I Struggle with the Term Servant Leadership

By Doug Franklin February 17, 2010

When I started in leadership development back in 94′ not many people in youth ministry or the church thought leadership development was important. In fact they pushed against it and many times rejected it for its connection to the business world. Then came John Maxwell and made leadership for Christians OK. Still, many people didn’t like the use of secular or business principles in the church. So they renamed leadership – Servant Leadership. This gave it more of a Christian feel and they could still reject the parts of leadership they didn’t care for, like evaluation, accountability to goals, or conflict resolution. Thankfully we have now come to understand that the truths of leadership are good for both the church and the business world. All truth is from God and can be used for his purpose and his goals. It’s a personal thing for me; servant leadership is a good term and it does describe the type of leader Jesus is, but for me, I like to say leadership is like living in an upside down pyramid – we serve people from the bottom up … it’s pretty much the same thing.