Jesus Redefines Leadership

Jesus said: “The greatest one among you must be your servant.” (Matthew 23:11) This sounds a lot like servanthood. R. K. Greenleaf, in his book Servant Leadership, attached servanthood to leadership as an ethical issue by encouraging leaders to empathize with their followers and by working to take care of them and nurture them. He goes as far as to assert that an individual emerges as a leader by first becoming a servant. In his book entitled Leadership, J. M. Burns supports this concept with his notable discussion on transformational leadership. His contention is that transformational leadership is distinguished from other leadership theories by its strong emphasis on meeting the needs of the follower. This sounds a lot like the greatest leader who ever lived. Jesus redefined leadership in His day. It was radical for Jesus to define great leadership in terms of servanthood because in His day Jewish free persons, like their Gentile counterparts, considered slaves socially inferior. Shelly, in his book Empowering Your Church Through Creativity and Change, brings this idea of servant leadership home when he states: “I’m becoming more and more convinced that God’s leader will never be allowed to get too comfortable … God’s call to leadership is not a call to privilege and displays of power but a call to servanthood and humility.”

Leadership That Challenges the Status Quo

Jesus challenged the cultural status quo in Mathew 28:18 when He gathered the eleven disciples on the Mountain and told them: (All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.) The Roman Empire, in the first century, represented a growing dynasty, which combined superiority with cruelty and could abruptly change from civilization, strength and power to fear, totalitarianism and self-indulgence. Rome was a beautiful nation with a great deal of inequality at its core. A few people were extremely rich while others lived in severe poverty. It encouraged a very rigid hierarchical system in which the emperor is at the summit of the social economical pyramid, and the further one falls to the base of the pyramid the more difficult life becomes. Authority followed this pyramid in such a way that those at the bottom were expected to be totally submitted to those at the top. Matthew shows Jesus moving counter to this cultural reality by establishing His authority outside this system. Jesus authority came from within as opposed to without. Romans, while they encouraged their own religion, were not intolerant to other religions. Rome had accepted into its pantheon deities from the Italian tribes and from Asia Minor. In the provinces, the great territorial gods-such as Saturn in North Africa and Jehovah among the Jews-were accepted as legal religions on the grounds that their rites, even if barbarous, were sanctified by ancient tradition. The cultural expectation was that religious authority be subservient to civil and military authority. Jesus assertion that He had “all” authority was radical and contradictory to the accepted culture. Jesus, in declaring His ultimate authority, offers an alternative vision of the world.