Let’s talk about feet!
(Sorry for the longer post, but this topic needs some explanation. If you’re in Christian leadership, read it to the end. It may be worth your time.).
We should be willing to question everything we do in the church.
Not cynically. Biblically. Like a Berean.
Is this actually commanded by Scripture? Is it a principle derived from Scripture? Is it merely methodology? Or have we practiced something for so long that we now assume our culture inherited it directly from the apostles?
That question becomes uncomfortable when we come to John 13.
Jesus washed His disciples’ feet and then said:
“I have given you an example” (John 13:15).
I do not believe the strongest argument is that foot washing must therefore become a formal church ordinance. The greater principle is unmistakable: those who follow Christ should willingly take the lowest place and serve one another in humility.
And Scripture shows that Christians continued practicing it. Foot washing appears again among the recognizable works of Christian service in 1 Timothy 5:10.
The question, then, is not merely:
“Are Christians required to wash feet?”
A better question may be:
“What is the modern equivalent that I have become too important to do?”
Maybe it is personally serving widows, poor believers, and overlooked members rather than simply delegating their care to another ministry department.
Maybe it means quietly doing what receives no recognition, produces no platform, and generates no applause.
Interestingly, American churches have little difficulty implementing other practices that are not explicitly commanded in their modern form.
The invitation call: Scripture commands repentance, faith, and gospel proclamation. It never commands walking an aisle, raising a hand, or coming forward during a hymn. Yet many churches have implemented the invitation so consistently that it almost functions as a formal element of church practice.
(The modern invitation system largely developed through nineteenth-century American revivalism, especially through Charles Finney’s “new measures,” and was later popularized by evangelists such as D. L. Moody, Billy Sunday, and Billy Graham. A practice not even 200 years old can become almost normative, yet a principle modeled and declared by Christ nearly 2,000 years ago gets benched?)
Get off the pew for the invitation. Stay on the pew for the towel.
See the problem?
Formal church membership: Scripture clearly teaches identifiable belonging, accountability, discipline, shepherding, and submission within a local congregation. Yet Scripture never commands a membership class, membership card, formal vote, covenant, transfer letter, or membership roll. Churches appropriately develop methodology to embody the biblical principle.
We apparently understand this distinction quite well when we want to.
Biblical principle can legitimately produce practical methodology even when the exact methodology is not directly commanded.
So why does John 13 suddenly make us nervous?
This passage has challenged me personally for years.
When I was young in Bible college, a close friend and I wrestled with this exact question. We could not escape what Jesus had done or what He said about His example. So rather than allowing our culture to decide the matter for us, we simply practiced it.
I washed my friend’s feet.
Many years later, we are still close friends, and it remains a privilege to serve him.
When my wife and I married, one of the first symbolic acts of our marriage ceremony was washing one another’s feet.
Before almost anything else characterized our marriage publicly, we wanted this to be visible:
Marriage begins with humility and service, not entitlement.
Then, years later, as several of the men I had discipled were approaching a major transition in their maturation and ministry, just before we entered a new phase of ministry among the Tiale people, I gathered them together.
It was late.
We had spent considerable time praying.
There were no cameras.
No pictures.
No social-media post.
No audience.
I washed their feet.
Not because I believed water on someone’s feet magically produces humility, but because sometimes a physical act forces us to confront whether we actually believe the principle we preach.
It was my responsibility to model that humility before them. These were feet that had walked barefoot since childhood, calloused, cracked, scarred, sometimes affected by fungus.
How could I teach these men about Christlike humility while considering myself too important to wash their feet?
Jesus is the Chief Shepherd.
Those who lead His people are supposed to be little shepherds beneath Him.
And our Chief Shepherd took the towel.
So perhaps American Christian leadership needs to ask an uncomfortable question.
We have institutionalized membership without an explicit membership command.
We have institutionalized invitation calls without an explicit invitation-call command.
We construct entire church methodologies from biblical principles, and often rightly so.
Yet when Jesus Himself gets down, takes a towel, washes feet, and says, “I have given you an example,” suddenly we become experts at explaining why the cultural form no longer applies.
Why?
Is washing feet really beneath us?
Or has American evangelical leadership slowly developed a concept of ministry where holding the microphone feels more natural than holding the towel?
I speak particularly to American Christians here because foot washing has largely disappeared from much of our church culture, while it remains a recognizable Christian practice in many other parts of the world.
Perhaps our discomfort tells us as much about American culture as it does about John 13.
Because if the towel makes you uncomfortable but the microphone feels natural, perhaps your understanding of leadership has been discipled more by Meta than by the Chief Shepherd.
And if our greatest ambition is to stand before the church where people can applaud us, rather than kneel before the church where nobody notices us, we should probably stop asking whether foot washing is culturally relevant and start asking whether our model of leadership is biblically recognizable at all.
https://youtu.be/v2GzSqZoxmk?feature=shared
Your feet to the Tiale people and the country of Vanautu. Seth, Nicole & Selah Stokes.
