Being a Servant-leader

Matt. 20:26-28 "But among you it should be quite different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to first must become your slave. For even I, the Son of Man, came here not to be served but to serve others, and to give my life as a ransom for many."

How many servant-leaders do you know? Servant-leaders are people who are not afraid to get their hands dirty doing the things that need to be done with cheerfulness of heart. We live in a culture where it seems far too many of our spiritual leaders are content to sit in their pastoral roles and let others do all the manual labors and the serving of others. We pay our pastors and staff a lot of money and tell them not to worry about the busyness of church life. But, is this something we should be doing?

Having been a pastor for over 40 years of my life, I know how important it is for pastors to have time to study and meditate on the Word. I know the demands on his time to prepare and minister to those in need. However, I believe we do the people of the church a disservice when we deny pastors the opportunity to get dirty hands; we deny the people of the church and community the opportunity to see them serve. Leaders who don’t know how to serve can’t adequately teach his people how to serve.

If you are a leader in the church, lead by example. It is easy to delegate responsibility and retreat into our ivory towers. It is easy to hide behind the veil of meditative study. It is much harder to balance the time in the study with time in the trenches.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to walk in on your pastor sometime and catch him on his knees—cleaning the toilet? I, for one, want to follow such a leader.