The following was in this weeks reading for the students in the Our Generation Training Center. I thought it was a wonderful challenge to all of us desiring to be servants. This does not only apply to missionaries but to all of us serving the King.
Missionaries should value achieving a spirit of servanthood as a high ideal and goal. Paul often presented himself as an apostle to clarify the authority with which he treated difficult moral matters in his letters. He also considered himself a servant even in those contexts (1 Cor. 1:1, 3, 5; 4:1–21). Paul illustrated from his own life how he humbled himself to more effectively convince the Corinthians of the rightness of his attitude and actions (2 Cor. 12:14–21). A brief outline of this passage underscores six principles of missionary servanthood:
1. The missionary must serve for the good of the people and not for his or her own designs (2 Cor. 12:14).
2. He or she must serve even though it is not recognized and appreciated (2 Cor. 12:15).
3. The missionary should serve to edify others and not to make personal claims (2 Cor. 12:16–19).
4. He or she should serve believing that God is conscious of what is being done, whether other people are conscious of it or not (2 Cor. 12:19).
5. The missionary must serve although the results are not what he or she had hoped for (2 Cor. 12:20).
6. The missionary must serve with a spirit of humility (2 Cor. 12:21).
Terry, J. M., Smith, E. C., & Anderson, J. (1998). Missiology : An introduction to the foundations, history, and strategies of world missions (342–343). Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
Text book used in the Missiology Courses at the O.G.T.C. to receive more information go to bcwe.org
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A Model of Servanthood
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