Growing To Serve

Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men… - Ephesians 6:7

“Your children are wonderful,” a woman at church told me this weekend. “They are so willing and happy to serve.”

I hadn’t thought about it before, but she was right. My husband and I became deacons in our church when our daughters were very young. When we were ordained before the congregation, the girls stood with us and our then four-year-old repeated all of the vows along with us. The pastor chuckled each time she spoke, but we didn’t stop her because we knew our decision to serve the church in this way would have a big impact on her. We suspected she would spend many dark mornings quietly eating an egg McMuffin while her parents made coffee and prepared the sanctuary for the day’s worship services. She would spend countless hours playing on the church playground while we washed those same coffee pots and tidied up that same sanctuary.

What we didn’t consider was how much she would want to help. She enjoyed passing out bulletins as people entered the sanctuary, then picking them up once everyone else had gone to enjoy the rest of their Sunday. As her little sister grew, the two of them became experts at spotting the tiny, clear plastic communion cups that tuck themselves into the craziest of places among the pews. They found the jobs they could handle and enjoyed doing them. I didn’t consciously process the way my daughters were becoming deacons themselves – serving the church in whatever ways they could, without all of the fanfare of a title or a nametag.

I recently retired from being a deacon because I felt like the girls were getting frustrated with those early mornings, and always being the last ones picked up from their Sunday school classes because Mom was busy getting things ready for the next service. However, this weekend I realized I might have made a mistake. The girls went with me to a mother/daughter brunch at church. When the event was over, I began helping to clean up and asked the girls to gather up any extra programs left behind on the tables. Little did I know that while I was off putting away centerpieces, they not only cleared away all of the programs, but the plastic cups, trash, and decorations as well. Then they helped me finish boxing up the centerpieces.

I did not see, until someone pointed it out to me, how they had grown to know how to lend a hand. Helping has become part of who they are. It seems those early mornings were more valuable than I ever realized.

What experiences have yielded unexpected results for your family?