Overcoming Challenges to Servant Leadership: Addressing Common Barriers

by Kaley Ihfe

 

I suspect we all have different parts of ourselves that form barriers to servant leadership. For some of us, it is our ego – we want the credit for the good things we do; we crave recognition. For others of us, it is difficult to do the work of serving others – we are too tired, too worn out, too burned out. For others, our desire to experience life may keep us from seeing the needs of others – we want to do all the things that we want to do, and we tend to not even notice what is going on with someone else. Some of us may become so anxious about our own problems or others’ problems that we feel paralyzed to do anything. Others of us rush from thing to thing without taking time to discern what is most important. Many of us may feel like the words of Taylor Swift reflect the biggest challenge of our ability to be true servant leaders, “I’m the problem, it’s me.”

In the Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible, service is defined as “loving, thoughtful, active promotion of the good of others and the causes of God in our world, through which we experience the many little deaths of going beyond ourselves.”[1]

Paul writes in Philippians 2:3-5a,  “Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others.Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus..”

To become like Jesus and let go of ourselves, we have to open up to the work of the Spirit in our lives to transform us into being servant leaders. We need to spend time in prayer (the more often, the better), reading and meditating on Scripture, silence and solitude. We turn to God when we are anxious, giving our anxieties over to him. We ask God to open our eyes to the problems around us – where can we help?  Where can we lead?  We ask for wisdom in how to best do this.  We allow time with God to reassure us that we are beloved and belong to him and don’t need constant recognition by others to know that we are worthy. Our time with God transforms our love for our own ambition and desires into a love for God and His desires.

When John Ortberg asked Dallas Willard how to become spiritually healthy, Willard famously said, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” This is true for good servant leadership also. If we are in a hurry, we won’t really listen to people – we might not even really notice them. We have to slow down and pay attention to be able to have the wisdom to know what to do, how to love best, how to lead.

Finally, I would encourage us to take the time to volunteer in a ministry that is different from ones we lead or to volunteer in the community through an organization that we are not in charge of. We need to serve in areas that get us out of our comfort zones and where we are not experts. Our eyes will be opened to needs we didn’t know about, possibly even to new ways of leading. Most of all, it will help us know what it feels like to be a follower, someone who is taking direction. Maybe this will help remind us that our true position is being a follower of Jesus.

 

[1]  Richard Foster, et al, eds, The Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible, NRSV (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), 2309.