Why Servant Leadership Can Actually Be Self-Serving
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.
My first book was titled 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?
