The Only Truly Viable Institutions Will Be Those That Are Predominantly Servant-Led

Recently my wife, Lynne, and I helped to facilitate our annual couples retreat. As part of the group agreements, we share some of the principles that adrienne maree brown named in her groundbreaking book Emergent Strategy. These principles include ideas like, “Small is good; small is all,” and “Relationships move at the speed of trust.” And one that we mention to the couples is “What we pay attention to grows.”

Most of us know this last one intuitively. We know that what we give our attention to tends to deepen and grow, and yet some of the most important things in our lives (like our love relationships) may not always get our attention or priority. And so we’re constantly invited to reflect on what we’re giving our attention to these days. Especially during Lent, we pause to ask, “What is growing in our lives because we are focused on it? And what would we like to grow more in our lives if we focused on it?”

In our first reading from Isaiah 1, we hear the prophet (speaking for God) say, “Cease doing evil; learn to do good. Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.” God then says one of my favorite lines, “Come now, let us set things right…”

What I appreciate about this passage is the implied principle of “what we pay attention to grows.” God sees that Israel has left behind certain groups of people and has tolerated a lot of people being wronged. Israel has not paid much attention to some fundamental relationships. And so God invites them to partner with him/her/them to “set things right.” God is essentially asking Israel (and by extention, us) to pay attention to who and what has been ignored.

I love this invitation because it is something that is actionable for us. 

At a personal level, all of us have things in our lives that we “should have” been paying attention to. I don’t mean this in the “should” sense so much as these are important aspects of our lives (like our health/wellness or significant relationships) that we have ignored for some reason. Some of these things need to be “set right,” and today’s reading is yet another invitation to pay attention to that which needs our attention.

At the collective level, this reading could easily be directed at the United States as we leave behind more and more people. As the wealth of the billionaire class increased more than $1.5 trillion last year, 1 out of 4 Americans are living paycheck to paycheck – skipping treatments, medications and meals to save money. And according to the Poor People’s Campaign, more than 43% of our population and 53% of our children are poor or low-income. This level of inequality and injustice has very real costs and consequences for our society. 

Isaiah warns that if these things are not addressed “the sword will consume you.” What I take this to mean is that in order to maintain this level of inequality, a culture or nation will need to rely on greater and greater levels of violence – meaning that they will be truly “consumed by the sword.”

Come, let us make things right.

In the gospel from Matthew 23, Jesus finds himself at odds with the people who know the scriptures but fail to model and embody them. He tells his disciples to “do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them…” He goes on to say that, “The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts themselves will be humbled; but whoever humbles themself will be exalted.”

In 1932 author Hermann Hesse published his book Journey to the East. It is the fictional story of a group of people on a journey. Leo, the group’s servant, becomes central to the life and morale of the party – so much so that when Leo needs to leave the journey the whole endeavor falls into disarray and is abandoned. Years later, one of the party members joins the Order that had sponsored the original journey. When they are brought to meet the head of the Order, they recognize Leo! All along, Leo was the great and noble leader who humbled himself to be the servant of the group.

This story inspired Robert Greenleaf to write his own work in the 1970’s called “The Servant as Leader.” His essay was turned into a book called Servant Leadership and went on to influence generations of leaders.

In that original essay, Greenleaf said, “I am hopeful for these times, despite the tension and conflict, because more natural servants are trying to see clearly the world as it is and are listening carefully to prophetic voices that are speaking now. They are challenging the pervasive injustice with greater force, and they are taking sharper issue with the wide disparity between the quality of society they know is reasonable and possible with available resources and the actual performance of the institutions that exist to serve society.”

Greenleaf said that, in general, people will “freely respond only to individuals who are chosen as leaders because they are proven and trusted as servants,” and said that in the future “the only truly viable institutions will be those that are predominantly servant-led.”

We are, perhaps, witnessing what Greenleaf saw back in the 70’s – that the more our institutions moved away from servant-led leadership, the less that people will believe in them and the more coercive power will be required to get people to go along with them.

Thankfully, there are still many great servant-leaders who are in the tradition of Greenleaf and Jesus, and we are invited today – with whatever level of leadership we might have available to us – to be servant-leaders. Leaders who are willing to say, “Come, let us make things right,” and then are willing to roll up our sleeves and be the first ones showing up for the work!