Servant Leadership redux

At a recent conference in Toronto (lovely, wonderfully diverse Toronto!)....I heard Eddie Gibbs speak. He is a Brit, raised in post WWII Anglican England....and is a current authority on the emerging church and church growth. He is on faculty at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Immediately upon returning home, I had to buy his two books ChurchNext, and LeadershipNext. Excellent books.....and I'm only into the first couple of chapters of each. I'm a new Eddie Gibbs devotee.

One of the eye jolting awakenings that has come through his writing....is so simple. Yet, so right for what I'm needing to hear. He talks about how the church has gotten "servant leadership" all wrong, when we try to put that paradigm onto Jesus, in the way that we live it out today. He says that in today's culture, Servant Leadership is really Doormat Leadership. An attempt to meet the needs of all, putting our (ministering persons) own needs to the side. This leads to burnout and to leaving ministry altogether.

Gibbs says that Jesus never did servant leadership in that model. He was never a servant to the masses, in that he put everyone elses needs first. Jesus was a servant to God and God's call for his life. That is the statement that got me. Gibbs goes on to say that through Jesus' faithfulness to God's call through being a servant to God, Jesus did all that he was to do.

Now, we are not Jesus. I am not. You, dear reader, are not. We are not God incarnate. But, we are called to sacred work. The thing that we MUST see, is that we must stay fast to serving God....and sometimes that will be at odds with what the world AND the church sees as Christian ministry. We are not to be swerved. If we are all faithful to what God is claiming within us to do and be, then it will all get covered. We are to be collaborators, and not lone rangers. None of us can do it all, nor should we. What we should do (and this is a JOYFUL should) is to claim our part and do it well. Then, looking around, we can claim what others have been called to and find joy in their faithfulness.....even when it is something different that our own call.

Yes indeed. I'm jazzed.

asgr