Serve Joyfully | Rev. Adam Hamilton | Church of the Resurrection

2:16 Well, this month as we're celebrating our 35th anniversary, we are intertwining two themes. One is why church? Why does church matter? Why did Jesus start a church? And that's important as we're celebrating 35 years. We're trying to remember, okay, why does this matter what we're doing now? And we're trying to help the community to understand people outside the church to go, you know, maybe church does matter. Maybe I actually need church. There's a lot of people out there who believe in Jesus and try to be good people. And they, but they say, I don't know that I need organized religion. But Jesus thought we needed organized religion. He thought we needed, whether you call it that or not, he thought we needed church. And so we're trying to understand that. We're running these TV spots like you're seeing at the beginning of every one of these sermons. and trying to help the community think about, maybe I need to find a church. Then we're bringing together with that, the denominations, the United Methodist Church's new vision statement. And that vision statement says this, that we are aiming to form disciples of Jesus Christ who empowered by the Holy Spirit, love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously.

3:14 And I love that, those three big ideas, love boldly, serve joyfully, lead courageously, describe the kind of Christians we're seeking to be in the United Methodist Church. I would just say that's probably true of every denomination. Every kind of Christian should be trying to do this. We have these 35th anniversary t-shirts, and we have the outline of the Servant Series on the back. It's part of the vision statement. Love boldly, serve joyfully, lead courageously. And so last week we talked about loving boldly. This week we're gonna talk about serving joyfully. Next week we'll talk about leading courageously. All right, I wanna begin with the gospel story. This is from Matthew chapter 20. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. The disciples think that when he gets there, he is going to be proclaimed the Messiah. People are gonna recognize he is God's long-awaited king, the anointed king. And he's gonna start putting the house in order. He's gonna drive out the Romans. He's gonna lead to the restoration of Israel, the restoration of God's kingdom here on earth. And that's what they're anticipating.

4:09 Jesus knows he's going there and he's gonna give us life as a servant for humankind. So he knows something different that they don't understand what's gonna happen when he gets there. All right, so that sets up this encounter that Jesus has with two of his disciples, James and John, two of his closest disciples, Peter, James, and John are the closest disciples. James and John, he gave nicknames to. You may remember they were called the sons of thunder. And so he was very close to them. They were fishermen who left their fishing vocation to follow Jesus. They were probably, I'm guessing, in their early 20s when this story happens. Jesus is 33.

4:44 James and John's mother comes to meet with Jesus and brings his boys along. And as she comes to encounter Jesus, she says to him, Jesus, I have a favor to ask of you. And Jesus says, sure, what is it? And she says, well, this is literally what she says. Say that these two sons of mine will sit one on your right hand and one on your left in your kingdom. When you finally come to power in your administration, that you will make my two boys. They deserve it. And I can just imagine all the arguments this loving mother made for why her sons should be his, let's say, vice president and secretary of state in Jesus' administration. She's not anticipating what's going to happen, not the way Jesus knows. She thinks something great's gonna happen. They're gonna be in power. And over all the other disciples, they should be the ones who are in charge. And then Jesus turns to the disciples and he says this, you don't know what you're asking. Can you drink from the cup that I'm about to drink from? Now by this, he means his cup of suffering, but they don't understand that.

5:37 They said to him, we can. He said to them, you will drink from my cup. Which by the way, James would be put to death for his faith. John would be exiled. He would be imprisoned. Tradition says he was boiled in boiling oil, burned and boiling oil. Yes, they're going to drink from the cup of suffering. They don't understand what he's saying yet though. You will drink from my cup, he says, but to sit at my right or left isn't mine to give. It belongs to those for whom my father prepared it. Again, they have no idea what he's talking about. Now, soon the other disciples hear about this conversation and they are really ticked off because all of them want to be on Jesus' right and his left. And they can't believe it that the James and John would send their mommy to come and try to convince Jesus to put them on the right and on the left. And this is when Jesus intervenes. He knows what's going on and he says this. You know that those who rule the Gentiles show off their authority over them and their high-ranking officials order them around, but that's not the way it will be with you.

