never once mention Jesus out loud. It feels safe. It feels like real love, because it is real love — nobody hands out a meal, or a checkup, or an hour of tutoring hoping for nothing in return. But somewhere in the middle of doing it right for so long, “we don’t want to be pushy” quietly became “we never ask anything at all.” The clinic runs, the tournament runs, the class runs, year after year, and not one Bible gets opened. Ask most of us why, and the honest answer is not theology. It is fear of being the kind of Christian nobody wants to be.

Serving in order to sell something

The second way is less comfortable to admit, because it usually comes from people trying hardest to be faithful. The meal becomes the bait: a sermon before the plates go out, a service time announced over the loudspeaker, an altar call worked into a soccer tournament. It works, sometimes, for an afternoon. But people can smell a transaction. A community that has been baited once stops trusting the next act of kindness — and the next time your team shows up to serve, some of them will be waiting to see what you really want.

Both come from the same good instinct

Notice that both failures come from people who love their neighbors and want them to know Jesus. One failure is silence out of respect. The other is pressure out of urgency. Neither one is a character flaw. They are both what happens when we have never been shown a third way — where the service is complete and unconditional, and the invitation, when it comes, is just as honest.

Jesus never separated the two:

Jesus travelled through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were troubled and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. — Matthew 9:35-36 (OTB)

He fed people, he healed people, and he taught them — not two ministries running side by side, one real and one attached, but a single act of love with a full mouth.

The service stands on its own

The test of whether your team has this right is simple: does the clinic still run, does the meal still get served, if nobody ever says yes to anything? If the answer is no, the service was never really the gift — it was the hook. Real love with no strings can afford to ask honestly, because a “no” changes nothing about what you already gave.

Recite this

The meal is not a lure. The silence is not a virtue.

Try it this week

Think honestly about the last time your team served someone. Was there a moment when you could have asked something, and didn’t? Or was there a string attached that nobody wanted to name out loud?

Write down one person from that ministry — a name you already know.

I will pray about asking ________________ an honest question, by ________________.