What Is Service?
What Is Service?
From the lectures of His Holiness Pope Shenouda III in the Servants’ Meeting
Service is not merely teaching or instruction; otherwise it would be an intellectual activity. A servant is not just a teacher, nor merely a carrier of information that he transmits to the ears or minds of his students.
So what, then, is service?
1. Service Is Love
It is a love that fills the servant’s heart toward God and His Kingdom, and toward people—especially the young. He loves God and wants everyone to love Him. He loves people and desires to bring them to God. The expression of this love in his heart is service.
Service, therefore, is love in the heart that overflows in the form of ministry.
It is a holy desire in the servant’s heart that every person may be guided to God.
If service is devoid of love, it turns into mere teaching and information, or into a purely academic activity.
2. Service Is Holy Zeal
It is a flame of fire within the heart, as the Psalmist said: “Zeal for Your house has consumed me” (Ps 69:9). And as Saint Paul the Apostle said: “Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn with indignation?” (2 Cor 11:29).
3. Service Is a Transmitted Spiritual Life
It is a life that passes from one person to another, or to many others. It is the state of a person who has tasted the sweetness of the Lord and invites others to taste it as well, saying: “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!” (Ps 34:8).
It is a life flowing from a great spirit to other spirits, or a person filled with God who overflows from his fullness to others.
4. Service Is a Handing On, Not Mere Teaching
It is the handing on of life—the handing on of the divine image to others. The servant becomes a living illustration of the spiritual life with all its virtues. He is the living model before his disciples.
Thus, service is the teacher before it is the lesson.
5. Service Is Magnetism
A powerful spiritual magnetism. Whoever enters its field is drawn to the life of the Spirit, and gains the ability to attract others as well.
6. Service Is Fellowship with the Holy Spirit
It is fellowship with the Spirit of God in building the Kingdom. The Spirit is the One who works, and we are merely co-workers with Him. As Saint Paul said about himself and Apollos: “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field” (1 Cor 3:9).
We share in the work with God, or become instruments that God uses in His work.
7. Service Is a Bridge Between God and People
A bridge that brings people to God, or a bridge over which God’s gifts pass to people. The servant receives from God to give to his disciples; he does not give from himself. Rather, he says as Christ Himself said to the Father: “The words which You gave Me I have given them” (Jn 17:8).
Service resembles Jacob’s ladder, upon which angels ascend and descend—ascending to God to ask what He wishes to give to people, and descending to offer people what they need.
8. Service Is God’s Word to People
Thus it is said of a sermon: “We hear the word of the Lord from the mouth of so-and-so,” because “it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you” (Mt 10:20).
How beautiful is what was said at the end of each message to the seven churches in Asia: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev 2–3). We rejoice in the phrase “what the Spirit says.” May you faithfully convey in your service what the Spirit says.
9. Service Is the Work of Angels and Apostles
Saint Paul said of the angels: “Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation?” (Heb 1:14).
And he said of himself and the other apostles that the Lord “has given us the ministry of reconciliation… Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us” (2 Cor 5:18, 20).
10. Service Is the Work of the Lord Himself
He who said: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45).
11. Service Is Continuous Giving
Giving to everyone and in every place—at home within the family, at work, and to everyone in need of service. Service becomes a natural disposition in the servant, just as it is the nature of the sun to give heat and light, the tree to give shade or fruit, and the spring to give water. So too, the servant’s nature is to give.
12. Service Is Moving Goodness
As it was said of the Lord Jesus that He “went about doing good” (Acts 10:38). So the servant does good by nature; everyone he meets receives goodness from him—whether a blessing, a helpful word, or assistance.
13. Service Is Spiritual Nourishment
Nourishment that the servant offers to those he serves, as the Lord said: “Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his master will make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of food in due season?” (Lk 12:42).
He gives them a rich meal from Scripture, reflections, the lives of the saints, hymns and praises, and even theology and doctrine—presented in a spiritual, loving manner that connects them to God and draws them to His beautiful attributes.
14. Service Is Fatherhood and Motherhood
It flows from the fatherhood of God and the motherhood of the Church, extending among God’s children. Thus, all feelings of tenderness and compassion appear in it, along with every form of care and concern.
15. Service Is a Debt We Owe
A debt we owe to the Church that raised and taught us; we must serve it as it served us. It is also a debt we owe to God Himself, who loved us, allowed us to know Him, and taught us His ways. We repay this love by showing it toward His children, whom He entrusted into our hands.
16. Service Is a Duty
It is a spiritual duty upon every person.
Everyone who loves God and loves people must serve.
No one can see people perishing before him and remain silent. When the Samaritan woman came to know Christ, she immediately went to tell others about Him, saying, “Come, see…” (Jn 4:29). She was transformed not only from a sinner into a repentant woman, but into a person who loved Christ and spoke to others about Him.
Thus, everyone can serve according to the diversity of gifts: one teaches (with the Church’s permission), another serves the poor, a third offers works of love to all, and a fourth serves through good example.
If you fall short in service, you must confess this to your spiritual father, for negligence in service indicates that love toward people, the Kingdom, and God is not complete.
17. Service Is a Trust and a Talent
Children whom God has entrusted to us are a sacred trust, and He will ask us about them one by one—what we did for their spiritual edification.
Service is therefore a serious responsibility before God and the Church.
Sometimes the servant may be the only source of spiritual nourishment in a child’s life during a certain period. If they do not find this nourishment in the Church through the servant, their lives may be lost due to the servant’s negligence.
18. Service Is Spirit, Not Formalities
Some think service is merely outward form: organized lesson plans, attendance, visits, explanations, memorization—and that is all. But service is spirit. It is the servant’s spirit that the children absorb; the spirit in which the lesson is delivered and the spirit with which the servant deals with them. It is the servant’s heart before his tongue, and his inner warmth before educational methods.
19. Service Is a Spiritual Means for Growth
Not only for the children, but for the teacher as well. A lesson that does not affect the servant personally and have effectiveness in his own life cannot affect those he serves.
The lesson is a spiritual means for the servant himself to grow, and through him, his children grow. The true servant practices what he teaches, and the children see the word lived out in his life.
20. Service Is an Active Power
It is the power of the Spirit working in both servant and served—the power of the word of God that does not return void (Isa 55:11). It is like the power of life in a seed: once planted, it never ceases to work and grow until it bears fruit—thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold (Mt 13:8).
This final point deserves to be a subject in itself.
