Saturday, May 7, 2011
Gifting the Servant
In a PDF file for Christian Leadership on youthtrain.com, the author proposes that the giftedness of leadership is conferred by God alone. The gift is then developed and honed through spiritual intimacy and instruction which results in spiritual insight and influence. The bulk of the paper covered the area of intimacy and instruction. The author broke them up in three categories of gifting, office, and function. From there, it became vital to understand the difference between authority and power. According to the author, “authority is the right to lead and power is the ability to lead.” The illustration given was with a policeman trying to stop a speeding car by holding out his hand. He has the authority, but not the power to do so. The point is that you need both, which are given only by God’s conferring within the construct of intimacy with him and instruction from the spiritual gifting that he gives. The author then concludes that Christian leadership is essentially all servant leadership. Servant leadership encompasses three areas, according to the author, which are 1. Not being self centered, (Matthew 20:20-28) 2. Being other centered (John 13:3-16) 3. That it is God honoring (Philippians 3:3-11). In conclusion, I found some of the questions following the 3 areas of servant leadership convicting. In particular, “I am happy to see others excel in leadership,
even when they are doing better than me.” I ask, am I willing die to myself, my ego, and my pride to see the gospel furthered by someone else? This one’s tough!
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I will do this one.
ReplyDeleteI also found myself convicted when reading the questions the author poses at the end of the article. That being said, I think you could have done a better job of engaging critically with the article, instead of mostly summarizing it. For instance, I did not find his metaphor of the police officer stopping the criminal to be particularly useful. What would “power” in a leadership context amount to? Surely we cannot force people to follow the direction we would like them to go. Yet this is the type of “power” that the statue has. More elaboration would have been appreciated, particularly to address what power in leadership means and how this relates to the free will of followers. I also think that it is a mistake to include all of the giftings that the author listed under the Dimensions of Christian Leadership section. It seemed that the author was assuming that all of these giftings would be found in one individual. This, however, seems to operate under a particular paradigm of Christian leadership wherein the local pastor is tasked with basically everything. Yet Paul provides a list of various leadership roles that are each held by different individuals, not by one person alone (Ephesians 4:11).
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ReplyDeleteMy apologies my friend. Be blessed by God and thank you for understanding my issues.
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