6:32 Whoever wants to be great among you, listen to this, whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant. The Greek word is diakonos. Whoever wants to be first among you will be your slave, doulos. Now what Jesus is pointing out here is the paradox of greatness. This is how he's redefining what greatness looks like. So he's gonna speak about this in a number of ways in the gospels. He's gonna say in the Beatitudes, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the meek or the poor in spirit or the humble. He's gonna say the first shall be last and the last shall be first in the kingdom of God. He's gonna demonstrate this a week later when he washes his disciples' feet at the Last Supper. And he's gonna say, you see what I'm doing? I've taken the role of a slave. Now I'm modeling for you how you're meant to live as my followers, as my disciples. He lives this message out, this paradox out by caring for the nobodies, the marginalized, the low lives in society.

7:26 And as I've said here before, thinking about that great Garth Brooks song, Jesus had friends in low places. He had friends in low places. So he stands in direct opposition to how the world thinks about greatness, where you're gonna move to the top, you're gonna have lots of people working for you, you're gonna have all kinds of power and authority and Jesus doesn't work that way. Real greatness is found in serving. All right, in the scripture, you notice that there are two Greek words that I highlighted there. Whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant, diakonos. Whoever wants to be first among you will be your slave, doulos, diakonos. We have the word deacon that comes from diakonos, but in the first century, it actually was the term that was used of a table waiter, or it was used of somebody who was going to, you know, broom the floors, or somebody was going to, you know, whatever the menial tasks were, whatever the things that had to be done were going to be done, that was a diakonos who was going to do this job. And the doulos was a slave. It was somebody who was owned by someone else in order to do the things like a diakonos, in order to do whatever needed to be done, whatever the master wanted done.

8:25 And Jesus uses these terms to describe what he hopes for from his disciples and how he understands his own life. He came not to be served, but to serve, he says, and to give himself as a ransom for many. I mean, he's turning upside down. He's turning on its head the values in our world and how we determine greatness. These two words, doulos and diakonos, show up 250 times in the New Testament. Now, sometimes they literally just mean a servant or a slave, but most often they mean the heart that we're meant to have as Jesus' disciples. They're meant that, you know, they're describing the way that we live our lives is we live as servants. We live as the people who are gonna look around to see who needs help, who needs care, who needs encouragement. The people are gonna volunteer ourselves to be able to make the world look more like God's kingdom by serving in the community, by working together for the common good. Jesus calls us to have the heart and life of a servant. This is just so important.

9:18 You cannot get Jesus if you don't get this. All right, so that leads to this statement from the bishops. They're right to say that we're meant to serve. So we're meant to love and we're meant to serve and we're meant to lead. So serving, but they add to that an adjective. We're meant to serve, they say, joyfully. To serve joyfully. So what does that look like? And there's two things. There's two dimensions of this. I think one is the approach, is the sort of mannerism by which, or the approach we have when we're serving other people. And the other is what happens to us when we are serving. So I wanna just mention up front that sometimes when I serve other people, I do it out of a sense of obligation. Sometimes even I'll admit a little bit of guilt. I know that this is what I'm supposed to do. It may not be what I'm feeling. I may not be feeling like, oh, I'm so excited. I'm so joyful that I get to go whatever it is. You know, care for somebody who's sick or go see. I mean, generally as a part of my job, I get to do a lot of these things and I do love doing these things.

10:13 But it may be going on a serve trip or maybe volunteering somewhere, helping somebody else who's in need. And sometimes I'm like, I'm in a hurry or it's been two weeks since I had a day off or I don't really have the mental energy for that right now or I just wanna go and do something totally for myself, right? I mean, these are all things that sometimes go through our minds when we think about helping somebody else who's in need, we think about serving somebody else or we think about volunteering our time is sometimes we are reluctant servants. I am sometimes a reluctant servant. I'm reminded of Moses. Moses, you remember he's 80 years old. He's in the wilderness of the Sinai and God comes to him through a burning bush and says, Moses, take off your shoes. You're standing on holy ground. I have a job for you to do. You're to go back to Egypt and you're gonna tell the Pharaoh to let my people go, to release them from slavery. And you remember what Moses does? He starts making excuses. Excuse after excuse after excuse until finally the last excuse he gives, he says this.

11:05 It's not even an excuse. He just says, Lord, please send somebody else. Now, this is the hero of the Hebrew Bible. This is the greatest figure in the Old Testament who goes on to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, or God uses them to make that happen. And yet he's reluctant to do it, right? Which gives me a little bit of joy, actually, to think, okay, when I feel like I don't really want to do this, I'm thinking about Moses, and I'm going, okay. And so Moses went ahead and did it, right? And so I do too. So my aim, if I see something, most of the time I'm gonna try to do it, but I may not always be joyful as I get started. What I find, of course, is that I never am participating in something where I'm serving somebody else where I don't feel joyful afterwards. I mean, I think about every serve trip I've ever taken. So I've been on 20, 21 serve trips, you know, across the US and in other parts of the world. And almost every time I thought, man, I don't have the eight days to give to this or the 10 days or the 12 days or the getting on a plane and traveling for 24 hours to go somewhere in Africa.

