Service sector

It's easy to feel disconnected on this side of the lake. "Central" seems like some nebulous movie bureaucracy, every now and then sending someone over to meddle. Of course it is a lie. Central Ops serves our church with great care and sacrifice. I forget that they also serve nine other campuses and their own people. I've been confronted recently with my own pride, and of course I didn't want to listen. I cannot hold out for long against truth, though. Praise the Lord.Productions is a ministry especially prone to feeling disconnected.  We spend church services apart from others, it often seems like nobody understands what we do or the work required to accomplish things.  It is good to take pride in one's work, but the peril I face is letting my work become my pride.  I feel like I need to defend my volunteers from oppression by the rest of the church.  I feel like I deserve to be informed of things, consulted for my valuable opinion.  Of course it is a lie.  We are all servants, in a competition to be the lowest brick in the wall; bearing the most weight, being the least self-interested.I was not hired to be a champion or a guru.  Mars Hill employs me to be an implementor.  My contract reads "and other tasks as necessary", which means sometimes my job is defined as "be inconvenienced".  
"For I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think as to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith." [Rom 12:3]  My self-worth stems solely, exclusively, out of my relationship with God.  Deriving self-worth from any other source is to declare God insufficient.  It's idolatry.  I have a terrible practice of making passive-aggressive comments to people totally unrelated to the issue which vexes me, and I know the reason I do it is so they can say "Wow how annoying" and therefore justify me.  It's sin.  Of course it is a lie.  Justification comes from God too.  I don't make snarky passive-aggressive remarks to the Lord, and why?  Because I know he won't justify me, but rather he'll instruct me.  Which involves knocking me off my throne and back into my place.  And my human nature doesn't want that.
But the Holy Spirit in me does.  I yearn after the Lord.  In my heart I love Jesus far too much to try to be my own king.  I am glad there are people around me to confront me when they see my stray.  This is the way in which service sanctifies us.  Not that the one who serves is superior; the one who serves has his sin revealed more fully.  The connection to be concerned with is my connection to God.  He led me here, as well as everybody else in the body, and He will be faithful to complete the good work He began in us.  Everything else is just working out the specifics.  And how can I ever be proud or self-righteous in the face of that?

-J