Let me tell you about the most dangerous volunteer in any ministry.
They’re skilled and reliable, they show up week after week, and they get things done. Everyone likes them. On the surface they’re exactly the kind of person you want on your team. And underneath it all, they’re serving themselves.
That’s what pride in ministry usually looks like. We’d spot the loud, obvious kind of arrogance in a minute. This kind is subtler, and it’s mixed in with a genuine desire to help. There’s a need to be seen and appreciated, to be the one nobody can do without. And over time that need starts to shape the service and eat away at it.
I’ve seen it in others, and I’ve felt the seeds of it in myself. So this isn’t a post about those people. It’s about all of us.
The quiet signs
Pride in service doesn’t usually announce itself. Nobody thinks, “I’m here for my ego.” But you can see it in the fruit. A volunteer who’s slowly being taken over by it tends to:
- Get territorial. It becomes my bay, my kitchen, my way of setting up the chairs. New people feel like intruders.
- Resist correction. Feedback lands as an insult instead of help.
- Need credit. When things go well, they want it known who made it happen. When nobody says anything, it stings.
- Keep score. They know exactly how many Saturdays they’ve given compared to everyone else.
By then they’ve stopped serving the mission and started using the mission to serve themselves.
Why is this so dangerous? Because the more gifted and faithful you are, the more exposed you are to it. Beginners don’t usually struggle with feeling indispensable. The folks who’ve been around a long time do.
The essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride.
What humility actually is
Part of the problem is that we misunderstand humility. We think it means running yourself down, refusing compliments, and pretending you’re not good at something you’re obviously good at.
That’s not it. Humility is an accurate view of yourself, held lightly, without the anxious need to prove or protect your position. Thinking poorly of yourself has nothing to do with it.
Bryan, one of our volunteers, is a picture of this. He doesn’t serve to be seen. When the whole team celebrated him at a recent meeting, he took it graciously, but you got the sense the celebration didn’t change a thing for him. He was already doing exactly what he would have been doing without it.
That’s what we’re after. You don’t have to refuse honor. You just don’t need it.
The cure isn’t trying harder
When we notice pride in ourselves, our instinct is to grit our teeth and try to be more humble. How’s that worked out for you? It almost never does, because trying hard to be humble tends to make you more focused on yourself.
Paul sends us in a different direction. In Philippians 2 he writes, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3). And then, instead of giving us a technique, he points us to Jesus, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:6–7).
The Greek word translated servant there is doulos, which really means slave, the lowest social position in the Roman world. The most powerful being in existence set aside his privileges and took the lowest place.
Think about that for a minute. If the one who had every right to privilege chose to lay it down, what grounds do I have for hanging on to mine? Down at the root, pride in service comes from not understanding what Jesus actually did.
So the cure for service pride is to meditate more deeply on what Christ gave up, and the more clearly you see the cross, the smaller your territory looks.
The simple test
This is the most practical test I know, and I’d ask you to be honest with it.
How do you feel when nobody notices?
Think about the last time you did something genuinely good and the ministry just soaked it up. Nobody thanked you or mentioned it in the announcements. Nobody even knew.
If that feels fine, if you can genuinely say “the Father saw it, and that’s enough,” your motivation is in good shape. If it chafes, pay attention to that. You don’t need to be ashamed, just curious, and ask yourself some honest questions about who you’re really serving.
What to do this week
If you see yourself in any of this (and most of us will, at least a little), here are a few small places to start:
- Hand something off. Pick one task you’ve claimed as yours without saying so and teach someone else to do it.
- Invite correction. Ask a leader or teammate, “Is there anything I could be doing better?” Then just say thank you.
- Do one thing unseen. Clean something, fix something, or prepare something, and don’t mention it to anyone.
- Read Philippians 2:1–11 slowly before your next time serving. Let it recalibrate you.
None of these will fix your heart by themselves. What they do is make room for the Spirit to do what effort can’t.
Serving from a settled place
Humility turns out to be freeing. A humble volunteer doesn’t need the job to go perfectly to stay at peace. They aren’t managing their image or keeping score. They’re just here to help, and that’s a much lighter way to live.
I write more about pride, humility, and the volunteers who’ve shown me the difference in Full Service. If this post stung a little, that’s okay. A little sting is often a sign the Lord is up to something good.
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