Beware of Serving!

As we come up on one year of serving on Wednesday nights and almost two years of service within the community, I am struck by how messy missional work can be. Within the past month or so, a couple of unique situations have come up:

• a group of ours who was building a handicapped accessible ramp for a person, only to find out that the night they were to finish the ramp, the police were looking for the man (who was in the hospital!).
• someone whom we have served several times throughout the past year believes that a group of ours damaged some of her property

Situations such as this can dampen the serving spirit. We may question what it is that we are doing, take steps (in the form of policies or procedures) to guard against future occurrences such as these, and be slower to respond to needs that come because we're a bit gunshy. There can be wisdom in some of these approaches, but if they take us out of the serving game, the other side wins. Serving is messy because life often is messy.