Serving Works

Dan Stine just gave me a copy of The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church, by Gregory Bode.  In the introductory chapters of the book, Bode compares the "power over" thinking of the world with the "power under" strategy of Jesus, an idea Bode credits to Barbara Rossing and John Yoder.  Bode describes it like this:

Perhaps no passage in Jesus' life sums it up better than these words:

Indeed, this is where the name "servantworks" comes from. 

Last week I went with Dan Stine, Bill Graver and a few staff and members of the The Well to the province of Khon Khen, about 7 hours northeast.  Our project was to do some upgrading on the house of one of our members at The Well.  For our part the work consisted of basic unskilled manual labor--breaking up old concrete, mixing and hauling cement.  We three foreign guys slept on the floor in a relative's house across the street.

We knew the neighbors would be curious, for one wanting to know which one of us was the boyfriend.  They also wondered why we slept on the floor instead of comfortably at a hotel in town.  Were we "bird dung" foreigners, the derrogatory term for low-class Westerners living in Thailand?  At the same time they noticed that we were working hard, pushing the pace of the project.

The third day we didn't have much to do--the Thai workers were laying concrete block and none of the 3 of us had really any experience.  We were hoping to help pour a new floor, but the three of us didn't really know what we were doing, and there were a couple more Thai workers and not enough trowels to go around anyway.  We considered going home a day early, but the bricklayers thought we may be able to get to the floor, so I thought we'd better stay.  Feeling useless, we went off for some visits around the 'hood.

Some sort of celebration was happening that day, but we weren't sure what.  One thing I discovered on this trip was how little I understood of the northeastern Thai dialect.  A motorcycle carrying 3 drunk-looking guys covered with mud passed us.  

Oo, the girl whose house we were fixing, wanted us to visit her aunt's father, who was dying of cancer.  We walked to the house, and found a number of family members there, with the dying man lying on a mat on the floor.  He didn't look good.

I would like to be able to write and say that we laid hands on this man, commanded him in the name of Jesus to take up his bed and walk, but we didn't.  We did pray for him, and we did ask God to heal him, but nothing happened.  He opened his eyes a bit, moaned for just a bit of water, but it was clear he wasn't going to be healed that day.

Walking back from the house, we encountered a procession of more muddy drunk people.  Although the Songkran celebration, where people douse each other with water and smear white paste, was over a week ago, this village has another custom--a festival involving water, mud and alcohol.  Apparently some chickens ended their days as a sacrifice.  A tipsy woman in the road saw me and came up with her muddy hands out.  There was no escape--she smeared both sides of my face with yellow.

We never did get to work on the floor, but did play with the kids and go on a brief outing in the evening.  The next morning, our fourth and last day, we woke up before 6 am to a funeral song played over the village loudspeakers.  Later we found out the sick man had died.

"Oh great," we thought.  "They're going to blame us."  Oo reassured us that wasn't the case, but we were still a bit nervous. 

So we went to the house again.  Before 8am, the funeral was already set up.  People were sitting around eating and drinking.  Music was playing over a PA system and there was an MC with a microphone.  We were directed to an area of empty chairs and tables in sort of the middle of the gathering, and before we knew what was happening, the MC handed Dan the microphone to introduce ourselves.

"What do I say?" Dan whispered nervously. "I don't know," I responded confidently, relieved that he got stuck with the job instead of me.

Groping for words, Dan said that we were sad, and a couple other things I don't remember.  Then he said again that we were sad, and people applauded.  He handed the mic to me.

Not about to start preaching at a Buddhist funeral, I said we were members of an organization that helps people with their needs, and had come to help fix Oo's house.  And even though we were foreigners, we felt at one with Thai people, that we loved Thai people very much.  That was about it.  Certainly not articulate.  People applauded.

Then another guy, that perhaps was some sort of community leader, took the mic.  He proceeded to talk for at least 10 solid minutes on how great it was that we had come to serve the way we did.  He said several times that we were of a different religion, but that was ok.  He noted how we were different from other foreign guys who seem to want to be the bosses.

We left knowing that a door had just been opened wide for us to come back and serve further in that village, thanks especially to our staying that extra "useless" day, and praying for a sick man who died anyway.  Now the whole village knew us.  While it would have been nice to see the guy healed, I could see how God planned it this way.  Power under.  Serve, not be served.  

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Roy Bessell
Posts: 2

Re: Serving Works
Reply #2 on : Tue May 01, 2007, 16:16:35

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Jim,
You're reminding me of my experiences in Thailand. Often I could not work inspite of the fact that I have the building skills. I am a carpenter with experience in masonry, plumbing and electrical. My friend who invited me to go to Thailand tried to make me a cameraman to record the work on his projects. I knew more about the work than he did. He is a visionary and a good planner. And we had some language difficulties. Also nobody seemed to believe that a Farang could know anything about skilled labor. One day when the contractor failed to show up, I made bamboo whistles for the boys in the Children's dormitary. I learned about a lot of problems with their existing buildings and corrected them. The people I was with did not have those kind of skills. A lot of them were born in bamboo houses. My friend thought I would go as a observer. It took a lot of effort on my part to get out of that role.

And I have the pictures to prove that the world's worst blocklayers are in Thailand.

Thanks,
Roy

Bill Graver
Posts: 2

That's the model
Reply #1 on : Mon April 30, 2007, 12:18:59

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Thanks, Jim, for sharing that story with everyone.

I had no idea, until that trip, what an incredible witness humble service is. I kind of always thought that servanthood was something you did for other believers and never really saw it as the model for evangelism, even though that's exactly what Jesus did. Thanks to you and Dan for teaching me.

Power under.
Bill