Transcript
Being a servant is counterintuitive and unnatural for us. You see that in Mark 9. Jesus is just for the first time talked in the most specific way about His impending death. And He's walking with the disciples and He notices the disciples behind Him are arguing. And so, He says, "What are you arguing about?"
Arguing About Who Is Greatest
These are the leaders that He's going to entrust move the gospel around the world to and they're embarrassed to answer; and finally, the answer comes out. They are arguing about who's going to be greatest in the kingdom. Now, isn't that amazing? Rather than discussing the fact that Jesus was leaving, how unthinkable that would be, rather than being sad, they're jockeying for the best position in the kingdom. That's us. And so, the call to servanthood and sacrifices and suffering of that has to be held before a leadership community at all because we're not called to mastery. We're called to servanthood.
When success happens, what often happens, what often takes place is we move -- these steps are small and subtle -- from a place of servanthood to a spirit of entitlement. We've done that because we've taken credit for things we could have never earned or produced on our own. We start thinking of ourselves as leaders as being deserving, and our people as being consumers.
And we think of the things we deserve and all of a sudden, this thing is flipped on its head. And rather than giving ourselves to serve, we want to be served. And so, we need an environment in every ministry and every church where leaders are constantly asking this question: Are we leading? Are we ministering out of a servant's heart?
