Leadership or Servanthood? Walking in the Steps of Jesus
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
The world is obsessed with leaders: identifying them, training them, becoming them. Even in the church, this preoccupation is all-too apparent. Jesus, however, is not interested in developing leaders. Rather, he is interested in the formation of servants.
In this powerful reflection on leadership and servanthood, Dr. Hwa Yung addresses the overemphasis on leadership development within the church. Challenging a culture of hubris, ambition, and self-seeking, he reminds us that ministry is not a call to position and power but to service and obedience. He draws us back to the example of Christ, who came as a servant of God and of his kingdom, who lived in submission to the Father, and who rooted himself in his identity as the incarnate Son of God. Linking spiritual authority to these three characteristics, Hwa Yung offers examples from both Scripture and church history to demonstrate that it is in fact the faithful practice of servanthood that leads to leadership impact.
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- Preface
- A Servant’s Prayer
- The Call to Servanthood
- Servanthood and the Contemporary Church
- Whence Spiritual Authority?
- Submission as the Path to Authority
- You Are My Beloved Child
- Living in the Security of Our Father’s Love
- But the Lord Looks on the Heart
- The Father’s Transforming Process
- Servants and Leaders
- Further Reading
In recent years the world of Christian publishing has been awash with books on leadership development, many offering principles and models gleaned from the business world, often promoting charisma and celebrity status above character. This book, from a seasoned leader in the Majority World, including reflections from a lifetime of experience, cuts right across that emphasis, calling us to recognize afresh the need to follow the model of Jesus Christ – a model of servanthood, submission to his Father, with a clear sense of identity, in our case, as children of God, which is diametrically opposed to the leadership paradigm taught in many circles today.
—Lindsay Brown
This significant book written by a senior Christian leader from Asia is urgently important for Christians everywhere but especially for Western Christians. So much of Western Christianity (and increasingly also elsewhere too) looks to secular models of leadership from the worlds of business and the Academy for the vision of what Christian leadership should be. The effect has been to encourage self-seeking and ambition in many Christian leaders. Hwa Yung shows convincingly that that is not what the Bible tells us to do. Servanthood, the Bible says, is both the path to genuine leadership and also the way it is exercised. Everywhere today in Christian circles there are programs on training Christians for leadership. But the New Testament never talks about how to train Christian leaders. Rather everywhere, it talks about servanthood as the fundamental characteristic of genuine Christian leadership. Hwa Yung is right that great Christian leadership is not attained by seeking it in itself. Rather it is the fruit of true servanthood modelled after Jesus Christ. The global church desperately needs to hear this message.
—Ronald J. Sider, PhD
- Title: Leadership or Servanthood? Walking in the Steps of Jesus
- Author: Hwa Yung
- Publisher: Langham
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2022
- Pages: 146
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- Subjects: Jesus Christ › Servanthood; Jesus Christ › Leadership; Christian leadership
- ISBNs: 9781839735769, 9781839736063, 9781839736070, 9781839736087, 1839735767, 1839736062, 1839736070, 1839736089
- Resource ID: LLS:LDRSHPRSSTPSJSS
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-10-26T17:43:59Z
