Servant Leadership (Part 2)
It’s what’s on my mind right now. How to cast a vision for servant leadership in our community of faith.
When we talk about servant leadership, most people think that means the "inmates are running the prison," or the leader is trying to please everyone. People who think this way don’t understand that there are two parts of leadership that Jesus clearly exemplified:
- A visionary role — doing the right thing
- An implementation role — doing things right
I’m thinking about the correct push to do things right. This is the call to excellence expressed in scripture with words such as "do all in the name of the Lord" or "work at it with all of your heart" and "as working for the Lord not for man." But in our effort to do things with excellence, to do things right, have we made sure that we are doing the right thing? This is not just fancy shmancy wordsmith preacherease. I’m also not talking about right from wrong. I’m talking about those ministry endeavors that we pursue and God is not in them. We invest copious amounts of time, energy, and resources into countless projects that fail only to discover that God is working somewhere else.
So what does servant leadership really look like? What do our shepherds need to hear? What do I need to hear to be a model of servant leadership?
5 Responses to “Servant Leadership (Part 2)”
First, what an exciting time it must be for you and the folks at “your Central.” Just the fact that your leaders are willing to review their model of leadership is a huge step. I think the next step is to cast a vision for your church that will lead each member to daily transformation into the image of Christ.
The key is to cast a vision and then filter all leadership input / decisions through that vision.
It may be the wrong vision, it may not be the one that God would have for your church (it won’t take long to find out) and that’s alright. I heard someone say the other day that it might take 10 wrong decisions before you find the right one that leads to “success.†It only takes one right decision to be successful.
May God bless you and your elders on this retreat.
Excellent thinking. Excellent!
I really like several books here:
They Smell Like Sheep by Lynn Anderson
Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders
Working the Angels: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity by Eugene Peterson
Brothers, We are NOT Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry by John Piper
The Jesus Style by Gayle D. Erwin
The Reformed Pastor by Richard Baxter (A classic)
The Way to Pentecost by Samuel Chadwick (A classic)
Withd Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray (A classic)
and last but certainly not least
A Little Exercise for Young Theologians by Helmut Thielicke
And last of all, if you can raise the money, fly me out to tell you what I’ve learn in 23 years of ministry at the same church!!!
Peace.
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, and you and I have had this discussion … or at least my side of it, but I’m still really fuzzy on this whole “vision” thing for churches. My understanding is that Christ is the head of the church and his vision has been cast and we’ve been given the challenge. The “vision” of leadership is to let Christ so fully live in / through me that others will follow Christ as I follow Christ. Anything short of that is just a lot of busy work, IMHO.
I like leadership retreats for the purpose of establishing team spirit and unity and deeper fellowship, but I’ve been through so many of these leadership efforts to cast a vision, come up with a ministry philosophy, develop a mission statement, etc., ad naseum, only to see us basically go about what we’ve always done that it just doesn’t excit me any more.
Maybe that’s why I’m leaning toward a mortuary career over ministry?
Hope your weekend is good and productive. If you figure it all out, write a book, autograph a copy, and send it to me.
Hey! I talked with Brice today, and he told me you are in Stockton. Pretty cool… Antioch is not that far away.
How long have you been there? Hope things are off to a blessed beginning.
Rick
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.