Leadership is always servant leadership

On a number of occasions Jesus emphasised the necessity of the servant role if a person would be a leader. So, when James and John asked if they might sit at his right and left hand in glory, Jesus replied: “You know that those who are regarded as leaders of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” (Mark 10.42; Matthew 20.25-27; see also Luke 22.24-26).

Jesus defined leadership in terms of service, and in doing so turned upside down all previous preconceptions of leadership. As James Edwards commented, “At no place do the ethics of the kingdom of God clash more vigorously with the ethics of the world than in the matters of power and service”.

Jesus went on: “Whoever wants to be first must be slave of all” (Mark 10.44; similarly Mark 9.35 & Luke 9.48). From the perspective of Jesus’ hearers this was a preposterous idea. To quote Edwards again:

The idea of a slave being first is absurdly paradoxical as a camel going through the eye of a needle (v25) – and it probably induced smiles and shaking of heads from Jesus’ audience. The desire for power and dominance focuses attention on self and this is love, for love by nature is focussed on others.

Frederick Bruner on the parallel passage in Matthew 20.27 drew attention to the question of Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias 491E: “How can anyone be happy when he the slave of all”. Bruner went on:

Jesus turns this aristocratic ideal on its head, and in one of cultural history’s dramatic reversal, he asks, he effect, ‘How can anyone be happy unless one is the slave of everyone else?’ Because culture so ceaselessly directs us in exactly the opposite direction, up, believers must pray almost daily for the wisdom and courage to go culturally down. But seeking to be a great ‘downer’ in all imaginative service and with all created and charismatic ambition is so right that it comes close to being Jesus’ definition of a happy life.

If we turn to Luke’s account of the dispute that occurred between the disciples at the Last Supper, we find that Jesus has some uncomfortable things to say about the love of power and place which still infects many who lead Christ’s church today,

A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest. But he said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. (Luke 22.24-27)

This desire for power and place is found in the term that Luke uses here for the ‘dispute’ that broke out between the between the disciples. The Greek word philoneikia appears only here in the New Testament and literally it means ‘love of victory, desire for glory’. That sums up what was going on that evening.

Jesus interrupted the disciples’ vanity, with a warning not to be like the world’s powerbrokers, who like to style themselves ‘benefactors’ but are not. Jesus went on to question the very concept of greatness. From the world’s perspective, honoured guests at banquets are ‘great’. Indeed, today we have the custom at weddings and at formal dinners of a ‘top table’. But in the Kingdom of God the world’s values are reversed. “I am among you as one who serves”. I find it significant that here Luke does not use a noun (diakonos) but a verb (diakoneo). Are we to infer that Jesus did not assume the title of a servant, but rather played the role of a servant?

For Jesus service was the hallmark of his mission. As he said to his disciples, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10.45; see Matthew 20.25). Nowhere more clearly do we see Jesus as the Servant than when he washed his disciples’ feet in the upper room (John 13.1-20). We are so familiar with the story that we do not always sense the degradation of the scene. In a very real sense this was a scandalous act. Today’s leaders would do well to heed the words of Jesus: “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you” (John 13.15).

The key to Christian leadership is servant-leadership, which focuses on the people to be cared for rather than just the job to be done. Servant-leaders cannot trample on people even in pursuit of the kingdom. Leaders may not be doormats – but neither should they treat others as doormats. But for all these necessary caveats, servant leadership must still lead – it must not become an excuse for no leadership.