It’s hard to have a leadership ego … when you are emptying garbage cans.

  The people of my church have made the choice to do all the cleaning of our church buildings ourselves, rather than hire it out. It is not a small endeavor with a two-story sanctuary building with lots of trash cans, classrooms, fellowship rooms, kitchen, offices, nursery, media center, and bathrooms. There is also a gymnasium with lots more trash cans, two-stories of classrooms on both sides, another kitchen with dining area, more fellowship rooms, bathrooms, and a full gym floor which needs sweeping, stripping, and waxing on a regular basis when in full use. A schedule was developed by the facilities/maintenance committee to assign individuals a specific week to clean and prepare the church for worship the next Sunday.

  This past week was my week. Not being the first time that I’ve cleaned the buildings, I had an idea of what to expect and a routine to follow. But, it struck me somewhere between cleaning out the icky unknown mess in the kitchen trash can, cleaning out the miscellaneous dead critters on a sticky bug pad in a corner (and having it stick to your hand), AND mopping up the flooding bathroom when the tank had some kind of problem that I could not fix….in the midst of all this, it is hard to remember that you are an ordained minister of the Gospel. A person “set aside” for God’s work. One that is viewed as “holy.” I got tickled and started laughing at the visual image and then these two scriptures came to mind.

  “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”  (Romans 12:3)

  “Let the greatest among you be the servant of all. For whoever makes himself great shall be humbled and whoever humbles himself shall be made great.”  (Matthew 23:12)

  I realized that cleaning the House of God is the most humbling act of service we can do. You may help by just picking up some trash in the sanctuary after a service, rearranging the hymnals and Bibles on the pews, or even going all out to volunteer in mopping floors, emptying trash, and…yes…even cleaning the bathrooms. Can you imagine the joy of the early Jewish and Christian people as they cleaned the synagogues and churches for the worship of the Holy God, Jehovah? I’m sure they saw it as an act of love and not of servitude. An act of humbleness and not of lowliness.

  In my thinking, those who perform the most menial tasks in the church are true ministers. But we all, in the pulpits or in the pews, should be willing to do what is needed in taking care of God’s House.

  Let me encourage you to be mindful of those who work behind the scenes at your churches and how much they appreciate your encouragement. After my day last week of trash, sweeping, lugging tables and chairs around, and (even) the bathroom cleaning, I realized how humbled I felt to be cleaning my church. To prepare it for Sunday School and Worship this Sunday. I may be an ordained minister, but that education and piece of paper on my wall does not make me greater than those who work hard to keep our local temple (church) pretty, clean, and acceptable to God. In fact, I felt closer to God on my cleaning day than I do in my Sunday morning Minister of Music role.

  And for today my friends, this has been the gospel according of Jimmy.