I realise that this subject has gained popularity thus the public acceptance of the badly written Shades of Grey thingy. But if anyone wants to explain the joys of this particular form of sexuality - it's appeal why they like it I would be willing to listen.
Why do you ask for our opinion and then limit a third of what we can say about it?
You'll get more replies if you take away the thing saying that they're the same.
I guess it really would depend on the context of the words serving and taking care of. both have a sexually suggestive side and both have a more mundane side. Are we talking serving as in the more traditional domestic servitude, or serving via submission to your Master/Mistress. Same thing for taking care of them, or are you talking taking care of them as in the way a parent would say they take care of a child? Picking up after them, etc etc.
Ultimately while there are different ways to look at the choice of words, and what is implied behind them, there will be overlap in the serving and taking care of debate regardless as it seems they are rather synonymous. Limiting saying that as an answer will limit the discussion mostly which would spawn around the degrees of separation or difference between the two choices offered.
SlavePrincess,
Here is my input on your question... I feel that serving your Master is something you do everyday. It is routine and what you are supposed to do.
Taking care of your Master is what you do above and beyond. Like when He is sick or when He is just really tired from a long day at work. "Taking care", to Me, has more of a nurturing, tender connotation than "serving". Waitresses serve, lovers take care.
First of all I do not think of myself as a slave, so I don't identify with the classic M/s relationship. I don't do TPE, and personally I hold TPE for an Urban Legend.
But, in your context I would define it as such: I take care of a Dom as much as I interpret the Dom wished me to take care of him; within the limits. In some rare cases I have had to do things like taking care of a Dom by topping from the bottom (he was seriously ill and refused to admit it). I think of taking care of Dom as an act of human kindness. But that's the kind of person I am. If you came to my house, I would make you dinner, and think of it neither as "service" nor "taking care of you". No one would even have to ask me.
Service, in my mind, is complying with the Dom's explicit sexual wishes. Anything non-sexual I can't identify that as "service". If my Dom asked me to wash his car, and fix his computer, and wallpaper his office, then I can't find the fine line between taking care of him and "serving him outside the bedroom".
I don't even like the word "service", for several reasons: a) servants are usually paid, b) servitude is a form of unrewarded sufferance c) it smacks of the Gorean Lifestyle, which I absolutely cannot identify with d) some Masters like to use this concept to remind their subs that they have less value than the grime beneath their fingernails.
Si vos postulo me, sed non vis me, oportet me manere.
Sed si vis me, sed non vos postulo me, oportet me abire.
I would just like to add - as neutrally as I possibly can - that everybody and every relationship is different. If I were not charitably inclined, I might find myself calling YKINOK.
You may not do it (for any value of "it"), but out of 6 billion plus, I guarantee you someone else does.
Thank you for answering 
Its definitely shedding some light 
. I also can say that I don't understand both concepts fully, hence why I started a thread. 