The God Who Serves, Part Four
This is the fourth and last installment in the series, The God Who Serves. In the first three posts, we saw that our amazing Savior’s ministry to His disciples was one of simple servanthood, including being so servile that He attended to their needs as a waiter and cook. However, we saw that the most challenging of Jesus’ teaching concerning leadership may be His command that His disciples were not to “exercise authority” over others, which is how Gentiles lead (Matthew 20:25). It seems clear that this denial of the exercise of authority would apply to positional authority, not spiritual authority, since Jesus and His disciples, apostles and elders obviously had spiritual authority. Jesus is teaching us that servants in His kingdom are to have no positional authority. This is very difficult for us to obey in a practical way today. How does a pastor/leader lead a church or ministry using spiritual authority only? The use of positional authority would be necessary to accomplish almost everything in leading an organization, including the hiring and firing of staff.
Jesus has thrown a spiritual grenade into the midst of our leadership paradigm.