1-8 The Servant Leader

The paradox of servant leadership is found back in 1 Kings 12:7- if Rehoboam had been a servant of his people, then he would have ruled over them. In all ways, the Lord is our pattern. He was a servant of all, and so should we be. His servanthood dominated His consciousness. He said that He came not [so much as] to be ministered unto, but so as to minister, with the end that He gave His life for others (Mk. 10:45). In His death for Israel, He was “a minister [lowly servant] of the circumcision”, i.e. the Jews (Rom. 15:8). Yet we are His ministers, His slave / servants. The same word is used for how the women and Angels ministered unto Him (Mk. 1:13,31; 15:41), and how He anticipated men would minister to Him (Jn. 12:26 Gk. cp. 2 Cor. 11:23; Col. 1:7;  1 Tim. 4:6). But both then and now, He came and has come in order to minister / serve us, rather than to be served by us; even though this is what we give our lives to doing. Yet He is still all taken up with ministering to us. He came more to serve than to be served. We are slaves, all of us, of the lowest sort. It’s hard for us to realise the lowliness of being a Roman slave; and the sheer wonder of being made a free man, purely by grace. This is what each and every one of us has experienced. Servanthood / slavery should be the concept that dominates our lives; for we cannot be a servant of two masters (Mt. 6:24). We are to be wholly dedicated to the service of the Lord Jesus and those in Him. As slaves, we serve without expecting any thanks at all; we do what is our duty to do by reason of who we are (Lk. 17:10). The Lord spoke this in response to the disciples saying it was impossible for them to accept His teaching about unconditional forgiveness of each other (Lk. 17:5). Man’s ingratitude is perhaps one of the hardest winds to weather, and it can so easily blow us off course in our service. But as the Lord’s slaves, judged by Him alone, we didn’t ought to look for recognition of our labours; neither should we demand apologies for anything. The Lord humbled Himself to wash the feet of His brethren, even though He was their leader (Phil. 2:4-11 is full of allusion to the foot washing incident, as if there the Lord exemplified the spirit of the cross). There may be brethren who consider it beneath them to talk to others, who think it is not for them to help wash up or move furniture or all the host of other tasks that our gatherings require. But in these things lies the spirit of Christ. Paul didn’t lord it over others, but was a fellow-worker with them (2 Cor. 1:24). It is one of the finest paradoxes: that he who is the greatest must be the servant of all. When James and John asked to have the senior positions, the Lord didn’t rebuke them; he just told them that the greatest would desire to be a servant (Gk. diakonos) of all (Mt. 20:20-28). The utter degradation of the cross, and the Lord’s willing humbling of Himself to accept it, is a pattern for all who would take up His cross. The “servant of all” would make no distinctions concerning whom or how he would serve; such servanthood was a complete and unqualified act of surrender. And this is taken by the Lord as a cameo of His mindset on Calvary.

In conscious allusion to this, Paul could speak of how he had become a slave of all men, that he might help some to Christ (1 Cor. 9:19). He was a slave of the Gospel, a slave of the kind who was lower than the least of all others, i.e. a slave of all (Eph. 3:7,8). He didn’t preach himself, but rather preached that he was a servant to all his brethren, for the sake of the fact that he was in Christ, the servant of all (2 Cor. 4:5). Thus he almost advertised his servant status; he preached himself as a slave. Paul wished to be perceived by his brethren and the whole world as merely a slave of Jesus (1 Cor. 4:1). In our talking to each other, or in our writing, it does us good to analyse how many personal pronouns we use; how much we are preaching ourselves rather than Jesus Christ. Any who may appear to be leaders or organisers are serving Him, who debased Himself to that depth. There can be no room at all for any sense of superiority amongst us. We are servants of all, not just of those individual brothers or ecclesias whom we happen to get on well with. The apostles in their letters usually open by reminding their readers that they are slaves of the Lord Jesus- this is how they saw themselves. Paul was called to be a slave of the Gospel (Acts 26:16; Gk. hypereten- a galley slave, rowing the boat chained to the oars). There were slaves who were made stewards or managers [‘bishops’] of the Master’s business, but essentially they themselves were still slaves. The leaders of the Corinth ecclesia were no more than a paidogogos (1 Cor. 4:15,16), a slave who had to take the little children to school, where they would be taught by the teacher (cp. Jesus). We have all been given some gift, and that is to be used in the servanthood / slavery of our Lord Jesus (1 Pet. 4:10). We can mindlessly say that yes, Jesus is Lord, quite forgetting that it implies we are His serving slaves. The magnitude of the ‘slave’ concept in the ecclesia of Christ is easily overlooked, and it was this which made it so different from others. And it is this which ought to make us different from other Christian groups; and it’s why the pattern of leadership found in our previous churches or religions is probably the wrong pattern for us to follow. The ability to lead is only given in order to prepare the congregation for acts of service themselves (Eph. 4:12). “Christianity was no slick imitation of existing ecclesiastical organisations. It made no attempt to set up a hierarchy modelled on previously existing institutions. It preferred diakonia, lowly service, to the grandiose ideas of the Gentiles” ⁽⁷⁾. Whoever serves [Gk. ‘is a deacon of’] the Lord Jesus must follow Him, and the idea of following Him is usually connected with His walk to death on the cross (Jn. 12:26). We are all asked to follow Him, it is all part of being His disciples, and so we are all asked to be ‘deacons’ in this sense. Our service is of each other; to walk away from active involvement because of personality clashes etc. is to walk away from true, cross-carrying Christianity. But I am persuaded better things of us generally. Immature we may be, and held back by a quite rightful sense of shyness and inadequacy in service, but there is evident and developing in so many of our groups a definite sense of responsibility to each other. In unfeigned humility, let us by love serve one another, and in so doing know the spirit of the Lord who served, and thereby share together His exaltation.

Notes

(7) Leon Morris, Ministers Of God (London: I.V.P., 1964), p. 35.

“We ask ourselves, " Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?" . Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child enlightened of God’s grace. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are born to manifest the glory of God that is with in us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others”.

Nelson Mandela, 1994