About Serving...

In her new book, Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian, Michelle Lee-Barnewall offers a fresh approach to the debate over gender roles in the church. Instead of pitting issues of authority against equality, she offers a kingdom perspective which emphasizes inclusion and unity over equality, and service over authority.

Although she is speaking into the gender role issue, her biblical study has striking implications for church leadership. Especially noteworthy for me was her discussion of the concept of servant-leadership.

“When one begins by considering oneself to be a servant, the end result is noticeably different from when one begins by thinking of oneself as a leader. In the former, making other’s [sic] needs primary is a natural occurrence, whereas in the latter, serving is a later, secondary addition. Greenleaf [Robert Greenleaf, whom she quotes as the founder of the servant leadership movement] causes us to ask the question, Is the point to be a leader who serves or a servant who leads?”

Referring to the first four chapters of I Corinthians in which Paul describes himself and his associates as servants, helpers, stewards and slaves, she writes: “In various ways Paul sends the message that the attention should be given not to the apostles, but to the one who appointed them and the task for which they have been commissioned.”

“Paul is not simply saying that they are leaders who have the attitude of a servant. He asserts that as servants they are the opposite of what the world esteems in status, privilege, and other worldly considerations when it considers them in their position. They are merely those who have been tasked by a master to whom they are responsible. As a result, their worth and identity come not from their own abilities, but solely from God. The Corinthians should esteem God rather than Paul and Appolos, who are merely the help God uses to accomplish his purposes [emphasis mine].”

My wife and I are watching the Neflix series The Crown, based on the life of Queen Elizabeth. In one recent scene, the Queen with her husband Philip is hosting President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy at Buckingham Palace. When the President and First Lady arrive, they are greeted by a ranking military officer and flanked by crisply uniformed staff. The officer escorts them to their audience with the Queen who is also attended by other courtiers and household staff. He announces them to the Queen and then, at the Queen’s signal, discretely withdraws with the rest of the staff leaving the two couples to talk privately.

As I thought about what Lee-Barnewall had written about servant leadership, Queen Elizabeth’s servants, especially the military officer who escorted the President, offered a perfect illustration of how church leaders and pastors should see themselves. Our job is to introduce others to the King and then get out of his way. We “…are merely the help God uses to accomplish his purposes.”

Amen.