Effectiveness of the Service
Effectiveness of the Service
Is your service effective in the souls of those you serve? Does it have power, influence, and depth in the hearts of people? Does it have spiritual fruit that multiplies day after day?! Do you have a burning service, as if it were a coal of fire? Or is your service formal, having the appearance of godliness?
Has your service been able to bring about a radical change in the Church? Have those served felt it, and have its fruits appeared in them? Has it blossomed? Is it increasing or decreasing?
What do you say about a service that has in elementary 200 students, in preparatory 100, and in secondary 20–30? And the number is continually decreasing?
The Lord Christ sent apostles to serve in all the ends of the inhabited world, and with them seventy others. And according to the thought built on planning, this number cannot be sufficient for one country, how much more the whole world?!
The Lord Christ did not plan based on the human ability of the servants, but on the ability of the Holy Spirit for the service…
Thus He appointed 12 servants, filled with the Holy Spirit, who had put on power from on high, so their voices were able to reach the ends of the inhabited world…
Stephen the deacon was filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom.
Therefore, when three philosophical councils stood before him, “they were not able to resist the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spoke.”
So the issue is not in the number of servants, but in the power, depth, and spirit—in the effective, living word of the Lord upon their lips.
It was said of the Church in the days of the apostles: “The word of the Lord grew, and the number of churches increased day after day, and the Lord added to the Church daily those who were being saved.” The service had influence, effectiveness, and power…
So does your service also have power?
And does it have the power of the Spirit in changing souls?
The Spirit who gives the word to the evangelists magnifies strength. Would that you, as servants, contemplate this word power which appears in the Gospels, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in the Epistles.
The Lord Christ said: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” And perhaps we say: They were few in Your days, O Lord. But now we have tens of thousands of servants.
Does the phrase the laborers are few apply to us?
Yes—the laborers who have the power of the Spirit are few.
The laborers in whom the Spirit of God works, whose service has deep influence and multiplying fruit—no doubt they are few… We have servants for regular classes; but those who serve youth meetings, young men and women, university fellowships, and those who speak in conferences—no doubt they are few.
The word servant is deeper than the word teacher. And we have tens of thousands of teachers, but the servants working by the Spirit are few.
A servant of the kind of Paul the Apostle, for example—no doubt his choosing was an important event in the Church. He labored more than all the apostles: “besides the care of all the churches”… And it is enough to hear him say: “Who is weak, and I do not burn?!” This one who was called “Apostle of the Gentiles,” whose preaching reached Spain to the west, and who wrote 14 epistles.
We are ready to give up tens of thousands of the servants we have in exchange for one Paul… and his service would be more beneficial than the thousands.
The matter is not a matter of number, but of effectiveness, influence, power, and spirit. We may find in a branch thirty servants with no warmth at all in their service. Then a new servant enters the branch and makes it a flame of fire…
The tongues of fire that came upon the disciples gave them a fiery tongue, fiery words, and a service with flame and effectiveness, with fervor in the Spirit, fervor in prayer, and fervor in visitation…
They were coals of fire, which the world kept passing around until the whole world ignited with fire.
Believe me, the title servant is not deserved by many servants, and not every service contains the spiritual qualities of service.
Therefore I thought at times to gather the old servants among whom we lived, in whom the Spirit of God worked, and make of them a group that visits the branches and gives them spirit—I mean the Spirit that worked in that time, when the service was a flame of fire.
Look at what Augustine did, for example, when he entered the sphere of service. His influence was not limited to his own generation; even now we still benefit from his service and reflections.
Theodore, the disciple of Pachomius, when he became a monk—how deep was the influence he had on monastic life in all the monasteries… Likewise John the Short, of whom it was said that he hung the whole Scetis on his finger.
There are people in every generation distinguished from others, servants of a special kind, as the Bride of the Song said: “My Beloved… a teacher among ten thousand.”
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