Leading By Serving

Servant Leadership

Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. But now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he made the universe and everything in it. The Son reflects God’s own glory, and everything about him represents God exactly. Hebrews 1:1-3

The greatest among you must be a servant. But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Matthew 23:11-12

Agape & Eros

In his 1953 book, Agape and Eros, Anders Nygren, a bishop in the Church of Sweden, took two Greek words, which can both be translated “love” and used them to underscore two views of God’s relationship with his human creation. Both of these meanings have coexisted within the Christian church since its inception. They are agape and eros.

Nygren traced the meanings of these two words from classical Greek philosophy, through its influence on Judaism, the early church and up to the Reformation. The first of these words, a word denoting the freely given and forgiving love of God, is agape. Agape is based on the character of the one loving rather than any merit in the object of the love. We are challenged by Jesus to love both our neighbors and our enemies, regardless of who they are or what they have done. Agape is, therefore, both an unselfish and a selfless love in which there is no expectation of gain or recognition. Selfless love is indicative of our moral integrity. It pulls from our personal values those attitudes and behaviors that support others and the community—the loved and the unloved—so that by way of unselfish love, we add to morality and justice both mercy and integrity – the foundations of our spiritual beings that enable us to appreciate the uniqueness of other persons and their situations.

Eros, on the other hand, typifies the Greek philosophy of Aristotle, Plato and the Gnostics. Eros denotes an envious love, one which responds and aspires to the beauty or perfection of its object. Eros can be a selfish love or a self-centered love. Either way, Eros puts the interests of the one giving the love first and the one receiving the love last. Potentially, it neglects the needs of others all together. At its heart, selfish love focuses on the needs and the personal agenda of the one doing the loving. Selfish love of this kind seeks submission and can be smothering; it is neither uplifting nor forgiving. St. Augustine believed that selfish love resulted in monasticism, legalism, and ritualism, which exemplify man’s attempts to reach up to God (eros), rather than glorying in God’s reaching down to man (agape). Selfish love begins and ends with me as it asks, “What will I get out of this relationship?”

Nygren explained that the restoration of God-centered theology in Martin Luther was a key to the Reformation. In a God-filled relationship, meaning becomes an understanding of oneself in relationship to both God and others. It is concerned with the most fundamental conditions of our being in the world. In this relationship Christians become servant leaders wherever they work and wherever they go.

In his book, Servant Leadership, Michael Greenleaf says, I believe that caring for persons, the more able and the less able … is what makes a good society. Most caring was once person to person. Now much of it is mediated through institutions—often large, powerful, impersonal; not always competent; sometimes corrupt. If a better society is to be built, one more just and more caring and providing opportunity for people to grow, the most effective and economical way, while supportive of the social order, is to raise the performance as servant of as many institutions as possible by new voluntary regenerative forces initiated within them by committed individuals, servants. Such servants may never predominate or even be numerous; but their influence may form a leaven that makes possible a reasonably civilized society.

For Christians, Jesus was the model of servant leadership and through Jesus we learn that agape love is the engine that drives the desire to serve others. Leanna Traill, a New Zealand educator, took the title of her 1993 book—Highlight My Strengths—from the Maori saying, “Highlight my strengths and my weaknesses will disappear.” She commented, “The fundamental goal of teaching and learning in schools should be that every learner is guaranteed optimal instruction and opportunity to reach his or her educational potential.”

Psychologist Joseph R. Royce says that many of us are too one-sided, too tied up in our own cocoons, too serve this purpose. He calls this “encapsulation” and he labels those who exhibit these characteristics as “encapsulated.” He reminds us, “De-capsulation demands that we are able to get inside and outside ourselves, our culture, and our time,” that we are able to lead from the inside out with foresight, followship, and by listening to and understanding the world in which we live. This is the attitude of agape love. Although we may never perfect such unselfish and selfless behavior, just beginning down this road will open us to a new world of human possibilities. It will free us from a mentality of hopelessness and from our current prejudices of race, color, religion, and political party.

A Crisis of Perception

Our relationship with God is a conditional relationship. Thus, Christian scriptures and theology must be adapted and recreated by every generation of Christians. Our spirituality is personal and in one sense practical. It is the no nonsense, functional side of Christianity that ought to guide our understanding and commitment. In this sense, a faith-based Christian ethic will always bear the stamp of human an investment risk. Being a Christian in the contemporary world puts us in jeopardy of being ostracized and overlooked.

