Service with a Smile

Have you ever waited on hold for what felt like forever, desperate for the live voice of a customer service representative? Waiting, waiting, waiting. A half hour later, when you think the call will finally be answered, the phone call is disconnected and you have to start all over again. Forget “service with a smile.” By then you’re muttering, “Good service is hard to find.”

But the reverse is also true. Appreciative customers or service recipients can also be hard to find. Many friends working in the service industry have shared horror stories about impossible-to-please customers. As my service friends have observed, “The customer is not always right.”

So who is correct, the server or the served? Which do you identify with?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I was asked this many times during my school years. Perhaps you were asked this question as well. Maybe you’ve asked it of your children or your grandchildren. The answers are as varied as the people who respond. Doctor. Attorney. Teacher. Electrician. Astronaut. Chef. CEO. Accountant. Veterinarian. Nurse.

One answer you won’t receive is slave or servant. Few, if any, people aspire to a life of servanthood. Yet, serving one another is a hallmark of the Christian faith. Many of the writers of the New Testament epistles introduced themselves as servants, specifically as servants of Jesus Christ. Paul, James, Peter, and Jude not only began their letters by not only calling themselves servants, they used a specific Greek word: doulos. Doulos means “a slave who is in a permanent relation of servitude to another, his will being altogether consumed in the will of the other.”[i] They not only identified themselves as slaves or servants of Jesus Christ—they considered it a privilege to do so.

Today many of us resist identifying ourselves as servants. Our history and culture cause us to chafe at the labels of slave or servant. Still, the Holy Spirit prompted the writers of the New Testament to use this same term to identify themselves.

Our example

Jesus said He “did not come to be served, but to serve” (Mt. 20:28). And the apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 5:13, “Serve one another in love.”

Still, Jesus did not ask anything of His followers that He was not willing to do Himself.

Take the example He set for us in John 13:5-17 when He washed the feet of His disciples. Afterward, Jesus told them, “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you . . . no servant is greater than His Master” (John 13:15-16).

Servanthood was not a concept readily embraced by the disciples. They often jockeyed for the best position, both in the present and for eternity. Two of the disciples, who happened to be brothers, even went so far as to request the privilege of positions second only to Jesus Himself. The other disciples were understandably indignant, perhaps because they hadn’t thought to ask for it first! And servanthood is no more easily embraced today.

But Jesus reminded His disciples, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.”

So the next time you give or receive less than adequate service, put yourself in the other person’s place. The world will learn more about who we are by what we do than by what we say. We reveal integrity when our words are consistent with our actions. As someone once observed, “A true servant acts like one even when treated like one.”

“Service with a smile.” Can that be said of you and me?

[i] Spiros Zodhiatos, The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament, (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 1992), 483