Service is sharing with others God’s love, to be ambassador for Christ (2 Co 5:20). This can’t happen without us first experiencing His love in our hearts. As St. Philip told Nathaniel “Come and see” John 1:46, or as St. John said “which we have heard, which we have seen” (1Jn 1:1).
As the name indicates, servants prep class is to help young men and women to become servants.
God has allowed me to benefit from the servant’s prep class for the last 10 years.
During this period our class had all sorts of youth that taught me a lot of things from their zeal, love to Christ, humility, and a lot more. Some started as clowns and ended as some of the best dedicated servants in the church, others looked great on the outside but did not want to commit at that time for Christ. Some waited 3-4 years before they were ready to serve. Each was different and great in a different way.
What I have learned is that servant’s prep (SP) is an opportunity for the youth to discover themselves more than us teaching them.
SP is not about knowledge and information or how well the youth memorizes things but the real goal of the servant is to learn to love God from all their hearts, their minds, and their strength and to love others as themselves. Please don’t miss-understand this point; I still strongly believe that knowing the true faith is extremely important for their salvation before anything else. No one graduates our class without knowing the basics of faith (Councils, Sacraments, the liturgy, and basic memorization).
The grades we are serving are 11th and 12th, the youth at this age are not ready to absorb a lot of information. In the teen years they think they know it all. The servant’s role is to share with them the correct faith so they realize what they need to learn in the future. Several of the youth who attended servants prep in that age, expressed their need to re-attend or re-learn the same information one more time.
The true goal of SP is for the youth to learn to love the Lord (if they haven’t already done that) and to commit their lives to Christ. However, if all what we discuss with them at this age is spiritual topics related to their life as servants, they will not accept that and they will drop the class claiming there is no benefit and that the class is boring. Even people who have been serving for years do not want to hear much about the state of their spiritual life, but they think that talking about topics related Dogma, Theology, Rituals, comparative theology, and how to teach a class are more important and this is what service is all about.
When Christ taught, He did not teach the masses abstract dogma and rituals but rather how the salvation (He gave through the cross and the resurrection) will make us new people and that our lives as true Christians will help us to see Him in our lives and the lives of others. Unfortunately, most of the youth at that age don’t understand the purpose of the Christian life nor have a strong relationship with God through prayers and sacramental life.
So servants of SP must use the topics of dogma, theology, and rituals as tools to help the youth come to realize the importance of the spiritual life and help them discover God’s love for them personally and to each person they encounter.
When the servants focus on the content of servant’s prep class and transform the SP class to a regular class room similar to school they are missing the mark and belittling the true meaning of service to sharing information rather than love. It is more important to focus on the spirituality of the youth and proper understanding of the importance of God’s salvific work for them.
We can graduate people who know about Christ but do not know Christ.
Another aspect is discipleship. Teaching in our Church relied on handing the faith in person. A test can’t really reveal how much a person understands the Trinity or who Christ is. During the council of Nicea the Arian heretics agreed with St. Athanasius on most of his biblical statements and discussions revealed otherwise. I am not accusing the youth of heresy but of ignorance. The level of understanding will be revealed through personal interactions and discussions more than a simple Q&A or multiple choice questions.
The same dogma topics can be used to emphasize the personal relationship with our savior. Examples: Our true fallen nature and how we can’t be righteous by ourselves, which means in my daily life I can’t be righteous without God. Why Christ was incarnate and how does that put me in map of God’s love? How do I benefit from the resurrection and the new nature that Christ has given me? What is the role of the cross in my personal life and service? The importance of the church as a home and a family for me, the importance of the sacraments in my daily life, and so many other dogmatic topics that are related to our daily lives.
This does not mean exams, and rigorous academic aspect of the SP class are wrong, but if they become the focus, then where they will learn to “love the Lord from all your hearts, all your soul, and your mind ” Matt 22:37
May the Lord grant us all to understand His will in our lives and to help others know what God’s plan for them are.