Brooks Robinson’s play at third base was arguably unmatched by anyone who has ever played the game of baseball. He played twenty-three years for the Baltimore Orioles, setting major league career records for games, putouts, assists, chances, double plays and fielding percentage. [i]

Brooks played in four World Series, winning the MVP in 1970 and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983. His fielding was as beautiful to watch as it was daunting to opposing teams. Brooks played and lived baseball simply because he had a passion for the game. He once said of himself, “I'm a guy who just wanted to see his name in the lineup everyday. To me, baseball was a passion to the point of obsession.”

This passion made Brooks put everything he had into every play. People that watched him play could not help but notice his devotion to the sport of baseball. Umpire Ed Hurley once said of Brooks, "He plays third base like he came down from a higher league."

Brook Robinson’s passion in life was the thrill he received from stopping an impossible grounder, throwing someone out at first from his knees, or turning a double play. The baseball diamond was a place where his dreams were realized and his passions were played out.

Yet despite all of his zeal and drive to succeed, Brooks could not have achieved anything without an actual field to play on. Throwing humility aside for a second, I am exceptionally gifted in distinguishing between a baseball and a soccer field. Both fields have a unique shape, one a diamond, the other a rectangle. The field provides context for the game, for when you see a particular field you immediately know how it’s used and why. You can’t play baseball properly on a soccer field and how would you sink a three pointer in basket ball without the three-point line. How could Brooks throw someone out without a first base to throw to?

Just like in baseball, serving needs a context to be effective. It needs a playing field. Biblical servanthood is primarily expressed among God’s people, which is the local church. Within this community, care and kindness can be practically demonstrated. People can serve and love one another in the church context. Here, motivated by God grace, propelled by His love, and enabled by His Spirit, the local church provides the context for Christian service. The church is serving’s playing field. “For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.” 1 Corinthians 3:9

The church is vital and unique in providing care and magnifying the Gospel. It enables believers to serve others, all so that God’s glory may be proclaimed as well as manifested. Professor Edmund Clowney writes “The church is called to serve God in three ways: to serve him directly in worship; to serve the saints in nurture; and to serve the world in witness.”[ii] The church is to provide the basis from which God’s people can serve one another as well as reach out to the world in witness.

God’s command to serve him is most always made in a certain context. That context is usually within the presence His people. The commands in the Old Testament were regarding the temple or the tabernacle or public rituals. The seven men appointed in Acts 6 were to serve in the context of the local church. Their role was to satisfy needs that existed within the church. The early church saw that local church provides the perfect milieu for serving God’s people.

To understand this is to grasp a vital aspect and mandate of the local church. God’s design is nothing short of amazing. Serving needs the church for a context to magnify the Gospel and worship God, the church needs serving to build unity and satisfy needs with the church. It is a perfect symbiotic relationship. The local church and serving cannot survive very well without one another.

God developed the concept and structure of the church to be his instrument on the earth to accomplish his plan of salvation and sanctification. This is the very purpose of the church, see Ephesians 3:8-10. Paul states that God invented the church before the outset of time to be his vehicle on earth to make his wisdom known in the earth.

Furthermore, our adoption into the kingdom of God results in a reconciling with his people. God saved us individually to him, but he also saved us into fellowship with his people. His people are brought together to glorify and worship God as one unified body in the local church. They gather because the church is the oasis within the sea of sin both in and around us. And here as they rest from the fallen world is where we can serve them.

The local church equips people to serve as it provides a structure and framework within which serving is carried out. Without a local body of believers to be involved in, serving would be severely limited in scope and effectiveness. We could never serve others beyond our own abilities to track down people and develop biblical relationships.

In the book of 1st Peter chapter 4 verse 10 states “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace:” So, like a forward in soccer needs a goal net to provide context for a score, the serving gifts need context within the church to be effective in benefiting others. The church gives the primary context for its members to be good stewards of God’s varied graces. Someone can have all the zeal and gifting to serve, but without someone and somewhere to actually do that, all that passion would be useless.

