Christ tried to make it clear that the most worshipful attitude for his followers is kneeling, washing the feet of someone in need. "The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life," he stated simply and directly (Mark 10:45). Gordon Cosby has observed that the mission of the church is always at the intersection between the needs of humanity and the grace of God.

We live in a time of worldwide spiritual revival, an unexpected turn from more than a century of secularization. Yet it seems to be largely a self-centered religion with great emphasis on individual experience, individual faith, and individual salvation. The foot washing ceremony has been repositioned by those Christians who do not ignore it all together to be about my need for spiritual cleansing instead of Christ’s call to a life of practical, caring service.

Adventists are just as likely to partake of the spirit of the age as are other believers. General Conference officers were shocked last year to find in a survey that only 18 percent of Adventist Church members around the world regularly get involved in any kind of community service. After all, one of the church standards states, "In every community where they live, Seventh-day Adventists, as children of God, should be recognized as outstanding citizens.…We should support by our service and our means…all proper efforts for social order and betterment [and] maintain an uncompromising stand for justice and right in civic affairs" (Church Manual, 162–63).

Hurricane Katrina, in all its horror, may be a blessing for large numbers of U.S. Christians. It may reawaken a sense of compassion and provide untold opportunities to serve. CNN has laid bare the usually hidden, ugly underbelly of affluence, in which the poor, the disabled, and marginalized are simply left out of the abundance and blessings most of us take for granted. Hundreds of thousands of middle class families have lost everything and are now entirely dependent on the care of friends and relatives, and on whether or not their insurance company believes more in social justice than in profits. Is it too much to pray that this will renew in our hearts a passion for service?

In every age, there have been Christians who worship God more with their hands than with their head or heart. They seem to be in much shorter supply in recent decades. I remember as a child growing up in the Adventist church in which my mother, although employed full time as a teacher, joined the other women in the congregation delivering food boxes and clothing to the poor through the Dorcas Society

My father, in addition to being the church treasurer, an elder, and a Sabbath School teacher, took time to help with the Five-day Plan to Stop Smoking, through which the Adventist Church brought a healing touch to the lives of millions. The Pathfinder club that I belonged to had regular community service projects, as did the Missionary Volunteers when I became a teenager. In college, I helped organize the Adventist Collegiate Taskforce (ACT) and spent summers working in inner city projects.

We seem to have lost almost all of that emphasis on service. Most congregations today do nothing significant to serve the community. Our outreach is focused on recruiting new members. And the evidence strongly suggests that it has cost us much of our spiritual vitality and growth. Church leaders worry out loud that we may have lost our sense of mission.

Not everyone is like this, but I am among the large number of people who need an active faith. I need to do something practical to express the love of God, the fullness of his grace. I need to serve humanity in Christ’s name in order to feel the deepest, richest sense of his closeness and power in my life. For me, service is worship!

I respect those who come close to God through music and art, or great preaching, or carefully reasoned theology, or the Scriptures. I, too, sense the presence of the Holy Spirit in those things, but it is in loving relationships and enacted compassion that I come closest to him.

Service is worship, and it is not legalistic. Have we become so swept up in a reaction against the legalism of the past that we have moved to a quietistic, do-nothing faith? Service does not bring salvation; I cannot work my way into heaven. Good works are no antidote for sin. That’s clear. No confusion. Yet that does not do away with the reality that, for me, service is worship!

I worship God when I get involved in the community or help someone in need. I worship God through acts of kindness and community building. It is my joyful gift to him who is our Creator and our Salvation.

A friend of mine told me recently about his father’s decision to join the church. His father told the pastor, "I don’t want to join a church that is active only on the seventh day; I will join the church when you can show me that is a seven-day Adventist church, that it is active every day." That’s my church! It is a living, doing, active representation of the grace of God seven days a week. It serves every day and is making a difference in the world.

It is the church of people in Africa, who are setting up homes and schools for the orphans of AIDS victims. It is the church of people in urban neighborhoods in the United States, who are tutoring neighborhood children after school. It is the church of people in India and Sri Lanka, who are building homes destroyed by the tsunami. It is the church of ADRA and Adventist health care and Adventist Community Services. It is people of hope—people who serve God through humanity!

Love to humanity is the earthward manifestation of the love of God. It was to implant this love, to make us children of one family, that the King of glory became one with us. And when His parting words are fulfilled, "Love one another, as I have loved you" (John 15:12); when we love the world as He has loved it, then for us His mission is accomplished. (Ellen White, Desire of Ages, 641)

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