The Virtues of Effective Service

By Luke Stamps

David Brooks has an insightful opinion piece in the New York Times this week that evangelicals would do well to read. In his column, “The Rugged Altruists,” Brooks observes, “Many Americans go to the developing world to serve others. A smaller percentage actually end up being useful.” By contrast, he describes the courage of several Americans who left the comforts of family and home to serve others abroad: a teacher in a small Korean fishing village, a college student serving AIDS patients in a diseased African slum, a doctor in Kenya who, with cuts on his hands from gardening, risked his life to save the life of a bleeding, HIV-infected man.

But according to Brooks, these individuals have been effective because they have displayed more than mere courage. They have also added to it the virtues of thanklessness and what Brooks calls “noncontingent commitment to a specific place and purpose.” He contrasts the effectiveness of servants like these with the relative fruitlessness of the foreign aid business—a fruitlessness that is characteristic of both governmental and nongovernmental efforts. Brooks explains:

“As you talk to people involved in the foreign aid business — on the giving and the receiving ends — you are struck by how much disillusionment there is. Very few nongovernmental organizations or multilateral efforts do good, many Kenyans say. They come and go, spending largely on themselves, creating dependency not growth. The government-to-government aid workers spend time at summit meetings negotiating protocols with each other.”

According to Brooks, real effectiveness comes when people are willing to serve away from the limelight and in ways that are determined by the needs of the people, not the comfort or prestige of the volunteers:

“But in odd places, away from the fashionableness, one does find people willing to embrace the perspectives and do the jobs the locals define — in businesses, where Westerners are providing advice about boring things like accounting; in hospitals where doctors, among many aggravations, try to listen to the symptoms the patients describe.”

It seems to me that these insights from Brooks have huge implications for evangelical ministry—both at home and abroad. No doubt, our best mission agencies, whose boots are on the ground in places of need around the world, have already discovered the principles that Brooks points out. Our missionaries, who may have been our best students, preachers, and evangelists while they were at home, have chosen to live and work in relative anonymity for the sake of the gospel. Many have committed themselves to life-long service to a particular place or people group, choosing to take the long (that is, eternal) view rather than making decisions based on comfort, security or fame.

But those of us who are called to remain in our native context would also do well to heed these insights. Christian ministry requires all the virtues that Brooks mentions: courage, thanklessness, and commitment. Courage is explicitly mentioned in the New Testament as virtue of ministry: “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (Phil. 1:20). A willingness to serve in thankless anonymity might mean that more young pastors choose a bivocational route so that churches in poor or rural areas or church plants in highly-secular areas might have solid gospel ministry.

The last of these virtues seems especially relevant for ministry. Brooks speaks of a “noncontingent commitment” to service that gives attention to the actual and ordinary needs of people in a specific place. Effective service gives itself to “boring things,” not necessarily flashy or newsworthy or conference-speaker-worthy or book-deal-worthy things. Faithful gospel ministers will give themselves first-and-foremost to the “outward and ordinary means of grace”: preaching the Word, administering the ordinances, and praying for the flock. These things might not make waves in the blogosphere or make a name for the pastor in some broader evangelical subculture, but they will have an eternal effectiveness that may not characterize higher-profile ministries.

Brooks closes his column with a testimony that should prompt all Christians to consider our own calling and ministry.

“Susan Albright, a nurse working with disabled children in Kijabe, says, ‘Everything I’ve ever learned I put to use here.’ Her husband, Leland Albright, a prominent neurosurgeon, says simply, ‘This is where God wants us to be.’”

What about you? Are you doing what God has called you to do even if it means that you minister in thankless anonymity? Have you committed yourself to ordinary service regardless of the attention it garners? Are you where God wants you to be?

Luke Stamps is a Ph.D. candidate at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in systematic theology. Luke is a weekly contributor to the Credo blog and also blogs at Before All Things. Luke is married to Josie, and they have two children, Jack and Claire. Luke is a member of Clifton Baptist Church in Louisville, KY.