Yet, through Agape we gain the insight that the world is a totality of meaning and is God’s purposeful creation. We come to God by faith. We cannot buy our way to God’s grace. God’s love is “self-giving, requiring no reciprocity” and challenges us to live life within the depths of our spirituality and become an ethical force within our society. This is not a surface-living of mutual exchange and negotiation. Living life on the surface adds little ethical value to others or us and often leaves our lives empty and unforgiving. We are challenged to look beneath the surface and find God in the small things that add quality to each day.

Spiritual and ethical meaning, like purpose, is found beneath the surface within the depths of human experience. They come through the interplay of self-understanding and our understanding of the world. This is an existential task with which each of us is confronted. What matters is our attempt to engage the world in an ethical way with a willingness to appreciate that the ethical life is a gift which finds significance as it is shared. In our relationships with others we give birth to our inner and communal lives—new birth such as this is always possible. There is joy when it is experienced.

In our quest for pleasure, we sometimes forget that real happiness and joy—that which endures—is found in our active and purposeful participation with others. The deeper values that really count are available to all of us. In our daily lives, time must be taken to personally express our care for others in positive actions, receive from others graciously, and show appreciation to our friends and loved ones. William Arthur Ward has observed, “We must be silent before we can listen. We must listen before we can learn. We must learn before we can prepare. We must prepare before we can serve. We must serve before we can lead.”

Building other-affirmative and constructive relationships means engaging others in ways that are not disingenuous and do not prove disadvantageous to their personal well being. Here we find our spiritual and ethical foundations. We should remember that to help others become something that they could never become on their own, is putting value into that other person. The most valuable currency of this church or any organization is the initiative and creativity of its members. As William Arthur Ward said, “The adventure of life is to learn. The purpose of life is to grow. The nature of life is to change. The challenge of life is to overcome. The essence of life is to care. The opportunity of like is to serve. The secret of life is to dare. The spice of life is to befriend. The beauty of life is to give.”

The Divine Dance

Loving and serving others as God loves us is more like an unspoken and understood capacity, which we acquire by following positive ethical examples, by working at friendships, and living with ethical intentions. Meaning is communicative; it is real-world knowledge laced with our own spirituality. The expansive qualities of the Christian ethical life are immeasurable and contagious.

Just recently, the Charlotte Observer newspaper told the story of how a group of people in southeast Charlotte gave aid to one of their neighbors, 84-year old Bill Judge. Bill had been a loner and not a very good neighbor with five old cars in his driveway and his eccentric habits. But when he injured his knee, his neighbors pulled together to help by cutting his grass, driving him to the store, and bringing him food. The story goes on to say that his neighbors changed the course of his life, and in doing so, changed their lives as well. They discovered that Bill had served in the Navy, earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Duke University, and worked with a chemical company in Charlotte. One neighbor said, “He brought the best out in us all. We became extra close neighbors.” Serving is like that.

The story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers as told by David Wright and David Zoby in their book, Fire on the Beach, is another story of courage and character. Wright and Zoby tell the story of the U.S. Life-Saving Service, formed in 1871 on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Etheridge—the only African-American to lead a lifesaving crew—was its captain. He was a former slave and a Civil War veteran. His crew was among the most courageous surfmen in the service. It is a story of character, dedication, courage, and determination. We learn from Etheridge that character is built over time and its strength comes, not from being successful in every adventure, but in our persistence and will to achieve. It is a mental attitude that expects good and favorable results. A positive mind anticipates happiness, joy, health and a successful outcome of every situation and action. Whatever the mind expects, it finds.

As you start your week, think of it as a fresh start, a new beginning. And when you think this way, try to imagine that all the pain of yesterday is left behind. Listen beneath the surface, down by your roots. In a quiet time of reflection set a goal, make a decision, decide on a course of action; follow a dream. Don’t spend so much time waiting for a large voice from on high to speak to you that you stumble over the whispers that are right at your feet. Small voices often speak loudly.

Understand that leadership capacity and spiritual maturity are ethical competencies definitive of the moral life. As our lives affect the lives of others, we need to take the lead in redefining the meaning of “community” and “service” as normal activities. We need to take the lead and affirm life’s riches and make loving and serving others the divine dance at the center of our lives. In this way we are helping recreate our communities as caring, loving, and joyous places to live and work.