What Is True Servant Leadership?

Around ten years ago, I released my first book, What Kind of God Do I Serve? I intentionally chose the word “serve” because that is the attitude Christians should have toward God and others.

For many, the idea of being a servant evokes a negative perception. They have been conditioned to think that serving is inherently a step down. But John 12:26 says, “If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.”

Matthew 20:28 says, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” In the words of twelfth-century French theologian Bernard of Clairvaux, “Learn the lesson that, if you are to do the work of a prophet, what you need is not a scepter but a hoe.”

As someone who works a lot in business and leadership circles, I’ve noticed the rise of servant leadership over the past few decades. This movement arose as a pushback against the flaws of industrialization and the top town bosses over employee models that saw workers as little more than disposable assembly line workers.

In 1977, author Robert Greenleaf wrote Servant Leadership and said, “My hope for the future rests in part on my belief that among the legions of deprived and unsophisticated people are many true servants who will lead and that most of them can learn to discriminate among those who presume to serve them and identify the true servants whom they will follow.”[1]

Authors like John Maxwell carried on the servant leadership torch, writing statements like, “The bottom line in leadership isn’t how far we advance ourselves but how far we advance others.”[2]

When I work with business leaders today, I’ll often hear them mention servant leadership. However, I’ve also noticed a troubling trend. The statement, "I love servant leadership," is often quickly followed by, "because it is the most sustainable way to help my organization thrive."

Based on this model, servant leadership is a means to an end. It's a tool to get others to do what you want them to do. This isn’t the type of servitude that Jesus had in mind.

So, how do we serve others as Christ intended?

By Serving With No Agenda But God's Glory and the Other Person's Highest Good

In Biblical times, servants varied in status. Household servants managed domestic tasks and often had close relationships with their masters. Skilled servants handled specialized work, such as managing estates or crafting. Hired servants worked for wages and retained personal freedom.

Bondservants were very different because they often willingly pledged themselves to serve their master, sometimes for life, as an expression of loyalty or gratitude for a debt forgiven. Paul frequently referred to himself as a bondservant of Christ. Similarly, in Philippians 2:7, referring to Jesus, Paul says, “but emptied Himself by taking the form of a bond-servant and being born in the likeness of men.” (NASB)

To be a bondservant of Christ is to willfully place ourselves in service to him with the recognition that bringing glory to him is totally fulfilling and in alignment with how we were created to live. It’s out of this willing service to God that we are then empowered to serve others.

Because Christ served us out of a genuine heart of love, we are to serve others with the same type of genuineness. We serve not to receive but to glorify God through our service and seek the other person's highest good.

So, What Does This Mean Practically?

It means we need to stop leveraging service as a tool and see it as a means to lower ourselves before others.

In Western society, most forms of service are applauded. But in addition to more service, what is most needed is everyday men and women who have the mind of a true servant. People who don't see others as ministry projects or business investments but see them as real individuals created in the image of God.

The idea of being a servant is why many call the Kingdom of Heaven an “Upside down Kingdom.” It runs countercultural to our thinking. Our default is to posture and position ourselves to look better and receive more benefits at the expense of others. But true service is radically freeing. Richard Foster writes:

Service enables us to say “no!” to the world’s games of promotion and authority. It abolishes our need (and desire) for a “pecking order.” That phrase is so telling, so revealing. How like chickens we are! In the chicken pen there is no peace until it is clear who is the greatest and who is the least and who is at which rung everywhere in between. A group of people cannot be together for very long until the “pecking order” is clearly established. We can see it so easily in such things as where people sit, how they walk in relation to each other, who always gives way when two people are talking at the same time, who stands back and who steps forward when a job needs to be done.[3]

By choosing to serve God and serve others, you opt out of the world’s paradigm for climbing. You stop obsessing about building your platform, receiving the respect you deserve, and being respected by those people you people you admire. In short, you stop thinking like a Genesis 11 Babylonian and building your own kingdom and start thinking like Christ.

Sunday Christians serve to gain leverage and power over others. Monday Christians serve to better glorify God and seek the highest good of others.

Be a Monday Christian.

[1] Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness, 25th Anniversary Edition, ed. Larry C. Spears (Kindle Edition), Kindle Location 360.

[2] John C. Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You (Nashville: HarperCollins Leadership), 51.

[3] Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home, 10th Anniversary Edition (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009), 127.