Jesus reserved His strongest words for the spiritual leaders of His day. He put no pressure on the masses to submit to their leaders but instead put the pressure on leaders to be slaves of all.

The principle of being servant (the word is “slave” in Greek) to all is devastating to chains of command and systems where submission is upward. In God’s kingdom, the power pyramid is reversed, up-ended, so that authority is on the bottom, not the top.

When Jesus alludes to submission, it is always directed toward leaders or the ones who want to be great in the Kingdom. And they are always ordered to submit downward, not upward. For example, in Matthew 20:26 Jesus declares, “Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant.”

This downward submission of the greatest seems to be a natural outgrowth of the way Jesus viewed people. He served them because He knew their value. We lord over others because we neither recognize their value nor see people in the way Jesus does.

In practice then, one who leads in the style of Jesus does not use forms of coercion nor does he depend on institutional position for authority. Instead, by serving people, he leads as they recognize his ability and authority and choose voluntarily to follow. And those who follow by whatever means will become like their leader, for better or worse.

Perhaps a good way to handle the trappings of leadership would be to put the plaque SLAVE over the doors of our plush offices! As you see, a slave should have no title that raises him above the lowly level and definitively no title that raises him above others. There are so many ways that the nature of Jesus is in direct opposition to the leadership patterns of the world that this list could go on and on.

Where can we start? Perhaps we should start in the family where we can firstly be servant-parents. We can certainly live it out in church and community where we seek to be servant leaders. Servanthood is not just the mandate for leadership. Servanthood is also the measure of our spirituality. A question then for all existing and emerging leaders   “Who serves to lead?”