Picture this: it is the night before Jesus dies. He gathered His closest friends for one last meal, the Last Supper. The disciples have walked the dusty roads of Jerusalem in open sandals, the way everyone did, and their feet are filthy. There is a basin of water near the door and a towel hanging beside it.

Culturally, before the meal, the lowest servant in the household would wash the feet of the guests, but no one was stationed there to fulfill that duty. Imagine the silence. Twelve grown men, each one aware of their dirty feet under the table. Before that moment, they had been spending the evening arguing about which of them was the greatest in the Kingdom of God (Luke 22:24), and in that moment, no one moved toward the basin.

Then Jesus stands up.

“Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.”
‍- John 13:3–5

Jesus, the Son of God, on His knees, with a towel and a basin, scrubbing the dirt off the feet of His friends, in the place of the lowest household servant. He does not wait to be served. He Goes First. The job is messy and humbling, and He does it Himself. Then He explains what they have just experienced.

“When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. ‘Do you understand what I have done for you?’ he asked them. ‘You call me “Teacher” and “Lord,” and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.’ ”
‍- John 13:12–15

Put yourself in that room. Your feet are dirty, and Jesus kneels in front of you with a towel. He knows everything you have done and everything you are about to do, and He washes your feet anyway. He chooses to serve. This is the God we follow, and the One we are learning to lead and serve like.

Servant Leadership

Everything in this week’s reading lives under one umbrella: Servant Leadership.

Often, when we hear the word leadership or think about someone who is a great leader, we think of titles, platforms, influence, and wealth. We think of a leader as a person everyone else serves. This is leadership as the world defines it: a ladder we climb until more and more people are beneath us. Jesus flipped the picture of what leadership looks like in His Kingdom:

“Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ ”
‍- Mark 10:42–45

“Not so with you.” In four words, Jesus dismantles the ladder. In His Kingdom, greatness is not about climbing; it’s about kneeling. The towel in His hands proves this. An all-powerful God, “made Himself nothing, taking on the nature of a servant” (Philippians 2:6–7).

We are all leading something: our families, staff, friends, or classrooms. Our calling as Christ-followers is to Go First, serving the way Jesus did. Let’s define Servant Leadership.

— Service: an act. It is a specific way we meet a need, help another person, or demonstrate God’s love in a tangible way.

— Servanthood: a way of living, where we surrender to the ongoing work of the Spirit inside of us, forming in us the identity and posture of Jesus — the One who “took the very nature of a servant” (Philippians 2:7). Over time, serving becomes more than what we do; it becomes part of who we are.

— Servant Leadership: the expression of servanthood through our influence, gifts, and opportunities. As we are formed into servants, we begin to lead as Jesus led. We Go First in humility, sacrifice, encouragement, and responsibility, helping others take their next step toward Christ. It is using whatever responsibility, authority, or platform God has entrusted to us for the flourishing of others.

When Jesus knelt to wash feet, He revealed something about who God has always been. The Son lives in complete dependence on the Father, receiving everything He is from the Father and returning all of it to Him, devoting His authority entirely to the good of others. We lead a home, a team, a classroom, a friendship, and we are given authority in each one. A Servant Leader puts that authority to work for the people under them. Taking on a posture of surrender so that God is supreme, and their heart is so given to Him that the growth and good of others become their aim. In His Kingdom, greatness is measured by surrender, and the leaders who look most like Jesus are the ones whose people flourish. The more we embrace our belonging to God, the more freely we spend our influence on others, until serving becomes our most natural response as leaders.

At its core, serving is the intentional use of what we have for the good of someone else. And what we have falls into three categories the Church has long named together: our time, our talent, and our treasure. We give God all three. Serving is how we give the first two. We give of our time and our gifts to people who often cannot pay us back. Serving is not tithing, but serving is a form of generosity. Next week, we will talk about the third, our treasure, when we discuss financial generosity and tithing.

When we give away our time and our talent, we are being generous with our very lives, and if we remember back to Week Four, we see the same theme of worship connecting to our service from Romans 12:

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”
‍- Romans 12:1

What moves a person to give of themselves for people who cannot repay them? We often convince ourselves that serving is simply a good thing to do, something a contributing member of society ought to do. We may even believe that serving is what we need to do to earn God’s affection or attention.

