10 Keys to Servant Leadership

When our church celebrates graduating high school seniors, one tradition we have is for members to highlight their favorite verses and put notes of encouragement in Bibles presented to the students by our pastor.

I always highlight my life verse—Philippians 2:3 (pictured above)—and encourage students to serve others. That’s also my tagline for this blog: “Serving leaders who shoot for the stars.”  Servant Leadership is core to my personal philosophy.

Calvin Miller wrote The Empowered Leader: 10 Keys to Servant Leadership with three objectives.  Here’s how he described them:

  1. I want the wisdom of Scripture to speak a clear and usable word to every contemporary Christian leader.
  2. I want those sound leadership themes that dominate current thinking to be linked with scriptural insight.
  3. I hope to define Christian leadership in such a way that it escapes the haphazard reputation it often acquires.

The whole of biblical and Christian history is a cumulative account of God’s call to leadership.

Every Christian who desires to become a leader must first know how to follow.

Matthew 20:27 says, “Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be a servant.”  A contemporary spin is Zig Ziglar’s belief that you can best achieve what you want in life if you are servant enough to help others achieve what they want in life.

Click here for a summary of Calvin Miller’s The Empowered Leader

The Abundant Life of the Steward Leader

This month’s focus on Perspective & the Purpose of Money makes me think about the importance of stewardship. 

That reminded me of R. Scott Rodin’s book The Steward Leader, which I summarized in a previous post.  Rodin wrote another book entitled Set Free to Lead: Your Guide to Discovering the Abundant Life of the Steward Leader.

As leaders, we may not see the relationship between leadership effectiveness and freedom in Christ. Yet they are integrally linked.

The enemy’s goal and desire to put us in bondage. He delights when we wear the heavy chains of stress, anxiety, fear of failure, doubt, discouragement, and despair.

As Rodin puts it, “A steward leader is a faithful steward who has been set free to lead.”

Click here for a summary of R. Scott Rodin’s Set Free to Lead