The August edition of Church Staff Digest published by the South Carolina Baptist Convention emphasizes in its lead article that building the kingdom of God is a “team sport” and that “everything rises and falls on leadership.”
Don Kirkland“True leadership is not lordship,” the article makes clear. “It is not top-down, politically fueled or self-motivated. It is not about controlling people; it is about serving them.”
These are important truths to bear in mind as the more than 2,000 congregations affiliated with our state Baptist convention begin new church years, most of them in September.
To live as servants of others in the greater family of faith is no easy task much, and probably most, of the time. It requires of us a humility that is a product of our dependence upon God and our respect for others.
Some believers, due to their temperaments, appear better suited to be servants than others. And yet, such service in the name of our Lord is required of all Christians.
In Luke’s account of the last Passover meal that Jesus celebrated with the apostles only hours before his death, an argument broke out among the disciples over which of them was the greatest.
Jesus warned them against falling for a false measure of greatness determined by the world. “The most important one of you should be like the least important,” he told them, “and your leader should be like a servant. I have been with you as a servant.”
In John’s gospel, that Passover meal in an upper room somewhere in Jerusalem set the stage for an unexpected drama as our Lord took a towel and basin of water and washed the feet of the disciples as only a servant would.
Having completed that humble act, Jesus, assuming the role of master teacher, quizzed the disciples. “Do you understand what I have done?” he asked them. “You call me your teacher and Lord, and you should, because that is who I am, and if your Lord and teacher has washed your feet, you should do the same for each other. I have set the example, and you should do for each other exactly what I have done for you.”
The Greek scholar A.T. Robertson, in his study of the gospels, places the argument by the disciples over greatness as taking place prior to having their feet washed by Jesus.
If Robertson is correct in this order of events, it emphasizes even more the striking contrast between the idea of greatness accepted by the apostles and the world of that day, and greatness as defined for all time by Jesus.
Centuries ago, our Lord turned an upper room into his class room to teach his apostles an elementary, and yet essential, lesson in discipleship. It was a lesson so simple, they could not forget it. And it was a lesson so significant, they must not forget it.
And neither must we, not if we desire with all our hearts to follow in the footsteps of the Christ who stooped to serve and showed by his example what it meant then, and what it means now, to be a disciple of his.