12:06 And so there's a hesitancy inside of me sometimes or even here in Kansas City and serving here in Kansas City sometimes. There may be a little reluctance at some point, but you know what? It's that sense of obedience or maybe even obligation. And you say, I'm gonna do it even though I don't feel like it. And then by the time you're done, you go, I'm so glad I did that. So sometimes, however, when we don't feel that sense of joy when we're doing it, We need to muster up the joy. We need to at least fake it until we make it. And by that, I mean that we can put on our joyful face. We can act joyfully, even if we're not feeling joy. And that's a part of what we have to do. You've been with people who did something reluctantly for you and they didn't really want to, but they went and did it anyway and they make you feel bad because they did it. That's just a crummy way to serve somebody else. You see, there's something to approaching serving with joy and joyfulness. All right, so I was thinking, I recently had to get blood drawn.

13:00 I went to, I was going to my annual physical and I had to get blood drawn. And then I was going to check on, after that, to check on some medications, make sure they were right. I mean, all the kind of stuff you do when you're in your 60s. So I was, I went to one lab to get my blood drawn and the woman who was there seemed very unhappy to be there. She wasn't friendly. She wasn't kind. And, you know, I always look at that as a challenge. Like, okay, so now I'm going to do everything I can to try to open her up. You know, like, hey, what's your name? How are you, how long have you been doing this? You know, what do you like about this job? And nothing, you know? Well, you know, so, and I mean, just everything I tried, it didn't work. And I realized I was just irritating her. I was like, just, I'm imagining her thinking, just shut up and let me take your blood. So I did. I just shut up, let her take my blood. And when I left, I just felt like, I don't know. I just felt like, I don't know that I ever want to come back to this lab to have my blood work done, right? Because it just felt, I don't know, just not very, it wasn't just joyful.

13:56 It just felt, it just felt unhappy. Now I left in thinking, you know, I feel bad for her. She must've been having a really bad day. And so, you know, I'm thinking that way. But so I went back to a different lab two weeks later that was associated with the doctor that I was seeing. And when I went in there, the woman met me and she's like, oh, how are you doing today? I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for getting here. Sit right here, you know, how are you feeling today? And she just was just bubbling, you know? And I thought, she's trying to help me not feel anxious before she draws my blood. I wasn't really anxious, but she's really going out of her way to care for me and bless me as I've come in there. And it gave me an opportunity like, well, how are you? How long have you been doing this? We had this great conversation. And by the time I left, I felt so uplifted and I thought if ever I have to go back for a lab, I hope I can come back to this lab. Let me just ask you, when it comes to daily life and how you serve, how you present yourself to other people, which are you?

14:49 Are you the one who just can't hardly muster up a smile? or you're the one who no matter what, no matter how you're feeling, you're gonna try to project joy for the other person. And there's an opportunity maybe for some of us to be able to focus like, I really wanna be that person who serves joyfully. All right, when it comes to serving, then we find that not only are we meant to serve joyfully, but we find joy in the midst of serving. And this is what's amazing, is what we find in scripture is what we find also from the medical sciences, that what serving does for us and bringing us joy, happiness, meaning, purpose, a whole host of other things. The medical sciences have researched this and said, yes, that's exactly right. This is what this does for us. Better than a pill, better than anything else, better than working out physically or anything else. For your mental health, your physical health is serving other people. So we find this also.

15:42 Jesus says it's better to give than to receive. We find that, I think Francis of Assisi, when he says, it is in giving that we receive. I think about the Isaiah passage that was read a few moments ago. and God promises, you know, when you're paying attention to the hungry, when you're paying attention to the poor, when you're actually, you know, seeking to serve and care for them, then God says, I will pour out my blessings on you. Then I'm gonna make my light shine upon you. Then you're gonna find that your heart becomes like a well-watered garden as a result of serving and caring for other people. Just briefly, I wanna mention what that might look like. I was thinking about a book and I was reading it this week by Alan Lux. Alan Lux died several years ago, but he was a remarkable guy. He was the founder of the Center for Nonprofit Leadership at Fordham. He headed up the Boys and Girls Club, or not Boys and Girls Club, the Big Brothers Big Sisters in New York City. And some years ago, about the time we started the church, he surveyed about 3,300 people, and he wanted to see the connection between serving and happiness.

