The whole family has been out church cleaning this morning. I must admit it is an event I've ducked out of at times in the past when I've had 'more important' things to do... However something I read on another blog essentially sums up how I now feel about prioritising the less glamorous jobs in church and this one in particular.
"When he became Bishop of Birmingham (or Bishop FOR Birmingham, as he preferred to call it)John Sentamu (now Archbishop of York) made a big deal of replacing the part of the service where he should have gone and sat on his "throne" with a ceremony in which he washed the feet of 12 local schoolchildren, gave each of them a rather splendid theatrical crown to wear, and got THEM to sit on the throne one by one. In his sermon, he said that he believed in servant leadership - and I can vouch for the fact that even when he wasa lowly Vicar he was to be seen just as often as anyone else mopping the floor or washing the dishes. He never allowed the music group or any other "profile" ministry group to escape their turn on the cleaning rota. If you won't clean for the Church, he said, you have no right to minister to them."
This ties in with an extract from one of my all time favourite bible passages: Philippians 2
" Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, didn't consider it robbery to be equal with God but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant."
Cleaning may not be glamorous but it is a servant ministry and what could be better than emulating Jesus in a small way by taking the form of a servant? That said it was also great fun. We had a great laugh and some fabulous conversations whilst we got on and did the necessary....next time I certainly won't seen it as a chore but as a privilege!
