Leadership roles should be modeled after Jesus, Elder reports

In our church leadership roles, do we practice what we preach? “I feel confident preaching on Sunday, but I can’t find time for my other responsibilities.”
   
“When major conflicts arise in the church, I hope they just disappear!”
   
“I never know what the rest of the church staff is doing, or when they’re going to do it.”
   
“There are so many divergent interests in my church, how can we act as a single body?”
   
I hear these sentiments all too often from church leaders across the country. It is clear there is a common thirst, from large-church ministers to small-church bivocational pastors: the desire to improve in their roles as leaders.
   
Budding pastors as well as seasoned veterans are often blindsided by the emotional, interpersonal and administrative elements of today’s church life. But balancing budgets, schedules and church disputes while still ministering to congregation members is just as essential to church leadership as the message from the pulpit. Luckily for those of us in the church, the answers for effective leadership are right in front of us.
   
Servant leadership is a burgeoning movement within corporations and educational institutions. It’s also an ancient pattern taught by Jesus to His followers.
   
In church life, we may be so familiar with the teaching of Jesus about servant leadership that we can ignore its impact in the strategic direction and day-to-day operation of the church.
   
To put it bluntly, do we “practice what we preach” when it comes to being a leader in the church, its institutions and its agencies? How do we organize our time, handle conflict and manage decision-making? What is our philosophy of motivation, of delegation? Do we listen to those we lead in a way that honors them as truly an equal part of the body of Christ?
   
The corporate and institutional world is discovering the power of servanthood for dynamic, effective leadership, and has made servant leadership a driving force in management philosophy in recent years.
   
Robert K. Greenleaf, credited with being the “grandfather” of this leadership style in business, concluded that great leaders must serve others first and foremost.
   
In “Servant Leadership,” Greenleaf says, “A new moral principle is emerging which holds that the only authorit(ies) deserving one’s allegiance … are individuals who are chosen as leaders because they are proven and trusted as servants.”
   
In “Leadership Jazz,” Max DePree says a jazz band is an expression of servant leadership — because of “the need for everyone to perform as individuals and as a group,” and “the absolute dependence of the leader on the members of the band.”
   
Leadership is a trusting, team relationship, not a personal state of achievement. It is the way to lead in Jesus’ image.