But when we are brought into the family of God, service stops being about obligation, self-improvement, or earning God’s favor. It becomes a response to His grace.

Blessed to be a Blessing

We are wired for exchange. We work, and we get paid. We give effort, and we expect a result. From the time we are young, we learn that the world runs on trade — give something, get something. That instinct works well for a job. It is poison for our faith. Left alone, that belief turns our relationship with God into a transaction, believing we need to serve in order to be noticed, blessed, loved, or forgiven.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”
‍- Ephesians 2:8–9

Grace is the undeserved movement of God toward people who could do nothing to earn it. We saw this truth in Week One. The Greek word is charis, the same root as the word for gift. A gift that has to be earned is no longer a gift. And Scripture is relentless on this point, closing every door we might use to sneak our performance back in.

“he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.”
‍- Titus 3:5

“And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.”
‍- Romans 11:6

The order reflected in Romans matters: grace comes first, then serving. Always in that order. We say, “We are blessed to be a blessing” a lot around our church. This means God blesses us first. He pours out His grace, mercy, and generosity on us, not because we deserve it, but because of His love for us. Then, out of the overflow of what we have received, we get to be a blessing to others.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
‍- Romans 5:8

Serving is not only the result of grace. It is one of the ways we come to understand grace. When we give to someone knowing they cannot pay us back, we are doing the one thing the exchange instinct cannot comprehend. We are handing over what no one earned. We are practicing grace from the giving side. The more we pour ourselves out for people who can give us nothing, the more clearly we understand how Jesus poured Himself out for us. Serving teaches us, from the inside, how He looks at us.

“We love because he first loved us.”
‍- 1 John 4:19

We now understand what serving is, now let’s talk about who we serve.

We are never only serving the person we are reaching. We are serving Christ in them. The overlooked believer, the struggling family, the new face, the one the world walks past. When we serve the least of these, we are serving Jesus Himself. This is why no act of service is ever small, and no person we serve is ever ordinary.

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ ”
‍- Matthew 25:40

Religious leaders were constantly trying to trap Jesus in His own words. In Luke, Jesus was asked for boundaries around serving, a line that marked exactly who we are obligated to love and who we are free to ignore. Jesus was asked, “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). Jesus answered with a story.

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.”
‍- Luke 10:30–33

Notice who passes by, the two most religious men, a priest and a Levite. They had reasons why they wouldn’t help. The man was stripped, so they could not tell who he was or whether he was one of their own. Touching him risked their reputation and would make them ceremonially unclean in their society. Every reason was reasonable during that time, and every reason made them walk past a dying man. Their religion became the reason not to love.

Now, notice the word for what the Samaritan felt. He “took pity” on the man. The Greek word is splanchnizomai. It is a gut word. It means to be moved deep in your insides, the visceral compassion that you feel in your stomach before you decide anything. The priest and the Levite saw and calculated. The Samaritan saw, was moved, and he acted. He inconvenienced himself, paid for the man’s care, and promised to cover whatever else it cost. Then Jesus turned the religious leader’s question around.

“ ‘Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?’ The expert in the law replied, ‘The one who had mercy on him.’ Jesus told him, ‘Go and do likewise.’ ”
‍- Luke 10:36–37

Jesus was asked where the line was, but He refused to give an answer. He never says who qualifies as a neighbor, because there is no boundary. He simply changes the question from “Who deserves God’s love?” to, “What kind of person am I becoming?” And we would do well to remember that we did not start this story as one of the passersby. We started as the man in the ditch, stripped and half dead, unable to save ourselves, and Jesus is the One who crossed every boundary to carry us out. We serve the overlooked because we were the overlooked, and we were rescued.

We serve in two directions at once, and the Kingdom advances in both.

Inside the walls. When we gather, it takes all of us to build a place where people meet Jesus:

• Welcoming and greeting people as they arrive at church
• Worship and production, making the room ready for God to be praised
• Kids and students, so the next generation meets Jesus
• Prayer and counseling, walking through valleys, and celebrating God’s victory in people’s lives
• Set up, teardown, facilities, and the unseen work
• Hospitality, meals, and following up with the new and the hurting

Outside the walls. In the places God has put us, and through local church outreach:

• Our homes, serving spouses and children
• Our workplaces, seeing our jobs not only as work to be done, but as opportunities to serve the people around us
• Our neighborhoods, knowing our neighbors, and Going First to serve them
• Our city, the under-resourced, the lonely, schools, recovery, foster, and adoption
• Global missions, making disciples of all nations

In Week Five, we learned we are one body with many parts. Being a part of a body provides belonging, while also giving us a unified mission. Every part has a function, and the whole body suffers when one part sits on the sidelines.

