What is a Servant Leader?

It just occurred to me (Devin) that “Servant Leadership” is an oxymoron.

I used to think it was pretty simple: servant leadership, so I thought, consisted of putting everyone else’s needs before my own, all the time. But that has gotten tricky because I’ve found myself unable to say no ever, to anything. That’s not leadership because the person who never says no to anything isn’t able to lead in a particular direction.

On the other hand, usually it’s usually the leader who has servants–people who follow the leader around and do what they are told. You could be a benevolent leader–one who looks out for the interests of the lowly, but a servant belongs to his leader, and is subject to his will.

In the past, people have called me a good servant leader when I’ve done background tasks, or lowly tasks, or when they thought I led by example and not by telling people what to do…I think people sometimes mean “not a hypocrite” or “down to earth” when they say “servant leader”.

A leader who is also a servant, if I really think hard about it, is pretty difficult to imagine. Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant…just as the Son of Man did not come to be serve but to serve.”

Maybe the best way to think of it is this: A leader who is also a servant is in the habit of giving away their power for the objective good of others. They aren’t subject to the will of every person around them, but instead are looking out for the real good, as God would define it, of other people. Here are a couple implications I can think of, in no particular order:

1.) Servant leaders need to give their power away because there is injustice. In this world, power is a limited resource and people fight for it. If powerless people can get power, there will be more justice.

2.) Servant Leaders are able to give their power away because, in light of their relationship with Christ, power is no longer a scarce resource. Christ has infinite power and that same power has given us life.

3.) Servant Leaders need to depend on Jesus, hear from him, and obey him. This is so vital because they are trying to look out for the real good of people as God defines it. It’s so easy to miss what God really wants and what justice really is, and to revert to the way the rest of the world works.

4.) If you’re listening to and obeying God, God’s will will certainly clash with what others want (not to mention what you, in your flesh, want). In order to be a Servant Leader, you need to develop the skill of caring first and foremost about God’s opinion, and shake off the grip of all the other opinions in your life. That’s super difficult!

5.) For me, this means I need to have my conceptions of leadership molded to Christ’s example. I also need to ask frequently whether this or that decision is a.) seeking the real good that God desires, b.) is just me trying to please the most people, or c.) is me trying to hold onto as much power as my cold dead fingers can grip.

6.) One really practical implication (and the only really practical thing on this list) is that I need to be much less afraid of not having control. If you give away power to others, you can’t control the outcome. But if you give away power to people who used to not have any, you give them a chance to grow, and have the opportunity to see the world from a different perspective.

I’ve found out that if you just hand over the reigns to someone else, in an attempt to give away power, with very little direction or support, you’ll probably cause a train wreck and frustrate the other person.  I’m trying to figure out practically how to do this–give away power and control, yet provide support and give direction, but just don’t know how to do that yet.

A spiritual whirlpool

It was a banner day for proselytizing on campus today.  At one plaza there were a pair of Mormon missionaries, a Hindu evangelist, and two fire-and-brimstone street preachers.  I was waiting for someone, so I stood to watch and listen for awhile, and here are some of my (Devin’s) thoughts.

1.) To visualize today with a metaphor, this kind of situation is a spoon to “stir up the spiritual pot” on campus and bring up things one hasn’t seen before.  I had literally five spiritual conversations with people that were not even initiated by me.  For example, a guy I was standing next to on the bus just asked me, “So what did you think about that guy yelling?”  That’s just great!  Another dude similarly asked me and another friend what we thought, and we got to tell him about our relationships with Jesus and how he could have one, too.  How often does someone effectively say to you, “Hey, tell me something, anything, about what you believe about God”?  For this, I am very grateful.  The going rate for a campus outreach intended to stir things up like this is about two grand–the fruit from a day like today rivals some of those large-scale events.

