2021.10.17 | Leadership Development
“Leadership Development”
Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, California
Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
October 17, 2021
Some years ago I enrolled in and completed a certificate program in organizational development offered by the Business School at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois.
The program was interesting and helpful for the work I was engaged in at the national offices, where I worked on executive recruitment and leadership development for our 475 UCC-related health and human service agencies. Many of the lessons that I learned in that program and during that job have been helpful to me in serving as your pastor.
That said, as I read and studied today’s gospel lesson, I could not help but notice how different Jesus’ approach to leadership development was and is compared with the best-practices approaches to leadership development that are taught in today’s most revered business schools.
Jesus' approach to leadership development was not only out of step with modern business approaches, it was contrary to the normative approaches subscribed to in the first century.
II
Consider the scene of today’s gospel reading and note the irony. According to the author of Mark’s gospel, James and John (the sons of Zebedee) had been following Jesus since the beginning of his earthly ministry. Their trek had not been an easy one. They had endured many hardships along the way.
It seems that their sense of seniority, the “stripes” that they’d earned, and the various cultural influences that had affected all conflated, and caused James and John to wonder just what was in this ministry for them? What would be their reward for loyalty, longevity, and perseverance?
These questions had popped into their heads before, no doubt, but in today’s scene, they not only were pondering the questions--they wanted answers. So James and John walked up to the boss and stated their demands: “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”
Jesus knows what’s on their mind before they approach, but he insists that they state their intent anyway, and they do.
James and John explain that they expect Jesus to get the corner office in the new Kingdom that’s coming--and they’re all good with that--but they want his assurance that one of them will be in the office to his right, and the other will be in the office to his left.
Rather than answering with a quick “yes” or “no,” Jesus explained that the two are clueless about his promotion system and how it worked.
The other disciples overheard the conversation and were very curious, but they lacked the courage to ask Jesus about their expected rewards. So Jesus decided to use the situation as a teaching moment.
He explained to all the disciples that his ministry was based on a different rewards system and power structure, and that anyone who would be great by divine standards would have to become a servant of others.
His disciples would not be getting fancy offices, new business cards, company cars to drive, seats at the head table, or Christmas bonuses. No, instead, they would be serving servants who were being crushed by the status quo. They would align themselves with the least, the last, and the lost.
Can you imagine the disciples' reaction? Can you imagine your own? Doesn’t Jesus’ description of all the “bennies” make you want to say, “Sign me up, Jesus!” Maybe not.
III
Gospel accounts like Mark 10 highlight the radical nature of Jesus’ approach to leadership development, and his own truth-in-advertising campaign. Jesus was super clear about the fact that he was inviting folks into a different kind of leadership role, and that the rewards did not align with worldly standards. So it should not surprise us that hordes of people didn’t rush to his side or follow him around Palestine in the early first century, or come rushing to sign up for discipleship classes in the 21st Century.
The surprise, perhaps, is that anyone signs up for Christian discipleship at all. And yet, some did, and still do. Have you ever wondered why?
Perhaps we become servant leaders because we were taught by parents or mentors that this is the norm. It’s not something we do with our spare time, or if and when we feel like it. Service is simply a human duty.
Marion Wright Edelman, former president of the Children’s Defense Fund, talks about the importance of service in her book, The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours (Beacon Press, 1992). Here she quotes Shirley Chisolm and elaborates in her own words saying, “Service is the rent we pay for living. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.”
IV
I agree with Edelman’s sentiments, and would add, we aren’t born valuing service. We don’t learn it by accident. Someone models it for us. For many of us, I suspect that serving others, particularly through the church, was highly valued and modeled for us by our families of origin and our mentors.
When I look at my sister’s family, for example, it’s easy to see how the standard set by our grandparents has been passed down four generations and includes many examples, from pulling stranded neighbors out of the ditch or the creek, to loading up tools and hay and driving hundreds of miles away to help communities whipped out by tornadoes or droughts recover and sustain themselves.
I see similar patterns of behavior unfolding in our church and surrounding community as children learn what they live, and carry on the kind of church and family traditions that provide the warp and woof of the social fabric that makes Eden Church and the Eden Area such great communities.
V
In addition to being taught the value of servanthood and being raised by people who model it, some of us have grown into servant leaders because we’ve grappled with hardships ourselves and developed empathy for others who are struggling, and we know the importance of receiving a “hand up.”
Eden’s own Theressa Collier is an example of an empathetic servant leader. Over the years, I’ve heard Theressa speak at several public events about a time when her family was struggling with health challenges and catastrophic medical expenses, which caused them to lose their housing.
Because of our partnership with FESCO, Eden Church was able to facilitate an introduction for the Collier family with shelter staff, who in turn facilitated their admission into Banyan House, a transitional housing program located in Cherryland.
Over time, and with support offered by FESCO, Theressa and her family’s health improved, they were able to progress in their educational processes, and they were able to pull together the financial resources needed to move out of the shelter and re-establish themselves in a conventional apartment.
Theressa was such an inspiration to the FESCO staff that once things leveled off for her and the kids, the executive director asked her to serve on the Board of Directors.
She was a little unsure about her qualifications, but with some encouragement from a few of us, Theressa was brave enough to try, and her contributions were invaluable to the management and governance of FESCO.
Theressa was, for example, able to help the Board more effectively develop and vet program plans, by sharing insights from her experiences as a client.
VI
So instilled values, the influences of family and mentors, the desire to give back and offer others a hand up are all factors that motivate people to become servant leaders, but that is not all. The experience of being a long-time servant leader also affects those who follow this path.
Tracy Kidder, Dr. Paul Farmer’s biographer, describes the effect as “inner clarity.” It is not the type of benefit that worldly rewards systems offer. (Mountains Beyond Mountains, New York City: Random House, 2004, p. 216.)
Dr. Farmer is now Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. You may recall that he became initially famous for his work with HIV/AIDs patients in the late 1980s and 1990s in Haiti.
Tracy Kidder, his biographer, followed Farmer all over Haiti as he worked on the book, and observed that the deeper the doctor dove into serving the poor, the more he felt their pain and the more he saw the impact of the injustices that propagated that pandemic, and led him into a state of “perpetual anger or, at best, [unrelenting] discomfort with the world...” (Kidder, 216)
So we learn from Dr. Farmer that Jesus knew what he was talking about in Mark 10. The path of servant leadership is not an easy path. It doesn’t offer the worldly rewards of high compensation, fringe benefits, or social prestige. It can, however, provide a meaningful path on which one can forge life-sustaining friendships, and reap the type of rewards that Jesus talked about--rewards that neither moth nor rust can destroy. Amen.