Ephesians 4:11-16 makes it clear that being properly equipped for works in ministry is an essential part of the Christian life. “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers,to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,” The church has been designed by God to be the very vehicle that equips the saints for spreading of the Gospel.

With the local church, God has given us a field to serve within. People wearied by the world and beset with sin can come and tangibly taste God’s provision and love. As chairs are arranged, children are watched, books are sold, and instruments are played, a great testimony of praise is offered to God. The local church is vital in fulfilling the command to serve. It is the place where God’s people gather and from whence His name and Gospel light shines forth into a dark world.

“In the pursuit of holiness, in the proclamation of the Gospel, in the service of the poor and friendless, the church of Christ builds a spiritual culture, a foretaste of the kingdom to come. Life Transformed in a community living in love for God and our neighbors.” [iii]

Serving in the Context of the Local Church

In baseball there are different positions one can play, each with its own rules and traditions. For example, rules for the position and body movements of the pitcher are strictly regulated. On the other hand, the center fielder can play wherever he wants. Each position in baseball is different in its involvement, rules, and place on the field.

So too are service roles within the local church. There are many different positions to play with their own rules and processes. Generally speaking, however, the local church provides two distinct contexts for serving: structured and spontaneous.

Structured positions are scheduled and staffed ahead of time. They usually have standardized processes and procedures. These roles are designed and regulated by church to deal with vital liturgical or security needs of the church. Some examples would be ushers, children’s ministry workers, the setup and sound crews, and the worship band. These structured services provide care and protection for the church. The members assigned these duties are well known and their roles are fully understood. Other members of the church can feel confident that things like their money and children are in safe hands. Without a structured service ministry, the church would experience chaos.

Imagine the following scenario: A first-time family visits the church. Without being greeted they quickly feel confused and unwanted. As they walk to what they think is the auditorium, ten different kids thrust papers in their face, contending to hand out the most bulletins. In the children’s ministry area, teenagers looking to escape the sermon start charging babysitting fees. However, instead of watching your kid in a supervised classroom, the teenager whisks the precious child to the mall to hang with some of their buddies. Worse yet, anybody could walk into the children’s ministry area and take any child. No one is watching them.

People would have to bring their own chairs. Guests who didn’t know any better must sit on the floor or stand. The band is chaotic freestyle with various people with questionable talent levels simultaneously singing different songs. During the offering, 50 people (including some guests) decide to help by haphazardly collecting offerings. Without any order, they wander aimlessly down isles with wads of cash and checks in their hands. Where did the guy in the red jacket go, he zealously collected money from half the rows?

In short, chaos does not serve or protect the church. Part of providing context for serving is providing structure. Plus structure helps to focus and develop people’s gifts. How could Brooks Robinson become such a great player if he never practiced on a field? Likewise, the structured services within the local church allow for people to have a regular defined role from which they can practice their gifts.

The other type of service is spontaneous service. These acts are not planned nor usually regulated by the church. More often than not spontaneous services are random deeds done in private, like bringing meals, writing encouragement notes, praying for someone, even just holding the door open for someone. Spontaneous services are the everyday acts of magnifying the Gospel. They can be done at anytime by anyone.

Just as vital as structured services, spontaneous services allow the church to be flexible in providing care. If, for example, a family needed some meals to be provided to them, the church can instantly react to the need. Anyone can step forward and serve them. This impulsiveness of servanthood serves the church because it enables the church to react quickly and in varying ways.

Spontaneous service gives people the flexibility to design new ways to serve one another. Detailed planning and scheduling in these instances, like in structured service, would leave the church sluggish and unresponsive to the changing needs of its people. Could you imagine, if the church made meal planning a structure service. By the time, the church checked the cooking credentials of its members; the family would have already suffered. Within the church, structured and spontaneous services allow the church to both care and protect the church in all situations.

