Some Reflections on Jesus-Like Servant Leadership

There is a strange and disturbing conflict of interest that besets many Christian leaders. By this I mean particularly leaders of Christian churches and non-profits, but not just here. As we will soon see, there can be a knock-on effect spilling over into other areas of leadership too.

Leaders in Christian circles often gain control over communications. Why? Because such a high emphasis is (rightly) placed on truth. But what this then means is that they gain control over the entire narrative, all that is taught. This is where things get complicated, where the conflict of interest occurs, because when it comes to the subject of leadership in the Bible, the Bible is highly provocative, highly countercultural: it brings leaders themselves under the greatest scrutiny. If leaders are willing to look and be honest about what the Bible says about leadership, they may then feel reluctant to tell anyone else, lest it shine an ugly spotlight on them. What happens next? The temptation then multiplies to reinforce silence on this entire subject, giving the impression (perhaps) that the Bible either has little to say on leadership or that what it says does not really apply today. Even worse, they may misrepresent what the Bible says, suggesting that it actually supports the ugly way some people lead. It is far too easy for Christian leaders, since they control the narrative, to under-communicate or misrepresent what the Bible says, creating a disaster.

Why might this be a problem? Perhaps the answer here is too obvious. But in case it isn’t, one need only listen again to the 2021 podcast “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill,” noting the dangers of toxic leadership and its abysmal effects on the church.

But how big a problem is this, really, one might ask? Surely if churches are growing, if non-profits are doing well, does management style really matter? If the Bible were silent on style, then we could afford perhaps to choose our own way. But the reality is that it is not silent. I have personally heard stories of pragmatism among elders when it comes to leadership, pragmatism created by fears of disenfranchising otherwise very “successful” leaders, thus driving them away. The fear is that leaders will take their success with them, and all on the home front will fall flat. In this way leaders can have other people over a barrel, doing whatever they want, as keeping the status quo becomes the order of the day, allowing the “good” things to keep on happening. Imagine the pastor of a church is dynamic and charismatic, attracting new people. Suddenly, the congregation starts ballooning in size. Who will have the guts to call out his toxic leadership style at a staff level? Who will keep him in check?

This creates further serious knock-on effects. Not only do such leaders perpetuate a toxic work environment which damages people under them, but they also create a negative example for others to follow, a larger ripple effect. If the leader of a church or non-profit leads badly, he or she provides a sense of justification for others to do the same.

Now the problem is like a runaway train, likely to spiral out of control. We must know that God cares how Christians lead. The “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” approach first makes matters worse. Second, voila, people get burned. Third, there is the added disaster of others following the awful example set. A mess!

Do we know, practically, what God’s model for leadership should really look like? What should be obvious from the title of this article is that we are going to reevaluate things in light of the Bible. But before doing so, consider for just a moment what outsiders have said about leadership in general. Our failures are often such that even if Christian organizations were to choose to be more thoroughly “worldly” in their approaches, taking the best secular advice, they might actually end up looking more Christlike.

There is a solid string of books claiming no Christian affiliation but promoting quite a biblical position on leadership. A key older work in this regard is Robert K. Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness (1977). Greenleaf was part of AT&T, entering at ground level and working his way up in the company. By starting at the bottom, he learned what bad leadership looked like. He then learned how to be a leader in ways that would improve the entire culture of the company. Consider one of his many choice quotations:

The best leaders are clear. They continually light the way, and in the process, let each person know that what they do makes a difference. The best test as a leader is: Do those served grow as persons; do they become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become leaders?

Though Greenleaf wrote this book back in the 1960s, his ideas still resonate, as shown by more recent leadership authors.  For instance, Gregory S. Sullivan reflects the application of Greenleaf’s ideas in Servant Leadership in Sport: Theory and Practice (2019). On the flip-side Barbara Kellerman has written Bad Leadership: How it Happens, Why it Matters (2004), which was followed by Followership: How Followers are Creating Change and Changing Leaders (2008).

What these books (and many more) have in common is that they hit on what seems obvious to everyone. Those in the business world who serve other people rather than themselves do the greatest good for others and have a multiplying positive effect on everyone around them. They facilitate change for the greater good. But those who are self-serving, who only have their own interests in mind, whether overtly or subtly, do not do good except perhaps by accident in secondary ways.