16:42 He observed it, but he just wanted to see if there was really good data for this. And in the surveys, what he found was that people, in fact, did find themselves happier, more fulfilled after they volunteered than before. And one of the things he says there, I love this quote, he says, even the smallest actions, holding a door open for a stranger who's carrying a big box or anything else you can do to make someone else's life a little bit easier can contribute to your sense of calm and self-esteem, especially if you make it a point to keep your eyes open for such opportunities and perform such acts regularly. We're not just talking about volunteering, we're talking about daily waking up and looking around, asking God, Help me to pay attention and see where I can be of help to somebody, what I can do to bless somebody. And as you do that on a daily basis, you find it actually, it improves your mental health, your spiritual health. It improves your physical health as you're in the process of actually serving other people. That's what he found.

17:33 He found that people were, I think he said, 10 times more likely to report being healthy if they were people who were regularly serving other people, as opposed to those who virtually never reported serving other people. All right, I just remind you, we have a lot of folks in 12-step programs here at Resurrection. And when you get to the 12th step, so you've worked all 11 steps, you get to the 12th step, and you'll remember the 12th step is you gotta go out and now help somebody else. That's the 12th step. You're gonna, and it actually, it's the act of helping. I would summarize it this way. The act of helping others ultimately helps you. So if you're gonna go out and help other people who are in recovery, you're gonna find it helps your own recovery, right? And while you're helping them, it's helping you. That's just how it works. All right, there was an experiment that was done. It was about 15, not even 15 years ago, 10 years ago. It was called the Baltimore, let's see, it was the Baltimore Experience Core Trial. And this was looking at, so doctors wanted to see, is there any, can we find some actual physiological data that tells us that helping people and volunteering to help other people actually helps you physically or cognitively?

18:38 So this is what they did. In Baltimore, there is this program, the Experience Core. And it's people over 50. I think it was started by the AARP and by their foundation. And they deploy people over 50 going into schools to read to underprivileged children. We do this exact same thing here at Resurrection. We have 13 schools where people go into, preschools and elementary schools where they go in to read. And not sponsored by AARP, but I'm glad AARP has done this. And so in Baltimore, they were doing this. And there was this group of researchers said, well, let's look at these people who are volunteering. So they had a group of 111 people who had volunteered to go read in the schools, all of them over 50. And they took 58 as folks who would go and they would serve for two years. And then the other 53, they said, you're on the waiting list, you'll have a chance to go later. We have all the slots filled here. I think that's what they said. They had 58 of these people. They would go into the schools two hours a day and they would read to underprivileged children.

19:32 At the end of that time, they compared certain things in those 58 with the 53 who were not able to serve in this way yet. Here's what they found. They found, and I'm quoting from these studies, the researchers found that the folks who had served or volunteered had measurable changes in their brain health. I mean, this is staggering. Measurable changes in their brain health. One of the researchers, Tara Grunewald, noted they didn't experience declines in memory and executive function like we saw in the control participants. And there were even changes in brain volume in areas of the brain that support these different cognitive processes. Now, that data released in the Journal of Alzheimer's and dementia noted also this, purposeful activity halted and in men reversed declines in brain volume and regions vulnerable to dementia. Brain volume increased in both men and women. It was more so in the men and the cognitive decline was slowed down. Normal cognitive decline that happens with age was slowed down by virtue of these folks going out. And it's not that, you know, the control group, some of them read, it wasn't about reading, doesn't appear. It was about serving and reading to these kids and helping them that led to improvements and increase in brain volume. Just imagine that. I love that. Now, there were other studies that, so that was a secular study, and it was people who, you know, they just looked to see these people volunteering through this program. There have been other studies I was looking at this week that said that the people who are most likely to volunteer in programs like that are people affiliated with a religious or faith community. So 50% more likely to serve in volunteer capacities like this if you're involved in a faith community. This is part of why church matters. Because in church, what happens, and that's not to say that there aren't atheists and agnostics who aren't doing really great things and volunteering in programs like this. Of course there are. But you're more likely to do that, 50% more likely to do that if you're involved in a faith community. Why? Because in faith communities, you're hearing, I think in terms of Christians, you're hearing Jesus say, to be great means to be the servant. You're hearing Jesus say that it's in humility and meekness that we find life. You're seeing Jesus model for us what this looks like. You're hearing this in all the rest of the New Testament. It's central to our gospel that if we're going to follow Jesus, we have to be