2.) To use another metaphor, it was a giant spiritual whirlpool.  You have one current of sensational words about hell and hateful comments about people who sin (at least who look like they sin, judging by their appearances), and another current of hecklers who have come out to make fun of religious people, colliding and sucking anything in its path down to the dark and cold ocean floor. But just beyond the epicenter of the whole conflagration (wait…let’s just call it “the middle of the big stink”), you have herds of people walking past on their way to class.  Most will turn their heads to catch a word while they pass by, and some will keep their eyes down, fixed on a point constantly eight feet ahead of them.  I wonder as I see them pass, how many are hurting?  How many of these people on the margin of the whirlpool also live on the margin of society?  Surely there are people whose parents are splitting up, or who are waiting for a scary test result from a doctor.  I’m sure someone walked past who thought about taking their life today.  There were people who have never had a father, or never had a mother; or who never had anyone believe in them.

And amidst the yelling, they’re missed.  No one tells them that Jesus is their healer.  That no matter what side they take, who they vote for, who they slept with, or who they’ve been attracted to, Jesus wants to love them, take away their shame and guilt, and give them a new heart and a new identity.  As I saw person after person spilling around the clump of arguers in the middle, I became overwhelmed by the prospect of what pain might be represented by the hearts inside them.

I’d really like for each of those people who walk by to know someone who truly follows Jesus.  Someone who both would take the time to know their pain, and help them get to know their healer.

Tonight I’m having dinner with a bunch of Destino leaders who lead freshman Bible studies, to talk with them about how to make the most of their relationships with these students.  I think I just found my conversation starter.

Photo Credit:  www.flickr.com, “Dave Stokes”, www.flickr.com/photos/33909700@N02/3159698458/

Pulling up roots Pt. 3–Jesus calls our bluff

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed ad self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.” Matthew 23:25-26

In my last post I talked about the importance of having a safe community to be honest about who you really are and about the things you’ve been hiding or lying about. That’s a big risk, because you don’t know how a person is going to react to your honesty. We lie about sin and hide our shame for a reason. But Jesus asks us to behave this way with one another because we (ideally) act the same way towards him. Jesus knows us inside and out, and yet the Bible says that he accepted us even when we were at our worst (Romans 5:8).

How many times do we try to bluff God, though? I pretend like I have bargaining power with him, or spend time reminding him of how I’m at least better than someone else. I’m reminded of the story Jesus told about the tax collector and the Pharisee in Luke 18.  The Pharisee, who was legitimately an outwardly righteous person, went to his worship service and spent his prayer time reminding God how good he was. The tax collector, who was a social outcast and widely regarded as a traitor and among the lowest of sinners, simply stood at the back of the temple, looking down at his feet, and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

When you play poker, an important skill is bluffing, or getting people to believe something different about your cards than what is actually true. What’s going on is that you decide whether you can deceive the person and manipulate them into doing what will benefit you. If you don’t think you’ll be able to do it, then you fold and give up that hand.

I, however, am shockingly bad at poker. I’m not good at getting to people to believe things about my cards, so I employ what I refer to as the “camouflage strategy.” That is, I try to keep a low profile and let people kind of forget about me until I get a really good hand.

I think it’s a pretty appropriate metaphor for what we try to do with God when we hide our sin from him.  We either try to pull the wool over his eyes and manipulate him into doing what will benefit us. Or sometimes we try to hide from him, hoping he’ll just kind of forget about us until things get a little better.

“Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there…

If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,’
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day
for darkness is as light to you.”

-Psalm 139:7-8, 11-12

“All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweet us away.”

-Isaiah 64:6

Photo Credit:  www.flickr.com, “Viri G”, http://www.flickr.com/photos/28754325@N04/2683932406/

Pulling up roots Pt. 2–Shedding light on things

In my last post I asked the question, “How do we live in light of the fact that Jesus wants to pull up the roots of sin in our lives, not just ‘trim the weeds’ and make us look externally good?” Our Destino community finished up last semester and started this new one talking about what makes a community healthy. There is a connection between a healthy community and this pulling up the roots of sin. At our Destino Winter Conference last week, our keynote speaker described the kind of community that breeds healing as, “a place where people can be ‘naked and unashamed.’” This borrows imagery from Genesis 2:25, where Adam and Eve, having a perfectly harmonious relationship with God and with each other, didn’t hide anything about who they were. That, of course, was before sin became a part of their reality, so they had nothing to hide. Today, however, it’s a different story. We have shame and guilt from things we’ve done and things that have happened to us. We have our background and family history that we either want to hide or selectively reveal to others. We have lies and facades that we want people around us to believe.

