Servant leadership is a concept that is often talked about in the context of living your faith at work. Robert Greenleaf wrote about this in the 1970s, and today The Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership helps people put Greenleaf's ideas into practice.
I write about servant leadership in the third chapter of The GEO Principle. At Luke 22:32, Jesus tells Peter to strengthen his brothers. Peter's job is to help the others succeed. Although Jesus clearly sets Peter apart as a leader, he doesn't say the other apostles should serve him, but that he should serve them. This serves as a powerful model for us today. Leadership, or you might say management, is more about serving others than it is about others serving you.
Dinesh D'Souza offers a very interesting analysis of servant leadership in his book "What's So Great About Christianity." D'Souza doesn't let us forget the extent to which Christianity has shaped our Western culture. Consider this excerpt from chapter 6:
Christianity enhanced the notion of political and social accountability by providing a new model: that of servant leadership. In ancient Greece and Rome no one would have dreamed of considering political leaders anyone's servants. The job of the leader was to lead. But Christ invented the notion that the way to lead is by serving the needs of others, especially those who are the most needy. Mark 10:43 quotes Christ: "Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant...for even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve." And in Luke 22:27 we hear Jesus say, "Who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves." In the new Christian framework, leaders are judged by how well they respond to the concerns and welfare of the people. Over time, people once known as "followers" or "subjects" become "customers" and "constituents." As a consequence of the new ideal, the job of the political leader, the merchant, and the priest becomes serving the people by attending to their political, material, and spiritual needs.
The system of modern capitalism arose in the West. To some it is surprising that capitalism developed so easily in conjunction with a Christian ethic. But capitalism satisfied the Christian demand for an institution that channels selfish human desire toward the betterment of society. Some critics accuse capitalism of being a selfish system, but the selfishness is not in capitalism -- it is in human nature. As Adam Smith put it in The Wealth of Nations, the desire to better our condition "comes with us from the womb, and never leaves us till we go into the grave." Selfishness, like lust, is part of the human condition. It is hopeless to try to root it out, although some zealous utopians have certainly tried. Over the centuries, Christianity came up with a much better solution. The Bible is often quoted to say that money is the root of all evil, but the relevant passage actually says that "love of money is the root of all evil." This is a condemnation of a certain human attitude to wealth, not a condemnation of either wealth or commerce.
The effect of capitalism is to steer human selfishness so that, through the invisible hand of competition, the energies of the capitalist produce the abundance from which the whole society benefits. Moreover, capitalism encourages entrepreneurs to act with consideration for others even when their ultimate motive is to benefit themselves. So while profit remains the final goal, entrepreneurs spend the better part of each day figuring out how better to serve the needs of their actual and potential customers. They are operationally, in not intentionally, altruistic...One may say that capitalism civilizes greed in much the same way that marriage civilizes lust. Both institutions seek to domesticate wayward or fallen human impulses in socially beneficial ways.
And when it came to capitalism, Christian civilization created the basic rules of modern economics. In the Middle Ages, Rodney Stark shows, people first realized that prices should be determined through supply and demand. In the past, prices had been set by law or custom. But Albertus Magnus, a thirteenth-century Dominican friar, explained that prices reflect "what goods are worth according to the estimate of the market at the time of sale." And this of course is what we believe now.
Comments