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ…. But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.”
‍- 1 Corinthians 12:12–18

God created each part with purpose. That means He made you on purpose, with a specific gift, for a specific job in the Body.

“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”
‍- 1 Peter 4:10

If you’re wondering where you can step in and serve, a great place to start is by using the S.E.R.V.E. acronym to ask yourself these five questions:

S — Strengths. What are my strengths? Everyone is uniquely gifted; what ways feel the most natural for you to serve?

E — Experiences. What experience do I have? God doesn’t waste anything. What from your past has equipped you for today?

R — Relationships. What relationships do I have? Who has God placed around me to bless and serve?

V — Voice. What am I passionate about that I want to use my voice for? The problems in the world we talk the most about are an indicator of what we might care the most about.

E — Energy. What fuels me and gives me energy? We serve the longest when we serve from joy.

Understanding Our Gifts

We are each handed different gifts, and these gifts are meant to be used.

“We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us…”
‍- Romans 12:6

Reflect on the results of your spiritual gifts assessment from Week Two. Let that guide you in what area of serving you step into, or maybe one of the examples below resonates with you. If you haven’t taken the test yet, take it now at thechurchrb.link/gifts.

Some of us come alive making a room feel warm and making a stranger feel like they belong. That is the gift of hospitality, and there is a place for it on a welcome team, at a table, in a home opened up for a Circle Group.

Some of us light up when truth finally clicks for someone else. That is the gift of teaching. Our children, middle schoolers, and high school students need leaders who will faithfully open the Bible and invest in their lives.

Some of us notice the hurting person in the corner before anyone else does. That is the gift of mercy, and there are people to pray with, meals to deliver, and hospital rooms to sit in.

Some of us would rather build, fix, set up, and tear down than stand on a stage. That is the gift of service, and nothing on a Sunday happens without it.

Our church has a place to serve for the way God built you.

We do not have to have our gifts figured out before we begin. A lot of people discover them by serving, not necessarily before. If you are not sure where to start, the simplest first step is greeting. Stand at a door, learn a few names, and welcome the people walking in on a Sunday morning. It is the fastest way to get involved and find community. Through that small yes and Going First, serving not only begins to shape your heart, it also shapes your circle. Serving is how we get seen, connected, and pulled into authentic relationships. We do not just attend a church. We belong to a body.

“Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.”
‍- Galatians 6:10

At The Church at Rancho Bernardo, we want to Go First and lead with the gospel everywhere we go, in everything we do, and through every word we say. We never serve to earn God’s love. As we saw in Ephesians 2:8–9, Titus 3:5, Romans 11:6, and Romans 5:8, grace always comes first. Jesus served us long before we ever served Him. Now, out of the overflow of His grace, we become a blessing to others.

The gospel advances through our everyday lives, exactly where God has already placed us. He did not put us in our city, jobs, neighborhoods, or families by accident.

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
‍- Ephesians 2:10

We are placed on purpose, and we carry the gospel into the precise places God has set us. We are the hands and feet of Jesus in the room we are standing in. And when we serve, people get a glimpse of the good news before they ever hear it spoken.

“Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”
‍- Matthew 5:16

“Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”
‍- 1 Peter 2:12

Our serving will never replace sharing the gospel with our words. Serving and speaking were always meant to go together, and we will learn how to share the gospel in Week Eight.

So how does the gospel move through a whole city? The same way it always has. One act of service at a time, through people willing to Go First.

Look back to where we began this week. The Son of God, the night before the cross, washing the feet of the disciples. Jesus took the role of a servant and He calls us to do the same. We do not wait to feel ready, qualified, or invited. We pick up the towel, we step toward the need in front of us — because He went first for us. We Go First in our serving, our whole lives, our hands and feet, given to God while carrying the gospel wherever He sends us.