There are a lot of things to hide and a lot of good reasons to hide them too. Our world’s main operating principle is pretty much survival of the fittest, so if you can’t be the fittest, the next best thing is to look like the fittest and hope nobody calls your bluff. Now, the Kingdom of God isn’t like that at all, but unfortunately we treat it like the rest of the world. That’s to be expected, though, because we’ve only ever known the world. But our Christian communities ought to be places where we don’t need to keep up the lies.

Maybe part of the solution is just talking about it honestly with another person, saying, “Look, I have lies, you have lies, and I’m sure we’re both tired of keeping up with it. Let’s agree to be a safe place for each other to be honest and start to heal.” In I John 1:7, God tells us, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin.” I’m praying that in Destino, if we get nothing else accomplished, that we’d allow light to be shed on our lives, every part, and therefore start to be purified from every sin.

Photo Credit:  www.flickr.com, “jcarlosn”, www.flickr.com/photos/jcarlosn/3758512806/

Pulling up roots Pt. 1

Imagine a sin.  A sin you can’t give up.  Maybe a habit you’ve tried to kick, or a pattern you’ve tried to break.  You get new resolve every once-in-awhile to try to change, and you break free for a little while.  Or maybe you make a New Year’s resolution, and you see decent success until Martin Luther King’s birthday.

But then you fail.  Giving into the temptation feels good, but then you feel empty and shameful.  You don’t want to admit your failure, so you don’t call your friends.  But in your isolation, you lose your resolve to fight when you face temptation again.  Thus the cycle continues.

As I (Devin) have seen this pattern take shape in our Destino community, I’ve been frustrated as I’ve seen people make mistakes that I’ve made.  I’ve been angry when I realize that a friend of mine is basing his actions on lies.  And I’ve wept as I’ve seen people do things that have consequences that will last a lifetime and even affect other generations.  We’ve started a conversation with our leaders about this pattern of sin, shame, and isolation, and I feel like it could be a major turning point for our community.

I’m going to write a series of posts on some of my thoughts along these lines.  I’d love to get your feedback on this stuff because my thoughts are all still very much in development.

One of our leaders talks about sin this way:  ”Don’t just cut the fruit, pull up the root.”  That is, when you see someone’s sinful behavior, remember that the most important thing is the heart.  I remember growing up there was this part of our lawn that didn’t have any grass in it–only weeds.  The yard looked great as long as you kept it mowed; the grass and weeds really looked the same so long as it was short.  But if you skipped a week with the lawn mower, you’d see crabgrass, dandelions, and thistles sprout up, and the true quality of the lawn would become evident.  Of course, just because you mowed the lawn didn’t mean it wasn’t filled with weeds–you just couldn’t see them.  To actually get rid of the weeds, you’d have to kill the root either by digging them out or with some sort of spray weed killer.  The point I’m trying to make is that sin is the fruit (or the weeds), but the real problem lies in the heart (i.e., the root system).

Jesus didn’t come to die for us so that we could trim up the weeds of sin and make them look like grass.  He wants to dig out the roots.  (Sorry, I don’t have any analogy for the spray weed killer…)

My question is, how do we live in light of this fact?  What does it mean to focus our efforts on helping people pull up the weeds of sin by the root instead of focusing on trimming the weeds and making our lives look good? On the other hand, what do we do about the poisonous fruit sin in our churches, organizations, and communities?  How should the leaders of those communities lead in not trimming the fruit but cutting out the root of sin?

Photo Credit:  www.flickr.com, “evaekeblad”, www.flickr.com/photos/evaekeblad/3003740368/

A Corny “I’m thankful” Post About Thanksgiving

Hello friends! We still aren’t updating this blog as often as we’d like, but we’re getting there.  I wanted to write a quick update to tell you what we’ve been up to since I last wrote. First things first, though. After our last post, we received many emails, phone calls, and letters from many of you, and the Lord really used them to encourage us. We are still in a place of weakness, and still feel like things are difficult, but we also feel like many of you are walking through this with us and that we aren’t alone.  Thank you for that. We feel so loved by you.

