Reflecting on Servant Leadership
by Fr. Richard Edward
From the February Perspective,
the newsletter of the Church of Our Saviour:
"Then Jesus and his disciples came to Capernaum; and when Jesus was in the house he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the way?" But they silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." --- Mark 9:33-35
As our parish adult education forum on the Hannah Freedom School in Marin City was winding down just this last Sunday, one of our members raised an insightful question:
Just where does the term "Servant Leader" come from?
The Hannah Project has been using the term to describe the young adults trained each summer to shepherd children in literacy enrichment and community empowerment. Clergy have heard the term tossed around in seminaries for a number of years. But where does it originate? I was curious, so I looked it up.
It turns out that "Servant Leadership" was initially coined by Robert Greenleaf, an American writer who studied business managerial styles in the early- to mid-twentieth century. Concerned about the authoritarian style of leadership that had come to dominate the corporate world and inspired by his own reading and experience, Greenleaf set about developing a model in which leaders saw themselves primarily responsible to those who worked for them, their colleagues, and the success of others and the community more so than the individual self. He became a renowned consultant, and his ideas spread to just about every organizational sector in American society.
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