Colin Mayer, the Peter Moores Professor of Management Studies at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford has particularly challenged the paradigm, not just in leadership circles, but in business as a whole. In 2018 Mayer published Prosperity: Better Business Makes the Greater Good, which was then followed by an edited volume Putting Purpose Into Practice: The Economics of Mutuality (2021), both from Oxford University Press. Mayer’s basic thesis is that business, not government, can be the ultimate change agent for the good of the world.

In his work, Mayer rather directly rebuts the foundational work of Milton Friedman. In 1970 Friedman published a New York times article entitled “A Friedman Doctrine: The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits”. This article argued that a company has little or no social responsibility to the public or society but only to shareholders, to maximize their profits. So, provided nothing is done illegally, the company executives have no moral responsibility to help anyone, regardless of effects on society and the world at large. Nothing else should matter to a corporate executive, Friedman argued, because it is up to the government to regulate operations, to keep corporations in check; companies must be focused simply on the bottom line. Mayer challenges this thesis entirely, arguing instead that corporations form a nexus of relationships within themselves and with wider society, such that when the greatest good of all is sought, the outcome will necessarily be a long-term maximizing of profit too. What this means is that kindness matters. And what this also means is that not being enslaved to shareholders and to one’s own selfish ends will ultimately be the route to everyone winning.

All this is to say that the secular world is talking about Christian principles already, even promoting them. Not necessarily with a Christian label attached, but nevertheless in ways that any Christian can be glad for and in a way that a Christian leader in a secular system can get behind, and (one would think) even improve by his or her own practice. Here, though, is the complete rub. Do Christians really know their Bible and what it says about servant leadership? Are we able to lead the way? Or has this entire matter been left to non-Christians to discover and promote the principles of the Bible, leaving Christians behind? Here is a sobering word. And so, we do well to stop and think about what the Bible actually says about servant leadership.

Jesus gives the answer most particularly in John 13, the classic passage of Maundy Thursday services worldwide. Like all good things, the answer is not lying right on the surface. It requires a bit of work, a bit of digging if we are going to really get the gold nuggets. John 13–17 must be read as a whole, and it must be read for what it says in context, i.e., as a testament, like a Last Will and Testament of Jesus. In the ancient world people of influence knew that when they were about to die, their influence would die with them. This was not just a problem in a selfish way. They understood that they occupied an important place within a larger tapestry of life, such that when they died, they would leave a hole in its fabric. It became important that when such citizens were about to die, they would gather around them people who would carry on their legacy. They needed, as it were, to stitch around themselves, to sure up the tapestry surrounding them such that it would not fray, so that disruption would be minimal when they were torn from the fabric of life.

In the ancient world, therefore, we find a number of these testaments both in Judeo-Christian and secular pagan literature. Scholars who analyze these texts have found several common features, features that hold true across the span of time, the basis of a last will and testament in the ancient world:

In terms of context,

• • the person would gather a circle of confidants,
  • pronounce a blessing upon them as a gesture of farewell,
  • give other gestures of farewell, e.g., kisses, embraces, weeping, a meal, a common posture, a dialogue.
  • The arrival of death or the final assent towards death would occur after a speech.

In this speech,

• • there was the announcing of approaching death;
  • there were sayings and exhortations, perhaps with reference to past noble figures, together with words of encouragement, mention of promises and woes;
  • prophetic predictions might be given;
  • retrospective accounts might be given of the person’s life;
  • a successor was identified;
  • prayers were offered;
  • final instructions were given;
  • instruction on burial might be mentioned;
  • promises and vows might be demanded to make sure matters were kept.

According to scholars, these features commonly characterized a testament in the ancient world as a person approached death and thereby sought to secure the future for those left behind.

A number of these elements can immediately be identified in John 13–17. Jesus is clearly about to depart and die and immediately after his speech come the final phases of the gospel account, leading up to his death at the hands of the Romans. Jesus has gathered his inner circle together to have a meal with them. He gives exhortations and offers prayers.