21:39 playing the role of the servant. We have to be taking on the task of serving, caring for, volunteering to help other people. That's just an essential part of what it means to be a Christian. And so it's no surprise that a majority of the people, a disproportionate number of the people who are serving in communities that actually increases brain volume and sees people happier, less despair in their lives, all of these things, a disproportionate number of those people are people of faith. All right. I want to give you an example of one of those. Scott Wells. Scott's a leader at Church of the Resurrection. He and his wife Stacy have been members here a long time. I mean, if there's something that needs to be done, they're the kind of people who say, I'll help. What can I do? And I loved this week, we interviewed him about his involvement in our global serve trips. So he's been a part of a number of these, I think 12 or 13 of these global serve trips. And I want you to hear how he got started. And then I want you to hear the impact it has on him when he goes out to serve in other parts of the world.

22:32 Take a listen. My name is Scott Wells. My wife, Stacey, and I were coming to church. We were participating in local serve opportunities and doing a few things involved in some Bible studies. But we'd never really kind of stepped out and done anything that got us out of our comfort zone. And we got a call one day from our daughter, who was a sophomore in college up at William Jewell. And she said, hey, there's this surf trip to Haiti that matches with my spring break. And would you two consider the three of us going on this trip together? And so we took a deep breath and we thought, how could we how could we refuse or not do this when our daughter wants to spend, first of all, her spring break with us? And so we went on this first trip, we signed up, went on a first trip to Haiti, and we were immediately captured with the idea of being in another culture, of watching them worship. And we found them just to be wonderful, loving, caring people.

23:35 We grew close to our teammates on this trip. We grew close to those that were there in Haiti that we were working alongside. and it really emotionally kind of captured our hearts, both the idea of Haiti and the idea of serving and working in another culture and meeting other people. What captures me most and what I remember most is not the schools we built, the churches we built. It's the relationships. it's the worship, it's the way we can worship God together. I think of the experience of being on a work site too, shoveling concrete, doing hard work in hot weather, and someone starts singing a song like Amazing Grace or When the Saints Go Marching In.

24:29 And they're singing it in Haitian Creole and we're singing it in English, but we're singing together as we work. as we work, but it almost always happens in that that joy comes into play at some point during the trip and a realization that I'm here for a purpose. May not know what that purpose is until I get back because there's a lot of it's like it's like a good movie that you keep replaying over and over again. I love this. And that's been my experience as well. You can't go on a serve trip. And our goal is that every one of you, at least once in your life, are gonna take a vacation or you're gonna go somewhere else. If you're physically able, we're gonna pay to go somewhere else and you're gonna connect with people in another culture. You're gonna have a chance to serve them, to just be a part of coming alongside them. And you're gonna let them pour into you. I mean, every time I go on a mission trip, one of the things I say to the people is thank you for allowing us to come here.

25:24 Like often we think we're gonna go there and we're gonna be the heroes. who are gonna save the day for somebody. Well, you know, we have some things we can offer. We have ways that we can help, but they're allowing us to come. They're opening their hearts and their lives to us so that we might grow, so that we might experience happiness and joy and meaning in our lives. And sometimes you don't figure it out. Like Scott was saying, you know, you come home and I've found these trips, they are like movies that play in my brain. Every place where I've been, I've been to Ukraine and Poland, I've been to Ukraine too, Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, South Africa, Honduras, all of these places that I've been, Mexico, places I've been. And in the midst of that, coming back and finding my heart was changed. My life was changed in the process of going to serve and to be a blessing to someone else. I hope that you'll consider at least once in your life being a part of one of our global serve trips. By the way, last year we increased by, I think it was 75% the number of people going on a global serve trip.

26:21 Last year we had 18 global serve trips. I remember 20 years ago, we'd have two or three every year. We have 18 that you can choose from. Wherever you are, online, across the country, Mason, here in Kansas City, you can join us on these global serve trips. They are remarkable, life-changing experiences as you go to serve other people. All right, so I wanna, this last week, we surveyed you as a congregation. This data doesn't come from somewhere else, New York City or somewhere, it's not old data. This is current data from you this last week. And we asked you, I asked on social media as well as in an email to the congregation. I said, you know, tell us about your experience in volunteering and how often you volunteer. So I wanted to share with you a little bit of data here. First of all, how often in an average week do you intentionally do something to encourage, care for, encourage, care for, or serve someone outside of your immediate family? All right.

