Excerpt from Authentic Pursuit (Chapter 1)

Are you willing to serve humbly?

“After becoming a Christian in 2002, I quickly dove into any work I could find at our local church. I remember going to my former pastor and asking what I could do, knowing I was definitely not qualified to teach or lead, but also knowing that I needed to have a purpose in order to survive as a Christian. I loved being in the church. I had become the guy who arrived too early and stayed too late. Unbelievable as it may seem (me being this guy covered in tattoos and piercings), the pastor gave me a key to the whole facility. I asked again, “What can I do?” and he said something like, “Well, the floors need cleaning.” 

“People will ask how I got started. I simply say I picked up a mop and mopped the church floors.”

That is how true ministry starts. Often at conferences and seminars, people will ask how I got started. I simply say I picked up a mop and mopped the church floors. No one wants to hear that kind of answer. They want to be given a mic and 300 people to yell at and be instantly propelled to some rockstar status, but no one wants to clean the floors for Jesus. My favorite image of God is the one from Bruce Almighty. Bruce sees God for the first time, and what is God doing? He is upstairs cleaning the floor with a mop. That is so God, up there cleaning up our mess, doing the job no one wants to do.

So I did this kind of work around our church for at least a year or so. I also started a Bible study at a local coffee shop where I worked. It was a great place called the Red Rose, and it was the cultural hot spot of our college town. It was a great place to witness to the kind of people I was once a part of and could identify with.”

—Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Authentic Pursuit by Corey Trimble with Josh Brooker