Organizing the Organism

Regardless of the type of service however, the church still needs way to coordinate services. Here is where the local church provides oversight and equips its members. The church needs administration to be effective in using the gifts God has given its members for his increasing glory. Administration, as Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 12:27-28, is a gift given by God which gives a focus to the context. Some synonyms for administration are management, government, and organization. The root word is minister, which is the same as to serve. To bring administration or organization to the way the church functions, serves its members by bringing order to chaos.

Organization is distinct from providing structure. The two are different but complimentary. On a soccer field, the lines on the field provide the structure. However, as I’ve seen many times with my nephew’s soccer team, that does not necessarily mean that there is any organization. Organization is the focused use of order to achieve the desired results within a structure. Without structure, organization has no idea how to achieve any goals. Without organization a structure becomes useless.

Consequently in the local church, serving needs organization to best utilize the context. However, the church does not require organization for organization’s sake. The function of an organization is to set a framework from which Biblical servanthood can be promoted and nurtured. The church needs an organizational structure whose focus and ultimate end is to point people to Christ. Organization in the church must result in God being glorified, the Gospel magnified, and people being served. Organization of the church must support the organism of the church.

Orthodox Presbyterian Pastor and author R.B Kuiper, in his book The Glorious Body of Christ, writes that an organism “ is something that is alive, as a plant, or animal or the human body. An organization although consisting of human beings, is itself not alive.”[iv] In Scripture, the church is often referred in organic terms in that Christians are all members of one single body, the body of Christ (Romans 12:5). The church must be not only thought of as an organization but as an organism as well.

“A building is distinction from the human body, is not alive. When Jesus said; ‘Upon this rock I will build my church’ (Matthew 16:18), He was thinking of the church in that way. Hitherto an internal invisible kingdom had loomed large in His teaching: now He went on to speak of His church as an external organization.”[v]

The trick then is to balance the organization and the organism aspects of the church so that, “its (the church’s) spiritual unity is a fact, on the other hand, that it may never cease striving toward the ideal of organizational unity.”[vi] The balance of both of these views will not only provide for the physical needs of the church but the spiritual needs too. The organization acts as a clear artery or funnel for people to exercise their God-given abilities to magnify the Gospel for the Glory of God and the benefit of others.

Take what was happening in the early church as seen in Acts Chapter 6. Widows were being neglected because the pastors were trying to do too much on their own. Creating the first service team to provide food and care to these widows the church solved the problem. The pastors appointed seven men whose responsibility was to solve the problem and provide ongoing care so that the pastors could continue to focus on teaching.

Here written in Scripture is a prime example of balancing the organization and organism. The organization in Acts 6 opened up the church for the ministry of the Gospel. Not only did this allow for the church to care for their own members, but it also made it possible for the church to reach out to others (Acts 6:7). The church can use the gift of administration to organize people in ways that they can worship God by serving others, sustaining and building the organism.

Equipping People to Serve in the Church

If we want to exemplify God’s vision for serving in the local church, we need to examine our methods for biblically-based servants in the local church. With some exceptions, we can expect the level of biblical servanthood in our Sunday service teams to be equal to the level of effort spent equipping them to serve. Although equipping people to serve means not just providing them with schedules and tools. They must also be given the Gospel. Unfortunately Sunday administration is often only about organization to the detriment of the organism.

How do can we organize services to allow for the context for serving to support the organism of the church? To do this, the church needs to focus on worship as well as practical aspects of the tasks necessary for the church to function. In other words, we need gospel-focused organization. If we skip this step, we have failed to serve our teams despite how much organization and structure we give them. The goal in providing both organization and structure is to not just to provide for the practical needs of the church. It also about communication and expression of the nature of God’s love and grace.

The church needs to provide both application and administration to service teams. Service teams allow members to understand the tasks needed to be performed and how they can apply the Gospel to them. Teams are the vehicles through which their members practically demonstrate and fulfill the purposes of serving. Here tasks are defined, assigned, and carried out in an organized manner with an understanding of the Gospel’s affects them. Application combined with administration is the most effective way to sustain a healthy grasp on Biblical servanthood.