That said, the biggest update is that my (Casey)’s parents helped us buy a plane ticket home for their thanksgiving celebration today. Part of my story is that Thanksgiving is one of the most special times of year for me, and carries some of my sweetest memories. As a kid, it was a time when I could get up really early and bake pumpkin pies with my grandpa (who, I’m pretty sure, was really just doing my mom a favor by letting her sleep in). In Missouri, it’s often around this time that the year’s first snowfall happens, and that’s always kind of magical for me. Two years ago, I got to spend Thanksgiving with one of my best friends who is a missionary in East Asia.  And while we were there, Devin proposed to me. These are just a few examples, but I think you get the picture that it’s a really special day in my world. This year, I feel like the rest from work and the chance to spend time with my family came at the perfect time.

I feel like one of the things that the Lord has done inside of me since since I started being a part of Destino is that He’s really teaching what it looks like to love my family. Because I tend to be a more independent person and because I live far away, it’s easy for me to take my family for granted. In reality, though, my family is incredible. They are certainly a gift from God.

It’s been such a hard semester, but I feel like spending a little bit of time around my parents and siblings has been really therapeutic. They know me. We share a common history and common traditions. The fact that it took like 10 minutes and about eight tries to get a decent family picture because too many of us were laughing was really refreshing to me.

And so I guess this is just a post to say that I’m thankful. I know that this is a really cliche time of year to be thankful, but I am. I’m thankful for my family-my blood family and my family in the Lord. Truly, he has blessed me abundantly.

 

On Weakness

 ”But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.                            2 Corinthians 12:9

After taking a long hiatus from writing anything on this blog, I’d like to write a bit about the current season that Devin and I find ourselves in. There’s a lot of reasons why we haven’t been writing a lot, but one of them is that things have been hard. But I don’t want to hide that, I want to be honest about where we are, especially if that means that God is glorified in it or that they people we love can be more deeply involved in our lives.

We receive a lot of missionary prayer letters every month. We love knowing what our friends around the world are doing and how they are seeing the Lord work. It’s incredible to see God’s hand working in all of their ministries! But sometimes, (and this certainly isn’t everyone) I think it’s easy for missionaries to paint an extra positive mask on their lives and ministries. I think it’s easy for us to tell the story about the awesome conversation they had with that one freshman in the cafeteria and completely ignore the ten stories about feeling lonely on campus, being rejected, or being stood up.

I think there’s lots of reasons people do this. One of them is that we want to celebrate about that really good story, and we want people to celebrate with us in the Lord’s goodness. That certainly isn’t wrong. I do think there are wrong motivations, however. For example, some might not share hard stories because they think people don’t care or aren’t interested. They also may not share hard stories because they think people won’t want to partner with them if things don’t seem to be going well all of the time.  Even worse is when we don’t want to share these stories for fear that someone will think that we are weak.

Well, this is me debunking any myth that I’m not weak. I am. I still struggle with sin and discouragement and some days I feel really lonely. There are some days when I wonder if I am able to communicate anything since I experience so much miscommunication. There are some days when I have doubts and want to quit.

Especially in my job, it can be easy to see the task, the task of reaching the college students within my scope (about 20,000 I think) with the Gospel, helping them learn to follow Jesus, loving them well, building a community where one doesn’t currently exist, and sending these same students out into the world to reach others, and I shudder.  My weaknesses are too great for those tasks. I cannot possibly do this alone.

Where is the hope in this? The hope is in the fact that I haven’t been asked to do this alone. My hope is in a God who has infinite love, infinite strength, and infinite wisdom. My hope is in the fact that He has rescued me from sin a death and darkness and that He is reaching other people with that same grace. He has promised to never leave me.  He has promised that His grace is sufficient for everything He’s asking me to do.

Why can I be honest about my weakness, and even boast in it? Because God already told me that apart from Him I can do nothing, but with God, all things are possible. His power is made perfect in my weakness.