Servant Leadership Can Work in Local Church Development

by Alan Johnson

I confess that Jesus’ teachings about servanthood (e.g., John 13:14, 15; Matt. 20:27, 28) always left me feeling uneasy. Although I agreed with the idea of leading by serving, I didn’t know how to practice it.

I confess that Jesus’ teachings about servanthood (e.g., John 13:14, 15; Matt. 20:27, 28) always left me feeling uneasy. Although I agreed with the idea of leading by serving, I didn’t know how to practice it.

I have studied models of servant leadership, but the most comfortable role for me was sitting behind my desk with my time management tools, organizational charts, action lists, and clearly worded objectives. From my protected place of authority I was prepared to mobilize the people I was supposed to serve to do great exploits for God, by telling them what to do and how they could fit into my program.

But, lacking people to fit my program, I did it myself. I comforted myself by saying that if you want the job done right, do it yourself. Performance, efficiency, and results were the key words. Nevertheless, the feeling nagged me that my style was closer to that of big business than to the Son of Man’s.

My pragmatism and goal orientation forced me into what I call pushing rather than serving leadership. Although this made me uneasy, I justified it as the means of doing things for God’s kingdom.

When I arrived in Thailand, however, a number of things happened to give me a totally new slant on leading by serving. I haven’t cornered the market on the idea, nor have I completely mastered it, but at least I have found a model I can use to apply servant leadership.

The first thing was a conversation with an experienced Thai pastor whom I deeply respected. I asked him what he thought the missionary’s role should be in working with a Thai pastor to plant churches. He told me it was best for the missionary to stand behind the pastor as a supporter and encourager. He explained that this was neither an over-under nor a superior-subordinate relationship, but working together in partnership. However, the missionary had to recognize that the Thai pastor must be the “up front” person, so that the ensuing ministry would be built around him and not around the missionary’s skills and money.

I listened to him, but couldn’t fathom his answer at the time. I had never worked that way before. I could never have guessed how often his points would come back to me in the future, as I wrestled with how to apply such a principle to my ministry.

This was my assignment: Work with a Thai pastor to develop a church in a provincial capital. Although I never said it in so many words, my commitment to developing people was limited by what I considered acceptable quality and performance. As long as the person was performing up to my standards, I would be willing to stay behind and encourage. But if the performance lagged, I would jump in and monopolize, calling it training.

Because of my goal and performance orientation, results became the controlling factor in my ministry. First, I settled into a pushing mode: pushing for better performance, pushing my agenda, pushing for results. I got more and more frustrated with this, because I often felt as if I were the only one doing anything. It frustrated the Thai pastor because I squeezed him into an ill-fitting mold.

Second, I gravitated toward my ministry strengths. For the sake of quality, I monopolized, thinking I was modeling for the others. The people were glad to go along with this, because they didn’t have to take any responsibility for the outcome.

Take the music for the Sunday morning worship. I’m musically inclined, so it was natural for me to start to help with the song leading and the instrumentals. This worked well when I was in town, and I thought my training had succeeded. However, I was appalled when my wife told me how things collapsed when I was away. Without some outside plan or help—usually me—the worship services were falling apart.

One day, however, it dawned on me that I was not going to be a permanent fixture in this church. In all of the excitement I had forgotten how temporary I really was. Someday furlough would come, or perhaps anewassignment. My separation from this town and these people was inevitable.

Gradually I began to see the trap I was building for myself and my fellow workers. By God’s grace, I started to realize that my problem was my poor model of serving. I continually recalled the wise counsel of the Thai pastor, who had told me to keep the Thai brother up front. In his experience he had seen clearly what was just coming into focus for me: To allow ministry to be built on the missionary’s skills, and not on those of the local believers, is to doom such a ministry to long-term failure. The missionary will not be there for the long haul, but the people will.

As I struggled with this, another model of leading by serving emerged. One day the light dawned: I could serve others by allowing them to do the work, even when initially I could do it better myself. The breakthrough phrase was “even when I could do it better myself.”

Once I figured this out, my idea of service took on a whole new meaning. I came to see my role as realeasing others to do the work of the ministry through their gifts and abilities. Without telling anybody, I changed my methods. I didn’t drop out, but I worked at deeper involvement with the local leaders. Serving meant allowing them the freedom to make mistakes, and then supporting them. Serving meant enduring some subpar worship times, some bungled witnessing, and some sloppy cell groups for the sake of growing people who eventually would go on to lead the work themselves. Serving meant allowing them to develop and express their agenda, and my having the grace and patience to keep quiet and be supportive. Sometimes, I would do it first, then we would do it together, then they would do it, and then we would evaluate. I emphasized that all ministry in town was their responsibility, and if something was going to come of it, it would be because of their work, not mine.

What happened after I started to follow my new approach to servanthood? First, I gained huge relief and liberty, because I didn’t have to push everything. But second, fear of losing control and subsequent failure through lack of growth gripped me. When you turn over the keys to the car, you risk a crash. But my commitment to serving pulled me back enough so that the people could use their spiritual gifts and come along as leaders.

Occasionally, I still pushed people for immediate results. But gradually, as I saw growth and development all around me, my fear subsided. No, the people didn’t always do things the way I would have preferred, but they were doing it and taking responsibility.

How have I fought off this fear? First, I go back to my ultimate goal as a missionary, which is to produce fruit that remains. In the short term, serving others by building them up and releasing them to ministry is not the fastest way to reach results you can report back home. However, by faith, I remind myself that over the long haul the ministry that grows out of the vision and burden of the local people will be the most effective, in bringing people to faith in Christ and establishing them into the local church. Second, I remember that God works through people, and developing people he can use is a strategic ministry.

One of the truly great benefits of servant leadership is that it is people-oriented and people-sensitive. In my pushing style, I was always trying to make people fit my program. Looking back, I sense that I was mostly using people, not training them. Now I approach each situation as a listener and observer, not with a previously developed agenda.

Thinking about leading by serving has also led me to examine missionaries’ relationships with the local church. Just as I had frustrated my local brother through my leadership style, so mission bodies can find themselves at odds with their churches. It’s much easier to discuss partnership principles before you go to the field than it is to work them out with real human beings and organizations from another culture.

Too often the tensions arise out of conflicting goals. Myproblemswith my Thai church set in when I pushed my agenda without discovering what their agenda was. In the same way at the corporate level, our vision and goals as a missionary fellowship can easily be vastly different than those of the national church.

Leading by serving must come into play at this level, too. It changes the kinds of questions we ask as we relate with the national church. Rather than start with what we want to see happen, we should begin by helping our brothers to accomplish their vision and goals. Instead of selling our show, we should ask questions and draw out the desires and longings of the local leaders. If we serve by helping the church to reach its indigenous goals, we greatly enhance the prospects for harmony, unity, and more effective ministry.

Although this is a painstaking process, it’s a small price to pay contrasted with the consequences of talking partnership while doing our own thing on another track. Tension, disunity, discord, and disappointment spring up when we fail to achieve true partnership based on a servant attitude. Combined, they severely retard the growth and development of the church.

In the future, I hope to continue to develop models that will allow me to serve others. Lists, charts, and goals—all of them helpful—are still part of my work. I will still struggle with my new concept of serving, because it demands my time. Telling other people what to do is a lot simpler and neater for me, while helping them to develop their gifts and abilities consumes hours and days. It also demands humility as I wait to see what God is doing in and through them. But I plan to keep on learning and working diligently at this, so that I can begin to approach what Jesus had in mind when he taught us to be servants.

—–

EMQ, Vo. 27, No. 4, pp. 378-383. Copyright © 1991 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.

Comments are closed.