27:11 So this is being intentional about seeing somebody who's in need and doing something to help. And what we found was that if you look at this, most people in our congregation, it It was 60% were doing this. Actually, it was more than that. I'm sorry. It was 88% of our people were doing this at least once a week. 88% of the people were doing this at least once a week. So less than weekly, once a week, several times a week, daily, multiple times every day. I want to ask you this question. Where are you on this chart?

27:43 Are you intentional about caring for, encouraging, or serving someone outside of your immediate family less than weekly? What I'd like to invite you to do as a result of this sermon is to say, you know what, I'm going to try to focus on doing this at least once a week. And if you do this once a week, I wonder, could you step up to several times a week? Like, Lord, help me to be intentional about watching and seeing and paying attention to who might need me and how I can help. And if you're doing this several times a week, how about if you aim every day when you wake up, Lord, help me today to see and pay attention and look at how I can help. And if you're doing this daily, what would happen if you thought, you know, I wonder if I could do this a couple times a day where I could serve somebody else. And who's gonna be most affected by this? And you know it's gonna be you. Talk about mental, spiritual, and physical health. This is better than jogging five miles a day, is if you're in the process of growing in the grace of serving and blessing. By the way, we ask people this question, what motivates you to volunteer or serve?

28:40 66% said serving adds meaning to my life. 45%, my faith inspires me to serve. 43%, serving brings me joy. And then we ask a similar kind of question. Now that serving was just, if you were caring for people, regularly serving people in any way, then we ask, how does volunteering make you feel? And I assume this is true for the caring for people as well. 68% said that they feel more fulfilled after they have volunteered than before. 47% said they feel happier. 42% spiritually healthier. 37% more joyful. 33% said mentally healthier. My gosh, you can't get that in a prescription from your doctor. You can't get that in exercising more. But you can get that by doing the very thing that Jesus called us to do, and that is to serve one another. All right, what does serving look like? I just wanna begin to wrap this up in this way. I remember, and what impact does it have on the church?

29:34 I remember 20 years ago, I stood in front of the congregation. I said, you know, what do people say about our congregation? And they said, oh, that's the big church. And I said, what do you wish they would say? What do you wish your neighbors, coworkers would say about resurrection? And I let them talk in church during the sermon for a moment. And then I had them shout it out. And they said, you know, that that's the church that serves people. That that's the church that welcomes everybody. That's a church that loves, you know, like crazy. And in the end, we sort of summarize that, that that's the church with the big heart. It's not about big buildings. It's not about being a big congregation. It's a church with a big heart aiming to serve the community in the world, to help the world look like the kingdom of God. that's our aim as a church. And that's what we've really strived to do in the last 20 years since that time. We were trying to do it before. But when we talk about our purpose to build a Christian community where non-religious and nominally religious people are becoming deeply committed Christians, that's what deeply committed Christians do.

30:26 They serve in churches like that are gonna be just determined to go serve in the community. So I wanna mention, and this is not bragging, I just think it's the facts. Aside from harvesters, you provide more food for anybody in Kansas City than anybody else. You provide more blood in the blood drives than anybody else in the Kansas City area, any other organization, college, university, anything. When it comes to tutoring children or caring for the schools or investing in the schools, you do more of that than anybody else in the Kansas City area. And so much more. You provide the bookmobile, the foodmobile, the mobile dental clinic that you provided for Swope Health. There are 13 preschools and elementary schools where you are serving in the community. I mean, all over the place. You're out in dozens of retirement homes in assisted living centers and nursing homes and out visiting and caring for senior adults. I mean, all of this kind of stuff you do. And in all of that, you're reflecting what it means to be the church.

31:19 Christ's hands and voice in this world. Serve Saturdays, all the rest. So I want to introduce you to one last church member right now, Kathy Easterly. Kathy Easterly is our liaison to the Woodland Early Learning Center. Woodland is located 9th and Woodland between Troost and Paseo, if I remember correctly. And in a part of our community in Kansas City, with a disproportionate number of low-income people and a lot of single moms, a lot of single dads, a lot of kids with only one parent at home. And these preschoolers, just having a chance to go to preschool gives them a fighting chance to escape poverty. I want you to hear a word from Kathy Easterly. Take a listen. Hi, I'm Kathy Easterly, and I am currently serving as the liaison at the Woodland Early Childhood Center in Kansas City, Missouri, which is a center that houses and serves three to five-year-olds children through the Head Start program. I had recently retired and I thought, nah, I'm not ready to go back into the schools.

