relationships and community on Community Service

Leonard Sweet shares an interesting story in the introduction to Neil Cole’s book, Organic Church , about a parish pastor who lived in a Scottish village near Edinburgh called Davidson’s Mains. ...

Community service has become a patch for morality. You can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck.

Self-righteous service comes through human effort. True service comes from a relationship with the divine Other deep inside. Self-righteous service is impressed with the "big deal." True ser...

Service is just a day-in, day-out, ongoing, never-ending, unremitting, persevering, compassionate type of activity.

There is a paradigm shift going on in the realm of forestry. For years there had been a consensus among ecologists that all trees were independent operators, each tree an island unto itself, the fores...

Picture this: you are just about a year into your first call as a minister. Everything seems to be going swimmingly. You caught up with a seminary friend over the weekend and you slightly brag about h...

In their excellent book on reconciliation, Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice share a story about how small acts of beauty, done well, can lead to reconciliation: A friend told us of visiting a very ...

The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.

In their excellent book on reconciliation, Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice share a story about how small acts of beauty, done well, can lead to reconciliation: A friend told us of visiting a very l...

The fact that our works are done in the service of God is not enough, by itself, to prevent us from losing our interior life if we let them devour all our time and all our strength. Work is good and n...

Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.

This prayer, by Rev. Lisa Degrenia, is intended as a way to honor and support the veterans in your community and their families. It may be included anywhere in the service, but is especially well suit...

There is an old cliché from the Boy Scout movement in which three Scouts report that they had helped an old lady across the road. “Why did it take three of you?” asks the Scoutmaster. “Because,” they ...

We are not called to help people. We are called to follow Jesus, in whose service we learn who we are and how we are to help and be helped.

Too Busy for God? American work culture is all-pervasive. For many members of your congregation, it can be a real fight to get actual time off—and cell phones and the internet has made it possible to...

Reflection In Isak Dinesen’s 1958 short story, “Babette’s Feast,” we see Babette Hersant, a 19th century French chef from Paris, seek political asylum in the Jutland region of Denmark in the home of ...

Community is the fruit of charity and is expressed in friendship which brings forth and nourishes loyalty, trust, sincerity and mutual understanding. … Friendship in Christ not only favors the develop...

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing...

We are again in a moment of intense anger, fear, and sorrow. We've been here too often, lately. In September 2025, prominent activist Charlie Kirk was killed in front of a crowd in Utah. This ca...

The following article was originally written for the author’s denominational newsletter as part of the celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. It is meant to provide some insights into t...

The true leader serves. Serves people. Serves their best interests, and in so doing will not always be popular, may not always impress. But because true leaders are motivated by loving concern, rather...

If your service of Christ has grown grudging (or stopped happening), you don’t need to try to obey more. You need to love more. This means that you don’t need to try harder; you need to ask your Fathe...

As our heavenly Father has in Christ freely come to our aid, we also ought freely to help our neighbor . . . and each one should become . . . a Christ to the other.

Sometimes service means doing routine tasks even if we could have someone else do them. There is a story about Abraham Lincoln – possibly apocryphal but certainly in character – that a cabinet member ...

If you wait until all of your own issues are gone before helping others, it will never happen. This is a trap that millions have fallen into, not realizing that our own sanctification happens as we mi...

You cannot be lonely if you help the lonely.

The way most of us serve keeps us in control. We choose whom, when, where and how we will serve. We stay in charge. Jesus is calling for something else. He is calling us to be servants. When we make t...

In More Give to Live, Dr. Douglas Lawson provides evidence that the urge toward generosity begins early in life. He describes a continuum that he calls the “Giving Path.” This path begins with parents...

What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neig...

We must serve God, everyone in his own way, wearing either a leather apron or an academic gown—it does not make any difference. Everyone has to serve God, wearing rubber boots or carrying a gasoline c...