What is so striking, however, is the way all this begins: the particular action that Jesus performs with his disciples upfront, how this is framed as blessing pronounced upon them, and what follows regarding his transference of leadership to a successor. Read with these categories in mind, we get the full feel of what Jesus was trying to communicate:

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.” When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen. But the Scripture will be fulfilled, ‘He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.’ I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am he. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” (John 13:1–20)

Notice, before anything else, that in the entire opening, Jesus’s action has to do with leadership, particularly servant leadership. John 13 ought to act as a hand-grenade tossed into the playground of Christian activity. What is it that Jesus thinks is most important when it comes to the future of Christianity? Leadership. And what is it that he thinks is most important when it comes to Christian leadership? The answer plain and simple is that it be characterized by service. This cannot be missed and cannot be passed over lightly. When we understand this passage properly in context, it becomes not one passage among many, but the crucial passage. Here is Jesus’ moment to pass the baton. But how does he begin? With leadership, with servant leadership.

Notice further two important themes that were meant to be part of any farewell, i.e., the blessing and the passing of the baton.

A person was meant to encourage his or her listeners with a blessing, with a statement of how things will go well, so long as they listen. Where is this in John 13? It is there when Jesus says in verse 17, “If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” Everyone now knows them. No one could miss Jesus’s actions and what they communicated. No one could miss this great act of service: washing everyone’s smelly feet like only a servant would do. But the pronouncement of blessing is conditioned on someone doing the same things. To the human spirit, this seems counter-intuitive: if we seek not our own life but life to be given to others, will we not lose? But Jesus promises the opposite. Blessing will come to leaders after him when they serve sacrificially, as he did.

The other point to make here, which takes us beyond our text into the wider context of John 13–17 is the passing of the baton to the next leader. What is so striking in Jesus’s speech is the theme that he is going away, but will soon return, first in the form of the other comforter, the Holy Spirit, and then he himself in person. In the testament literature of the day, this stands out as extraordinary and unexpected. There is no transfer of leadership. Jesus does not say to Peter: “and you Peter are my assigned successor, wherein the others must follow your lead, your vision”. Instead, the lead and vision (in this passage at least) remain with Jesus himself, working through the Holy Spirit in his followers.

How do we apply this practically? What would happen if leaders in Christian circles believed that Jesus had never really passed leadership on to his followers, that he is still at the head? This would produce Christian leaders who sensed that they are only ever under-shepherds, always answerable to Jesus.

And what about the blessing? What about the fact that the greatest blessing is proclaimed over those who lead as servants? It takes amazing humility and amazing faith to let this happen, and a servant leader will actually see that this is only right. They will want (as Greenfield also noted) to see others prosper, such that credit might be spread around. But this is difficult indeed, if leaders are seeking their own good rather than the good of others.

I want to finish by noting just how hard it is, though not impossible. Servant leadership, selflessness, requires humility and faith while everything in our world seems to cut against it. If one does not seek credit or a name for oneself, the vacuum will be filled by the biggest voice, by those who will seek credit for themselves.

This should not be taken as an excuse, since Jesus himself implied it was possible, calling everyone to the blessing of servant leadership. And yet the issue is before us of how Peter responded when presented with the example of Jesus’s servant leadership. He hated it. He hated it so much that he even refused to be served by Jesus. Reader beware!

Not only will you not get credit when you try to be a servant leader, you will also (like Jesus) get criticism. The reasons for this may be complicated. It may just be that people are so confused they cannot accept it. But it may also be that they were wanting to protect their own future—they do not want you to model servant leadership, because then when it comes time for them to lead, they will be forced to do the same!

I think by now we can see the extent of the problem before us. Being a servant leader goes against everything this world often teaches, even if people like Greenfield and Kellerman and Mayer are beginning to point matters in another direction. Being a servant leader goes against much of our culture, it results in robbing yourself of glory, and it may even mean others will hate you for it. So why do it? The reason must be because Jesus says it is crucial, because he did it and called the rest of us to do it too, and because we believe by faith that when we follow what he says we will be blessed.

And remember the good news. Peter got there, too, once he saw how far Jesus would go in serving us… all the way to the cross!