32:18 God had blessed me with a wonderful career in education, knowing how impactful those first years of a child's life are. I needed to give back. So I said yes, finally, and have never turned back, never regretted that. that was a very good decision. Honestly, our best volunteers are our folks who don't have that educational background. All you need to be able to work in the classroom with the kids is a love of children and an ability just to be playful. You know, what kids need every day in their life is they need an adult to give them eye contact, to give them touch, and to have playful interactions and help guide them in their activities within the classroom. One of the teachers was doing a unit on sewing and clothing making and asked if anybody from the church would be willing to come and do a little demonstration.

33:17 And I wasn't sure how crocheting was going to go with a class of three and four-year-olds, but it was the best thing. She was just so genuine. She demonstrated. She was hands-on with the kids. And then she made them a hat. Every child left with a crocheted hat. You know it's having an impact when you walk in the door and they throw their arms around you, Miss Kathy, Miss Kathy, and they fight over who's going to get the hug, you know, so you know, you know it matters to them. It also fills my cup, you know, it gives me, you know, lots of love when I'm there and having those moments with the kids. Could you see on her face and hear in her voice the joyfulness that she serves with, but also the joy that she receives? And by the way, Woodland Early Learning Center, I went to their Facebook page just to see what was going on down there.

34:11 And this is the Facebook page they put together at the Woodland Early Learning Center, part of the Kansas City Public Schools. Take a look. Notice their t-shirts? Those are our Resurrection Campaign t-shirts from last fall. do unto others. So that's the picture. That's the t-shirt they chose to wear when they put together this photo for their Facebook page. I just love that. Like that's the kind of impact that you are having here at Resurrection in lots of different schools, lots of different places. All right, so here's my ask and this is where we end. So if you are at one of our physical locations today, you receive this hand in, joy in serving. And this is where we begin inviting you as you're thinking about the holidays to say, I want to help. I want our family to help, a family of children. I want to help in serving meals. I want to help at Thanksgiving time. These are all opportunities for you to serve. If you are at Mason, Pastor Jen can tell you, you're going to be developing ways to be able to do this in Mason.

35:03 If you're across the country, you can do this in your community. There are volunteer opportunities there. But if you're in Kansas City, online or on TV or any of our locations, if you're online or on TV, you can find this at cor.org slash next, cor.org slash next. And you can sign up. You can join us for any of these. Get your friends and family to join. But as you open it up, you'll find Thanksgiving meal bags, Christmas sponsor opportunities to sponsor children and families. Winter warmth drive. Joy partner school toy drive. Give the gift of hope across the globe. There's lots of things you can do. There are QR codes where you can scan those. All of this is available online as well. And you can say, I want to help. I want to find some joy this year as I go into the holidays by helping somebody else find joy. And on the backside, you're going to find year-round opportunities to volunteer, like what you heard Kathy speaking about, or global serve trips like you heard Scott speaking about. You can scan those QR codes and you can say, I wanna find out more. I'm interested in being a part of this.

35:55 And in our physical locations, there are people at tables outside waiting just to answer your questions at the end of the service today. I wanna ask you this question. It was really clear for Jesus. We're meant to serve. I wanna ask you a second question. That's really not a question. That's just a statement. I wanna ask you a question. Do you need more joy in your life? Could you use more happiness? Could you use more meaning in your life? Do you wanna be a more deeply committed Christian? Are you looking for better physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing? I'm gonna encourage you to take seriously the words of Jesus, to daily start your day looking around to see, Lord, help me to see who needs help, who needs encouragement or care. And then for you to be the one who's gonna go out and offer that care and that love. And then to look for ways you can volunteer and serve. And I promise you this, you're gonna find that as you serve joyfully, you're gonna find joy. Let's pray. Lord, help us to have a servant's heart. to wake up every day offering ourselves to you.

36:52 Holy Spirit, help us to pay attention and see where we can bless, encourage, and care for others. And help us to be willing to say yes when we may feel like saying no to opportunities to serve in the church and outside the walls of the church as your hands and feet. We offer ourselves to you in your holy name.