Full Service , livre ebook

“True service is close to the heart of all who are following hard after Jesus. For this reason I welcome Full Service by Siang-Yang Tan. Dr. Tan has wonderfully distilled and critiqued the vast literature on servanthood and leadership, and in addition, given us practical insights into how servanthood looks in daily life. Full Service is itself a genuine act of service.”
Richard J. Foster, founder, RENOVARÉ
“Siang-Yang Tan is a prolific reader and thinker. In Full Service he distills the essence of an enormous amount of Christian thought on what mattered most to Jesus. I have benefited as a student, beginning writer, and friend from Siang-Yang’s servanthood. This book is an act of servanthood for you!”
John Ortberg, author, God Is Closer Than You Think; teaching pastor, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church
“Finally, the cart has been put back behind the horse! With his typical style that is scholarly, biblically based, and accessible, Siang-Yang Tan reminds us that Jesus’ call to servanthood is both primary and universal. Leadership is a secondary calling that is given to a few. Because the phrase ‘servant-leader’ may have the same ego appeal as ‘tither-tycoon’ to our fast-growth-oriented culture, it is timely to receive this gentle reminder from Dr. Tan that the secret of true servanthood is developing a friendship with Jesus.”
Gary W. Moon, editor, Conversations journal; author, Falling for God
“This superb book on servanthood reflects the exceptional wisdom and the spiritual depth for which Dr. Tan has become known through his many years of preaching, counseling, and writing. If you want to know what it means to be truly a servant of Christ the highest of all callings this is the book for you. I recommend it enthusiastically!”
Donald A. Hagner, George Eldon Ladd Professor of New Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary
“The message of this book is biblical, balanced, and counter–cultural. But more so, it touches me deeply because of my personal relationship with Siang-Yang he lives out what he writes in his personal life and ministry.”
Chi-Hok Wong, president, First Evangelical Church Association

© 2006 by Siang-Yang Tan
Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakerbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-3185-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Scripture is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Scripture marked MESSAGE is taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson, copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.
To my mother, Madam Chiow Yang Quek, whose life has been an exemplary model of servanthood, with love, gratitude, and prayers
C ONTENTS
Foreword by Larry Crabb
Acknowledgments
Preface
1. Jesus’ Call to Servanthood
2. Learning from the Master Servant Jesus
3. Serving Our Best Friend
4. Servanthood Versus Servitude
5. Servanthood Versus Servant Leadership
6. True Service Versus Self-Righteous Service
7. Servanthood and Suffering
8. Servanthood and Humility
9. Servanthood and Rest
10. Servant Evangelism and Warfare
11. Servanthood in the Church
12. Servanthood in the Home
13. Servanthood in the Workplace and School
14. Living for Eternity
Notes
F OREWORD
I remember sitting in lavish gardens near Capetown, South Africa, sipping tea with Dr. David Broughton Knox. Our wives were exploring the stunning display of God’s love of beauty all around us as we were enjoying rich conversation in its midst. Dr. Knox, for years principal of Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia, was regarded by many who knew him as the finest theological mind of his day.
Aware of both the beauty surrounding me in the gardens and the brilliance sitting across from me at the table, a troubling question came to mind. “Dr. Knox,” I asked, “why do people have so many problems? With all the potential for beauty, why is there so much ugliness and sorrow in our lives?”
With a mind that had long since left platitudes behind and for decades had traveled through the depths of disturbing reality guided only by biblical revelation, Dr. Knox replied in about three seconds, “Oh, it all boils down to self-centeredness, doesn’t it.” It was a statement, not a question, delivered humbly but with the authority of a man living on the far side of complexity.
That conversation took place two decades ago when I was still in my early forties. Those few words from Dr. Knox confirmed a suspicion that had been worming its way into my mind since graduate school days, the suspicion that beneath our struggles and joyless existence lies an often unrecognized, deeply loved, and mostly uncriticized passion to serve ourselves. And in Christians, that passion reveals itself most often in the assumption that God exists to cooperate with our self-centered agenda.
Siang-Yang Tan appropriately labels that distortion self-serve Christianity . Call it what you will primary narcissism, old-fashioned self-centeredness, pride, character weakness the problem is real. And it has more power to soil beauty and to mess up our personal lives and relationships than any other problem.
True servanthood, the opposite of self-serve Christianity, grows out of a human spirit filled with God’s Spirit. Self-centeredness, on the other hand, is the fruit of the flesh, that horrible energy in every human soul that is unchangeably anti-God, that lie-believing conviction that recognizes no greater good than one’s own subjective sense of well-being, that passionate resolve to pursue one’s own interests with no thought that serving God might, in the long run, actually serve one’s best interests.
Self-serve Christianity, our pervasive perversion of the real thing, not only accommodates the flesh, it attempts to socialize it with external goodness and then to pass it off as spiritual maturity. Beneath so much of what looks like good Christian living is the stubborn attitude that thinks God really exists to serve us. His pleasure isn’t the point. Ours is. And we think there’s a more direct and immediate way to secure our well-being than to live for his glory. Our felt desires now fill the spotlight. Our needs have assumed greater priority than his pleasure.
As I look around the world, including the church, and look into people’s hearts, including mine, I see no worse evil than self-obsession. It’s the root of every other expression of evil.
And I see no greater battle in the regenerate human soul than the too often hidden conflict between self-obsession and God-obsession. It shows up in every relationship, every conversation, every sentence. And I believe that the only path to real victory in this fierce battle is to become true servants.
Which brings me to the book you are about to read. Psychologist Siang-Yang Tan clearly and with gentle wisdom lets us see what true servanthood looks like and illumines the narrow path that gets us there.
Without ever compromising his foundation in Scripture, Dr. Tan artfully draws from psychological research, personal stories, and respected thinkers to bow us low enough and lift us high enough to see the real beauty revealed only in becoming a servant to all. Among his many rich insights, he rightly challenges the familiar notion of servant leadership as sometimes allowing leading to eclipse serving .
As I read the book, I could see an underlying theme that moved my spirit. It’s this: when we recognize the incomparable beauty of Christ, when we delight in how he served his Father (and us) to the point of death, when we’re drawn to his revelation of the beauty found only in the relationships among the Trinity, then and only then will the call to total servanthood be irresistibly attractive.
The beauty of Christ fills every page of this rich invitation issued by Dr. Tan to become true servants of God and each other.
Let me add a personal word. Siang-Yang is the right person to write this book. I know of no follower of Jesus more devoted to serving his Lord and his Lord’s people. He serves me by praying every day for me and my family.
When Rachael (my wife) and I received devastating news some years ago that shredded our hearts, God provided Siang-Yang to serve us. Those moments spent together in conversation with God as Siang-Yang brought us before the Father continue to provide a rich taste of what you’ll read about in this book. Dr. Tan lives what he writes.
Let me ask you to put the book down for a few minutes before reading on. Pray. Pray the Lord’s Prayer. Pray that God’s Spirit will reach deep into your heart both to expose the self-serving energy that remains within you and to reveal the beauty of servanthood that your soul longs to know.
Pray that thousands, millions, will recognize the life-changing truths that self-service destroys beauty (it never lives up to its promise), and that serving others out of a soul obsessed with God, at any cost to oneself (shame, rejection, disappointment) restores a beauty beside which the gardens near Capetown pale in comparison.
And pray that God will use this book to hallow his name, to bring his kingdom to earth, to further the reach of his will into many lives, especially yours.
Larry Crabb, founder and director, NewWay Ministries, author of Inside Out, Shattered Dreams, The Pressure’s Off, SoulTalk , and The PAPA Prayer
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to first thank Don Stephen