Fed vs. Feed

I just got off the phone with a very wise person that I talk with alot. We were talking about a recent decision that I had made not ask any of our graduating seniors to be involved with the Axiom staff following graduation. Allow me to say this, the decision had nothing to do with the students that graduated, rather it had everything to do with where we are at as a youth ministry and youth staff.

Anyway, we were discussing people involvement in churches. So often when someone gets invovled in a ministry they go in with the attitude of 'what can I get out of this?' rather than one of humility and service. In the past I have had people come to me and say they needed to be involved in something were they could get fed more, because that wasn't happening in the youth service. I have always tried to respond understandingly, and encouraged them to seek growth somewhere else.

This whole conversation reminds me of a few meeting/talks that we have had as a staff here at FMC. We intentionally do not design our sunday AM services to 'feed the saints.' Our goal in the those services is to reach out to the guest and those newer in there faith. This poses a problem for the people who do there 'religious duties' on sundays. They have a tendency in their minds to leave not feeling like they got anything out of the service...which they probably didn't, because they are more mature in their faith (to a certain degree).

To often the majority of people who attend church regularly get this mentality that sunday mornings are the times to get fed. They don't read much of their Bible during the week, they don't attend any wednesday night classes or any small groups. So there for they are 'spiritually' eating once a week...turning the vast majority of those people sitting in our sanctuaries on sunday mornings into 'spiritual anorexics.'

If you are involved in a ministry, don't look at through the lense of how can I get fed...learn to feed yourself on a daily and weekly basis by reading the Bible and praying. Then when you go into a service you can well nourished; ready to feed someone else and help them grow in their relationships with God.