The disciples had been the trainees of Jesus for three years, following Him around, listening to everything He had to say, and assisting in His ministry. His death came as a terrible blow to them.
The hours between His death and the revelation of His resurrection must have been devastatingly depressing and terrifying. Someone might be coming for them next. Yet, if the disciples had remained scattered in silent exile after the Crucifixion or huddled in fear and never emerged from the mountain where Matthew says the risen Jesus revealed Himself, Christ’s mission would have ended in failure.
His message would never have gotten out. We might be colonized subjects of pagan Rome today, Jews still waiting for the Messiah or otherwise oblivious to Christ’s teachings.
Servant leaders produce servant leaders.
A leader inspires others to become leaders and fulfill their own purposes.
In essence, true leadership success is measured by the diminishing dependence of your followers. Colleagues will need the leader less, be less dependent, if the leader is doing a good job.
If your staff, congregation, or family can function well when you are not around, you are an effective leader. If they can carry on even after you have retired, resigned, or gone to Glory, you have fulfilled your mission.
Leadership effectiveness is measured not by what happens in your presence but by what happens in your absence.
If your household dissolved in chaos every time you went out on an errand, or worse, your family disintegrated upon your death and never recovered, something was wrong with your leadership. The test of a leader is how many others are leading— or at least trained to lead.
True leadership provides the resources, policies, and assistance to help people discover their gifts. Look at the failure of Communism; it could not work even though it preaches equality. It still resulted in the elite versus the masses. The masses were not motivated to work because the system did not allow them to exercise their gifts. They were commanded to do what the state said.
That worked against personal development. Poverty, low self-esteem, lack of incentive, lack of entrepreneurial spirit— all of these are products of any culture that does not encourage people to discover their personal leadership.
If leaders provide an environment that encourages people to discover their own gifts, everybody benefits. No one is just a servant, and everybody is a leader who serves a gift to others.
The economy becomes powerful and strong because small businesses are the strength of economic growth.
Entrepreneurship enables people to discover their gift of leadership.
“Greatness is measured by how much of yourself you lose in service to the others.”
True success in life is not measured by how much you accumulate but by how much you lose. A full life is determined not by how long you live but how much you donated to your generation. In essence self-service is greater than being self- serving.
I do not think I could have found a greater example of a woman who wants to be a servant than in my beautiful wife and partner in work, Ruth. She is the epitome of compassion in much the same way my parents were. Every time I think of her, I think of the perfect spirit. In that way, she has the same spirit as my mother, who was so generous she shared what little we had with others.
Ruth always wants to make sure that people are comfortable and have what they need. She is always working or initiating projects to help young women, girls, or older people. Her compassion encourages and inspires me. My wife works with all of my projects and is constantly there to be a support.
I met her when I was in high school, involved in community groups to help other young people. She already knew who I was, though I did not know her. Later, she also attended Oral Roberts University. She was learning secretarial skills, which at that time were thought to be a natural choice for females.
In the community where I grew up, most women were expected to go into secretarial work or nursing, or similar fields.
In the twenty-nine years that we have been married, it has been very gratifying for me to watch Ruth evolve. But taking a public role did not come easily to her at first.
She was afraid of up-front involvement and quite introverted. Ruth never had a desire to be seen and preferred to be in the background to help. Today, she is a public speaker and she can represent me, if I am not able to serve.
Sometimes she will do a better job!
She has completely transformed because she simply wanted to serve. She found purpose and acted on her desire to serve her gifts to the world. This is the source of greatness. If you serve, you become great.
We misunderstand what Jesus taught, because our concept of servant has more to do with servitude than it has to do with serving oneself to the world. Our concept has to do with subservience. It has to do with belittling yourself or making yourself inferior or less.