When you see a particular sports field, you immediately know what sport it is set up for. You can’t play baseball properly on a soccer field and you can’t hit a hit a triple without bases. In the same way, a church provides a field to play on for worshipping God. The service teams enable those contexts for worshiping through serving.

In the book of 1st Peter chapter 4 verse 10 states “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace:” So like a forward in soccer needs a goal net to provide context for a score, the serving gifts need context within the church to be effective in worshipping God. As the church provides ways to serve, whether it is valet parking or handling out bulletins, the church is simultaneously giving contexts to its members to be good stewards of God’s varied grace. The church and any ministry team inside of it provide a foundation for people to exercise their gifts.

Teams generally can accomplish much more with greater efficiency and better quality than individual people alone can achieve. Organized teams are at better vantage points to see the work that needs to be done across the different functions of the church. Individuals cannot serve beyond their own single capacity but teams can bring and focus multiple resources to bear on a problem. Teams facilitate idea sharing and problem solving that quickly serve the church. Teams serve their members so that they can serve the church more effectively.

The service team not only provides a context to exercise gifts but facilitates them as well. It can facilitate serving by developing and providing focus for the gifts of church members to glorify God through serving. A team in itself is not the goal, glorifying God is. A team is however highly beneficial and effective in allowing people to glorify God by developing and using their God-given gifts.

Within the context of the service team, a whole manner of gifts can be exercised and encouraged. Team leaders can use their knowledge and care to help develop and train new leaders. Teams can train new members using their experience and knowledge. They also ensure the continuity and consistency of service provided by the church in scheduling people to serve and finding replacements if someone can not make it on Sunday.

We can use the service team to equip church members to serve more effectively. The service team accomplishes these purposes by first forming contexts to apply God’s word, and then facilitating the purposes of serving. People on the service teams can be equipped to serve by being provided structure, organization, focus, encouragement, excellence, and delegation.

However the primary means of equipping people to serve is to help them focus their hearts and minds on God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The team as a group should regularly have focused time reflecting on the Gospel and highlighting where the Gospel has impacted the church through serving.

We must be ever diligent to keep our focus on the primary importance of the Gospel, for as Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” By using organization and tools like job descriptions we can effectively equip our people to focus on God when they are serving.

An organized team structure is not the final step in serving. It merely facilitates worship. We must now use our organization to focus our worship to God and for the benefit of others. In the big picture the Christian life is not about how well organized or structured things are, nor how many serving teams we have.

Instead, the Christian life should be based on setting our faith, our church, and our ministries on the foundation of God’s Word. That means resting in Christ’s work on the Cross and in not our ability to organize.

The church provides the needed context to serve and plays a vital role in equipping people to serve. God grants us the ability to apply gifts like structures and organization to help local the church glorify Him and spread the Gospel more so than they could individually. In the big picture, the hallmark of Christian life is not about how well organized or structured (or for that matter how spontaneous) the church is. Rather it is whether we have built our faith, our church, and our ministries on the foundation of the Gospel.

That means we rest and find our assurance in Christ’s work on the Cross, not in our ability to organize. Our Passion for the local church should stem from not our work in local church but from Christ’s passion and plans for, as well as His work in, the local church. People serve and love one another in the church context, motivated by God’s grace, propelled by His love, and enabled by His Spirit. As we come to develop a stronger passion for the church, our serving will metamorphose into a passionate drive to see God glorified and the Gospel magnified in people’s lives. We can then serve the church like Brooks played third.

[i] www.baseballhalloffame.org

[ii] Edmund Clowney, The Church pg. 117

[iii] Edmund Clowney, The Church pg.176

[iv] R.B Kuiper, The Glorious Body of Christ

[v] ibid

[vi] ibid