The Best Leaders Serve
When Jesus spoke to his leadership team, his apostles who would spearhead the beginning of the church, he didn’t mince words. He was clear: “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45).
This is something He both taught and modeled. If you want to be the best of leaders, then be like Jesus and serve well. It goes right along with “deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me” that Jesus would teach in another passage. His message and his ministry were marked by this.
When I hear this, I think of two broad categories of serving. One is the obvious which is the actual acts of service that can be seen by those around us. Jesus served people with actions of healing, listening, feeding and of course giving clear teaching about God and the ways of his kingdom.
The other is the spirit in which we serve. Similarly, Jesus also served people in the spirit of the way he interacted with them shown in humility, patience, kindness, compassion and tenderness.
As a leader in the church, I find myself convicted on both of these fronts. It is all too easy to enjoy the perks of leadership that involve being served and steer away from doing anything that is actually serving others. This temptation was not foreign to the apostles, and was exactly what Jesus was responding to in this passage.
The context of these words reveals the true enemy the leaders in Christ’s church must face. Pride lurks in all of us. This sin constantly tempts us to put ourselves at the center of our universe where everything revolves around us.
I want to focus on the latter of the two categories of serving, the spirit of our leadership. To do so, let’s look at the context of what we just read.
“And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. And they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.”” (Mark 10:32-34.)
What we’re about to read next is shocking. Now we don’t know for sure if this was the same day or a few days later that James and John come to Jesus with this request we’re about to read. Knowing us as humans and how incredibly self-seeking and self-centered we can be, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was that same day. Either way, this should go down as one of the most eyebrow raising, self-seeking comments found among the apostles.
Remember, they’re amazed at his boldness and fearlessness while heading into Jerusalem. There are threats on his life and yet he is unmoved, headed directly into the den of people that hate him the most: the leaders in Jerusalem. Jesus pulls the twelve aside and details with gut-wrenching honesty and shocking transparency what is about to happen to him. He predicts his death and even some of the details of his coming crucifixion. It must have been sobering to say the least.
What happens next in this passage is a remarkable demonstration of how blinded we can be by our own pride self-centeredness.
“And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came up to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”” (Mark 10:35-37)
It is in response to this that Jesus gives a lesson demonstrating the spirit of his leadership. Not only that, be he shows us about serving people even when they are not exactly at their best. Instead of writing them off, he engages them with patience and amazing grace. Rather than rebuking them for their self-centeredness, he engages them with what they’re asking and tells them how to truly become great:
“But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”” (Mark 10:45).
The takeaway. The best leaders serve. Let’s be diligent in good works and acts of service while serving those we lead with patience and grace, even when they come up short. We can do this in the home, school, friends and of course our churches.