servanthood on Education

I heard a woman named Veda Gill who is the Executive Director, Presbyterian Education Board in Pakistan preach on a Palm Sunday. Perhaps you’ve heard this story before, but it is so powerful that I th...

Preaching Commentary If religion is to be true, its leadership must be true. —Frederick Dale Bruner [1] Humble Leadership Whenever Anthony Bloom, a former bishop and archbishop serving in Londo...

If religion is to be true, its leadership must be true. —Frederick Dale Bruner [1] Humble Leadership Whenever Anthony Bloom, a former bishop and archbishop serving in London, would teach, he would...

Reflection We all are aware of cultures that have a hierarchy—a pecking order. The elite and the hoi polloi. The acceptable and the unacceptable. In such cultures, the hierarchy determines the role. ...

What he was attempting to instill in his disciples was the attitude of a servant: humility and a willingness to put others ahead of oneself. In that culture, washing the feet of others would symbolize...

The servant role was completed in Jesus. Though there were auspicious sings that preceded and accompanied his birth, preparing the world for the majestic and kingly, the birth of Jesus itself was of t...

What he was attempting to instill in his disciples was the attitude of a servant: humility and a willingness to put others ahead of oneself. In that culture, washing the feet of others would symbolize...

A faithful servant may be wiser than the master, and yet retain the true spirit and posture of the servant. The humble man looks upon every, the feeblest and unworthiest, child of God, and honors him ...

The career path for the Christian looks different than for others. We should not be hungry for her own name or unrestrained in our self-promotion. We don’t need to broker our future. The gospel remind...

I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

Above all, leadership is a position of servanthood.

Civilization is always in danger when those who have never learned to obey are given the right to command.

Nobody gets to heaven without a letter of reference from the poor.

Editor’s Note: The following illustration came from one of my own (Stu’s) sermons, as I was trying to help the congregation make a paradigm shift from the church as a building, to the people of God: ...

In 1878, when William Booth’s Salvation Army was beginning to make its mark, men and women from all over the world began to enlist. One man, who had once dreamed of becoming a bishop, crossed the Atla...

The words which all of us shall one Day hear sound not of theology but of life, not of churches and saints, but of the hungry and the poor, not of creeds and doctrines, but of shelter and clothing, no...

I have come to see clearly that life is more than self. It is more than doing what I want, striving for what will benefit me, dreaming of all I can be. Life is all about my relationship with God. Ther...

We have all been called to be foot-washers.

Summary This is one of those texts where it’s pretty easy to laugh at the disciples. This is the second time Jesus told them he was going to die and then rise again after three days. And yet they wer...

O God our Father, who sent your Son to be our Savior: renew in us day by day the power of your Holy Spirit; that with knowledge and passion, with courage and love, with gratitude and hope, we may stri...

The Servant Leader The servant leader is the hero of this text.  And the example,  par excellence,  is the Apostle Paul. He has never shied away from holding himself up as a person to be imitated, as...

An ancient legend tells of a well-respected rabbi who would vanish from his synagogue for a few hours each Sabbath. His mysterious absences sparked curiosity among his students, who wondered if their ...

Preaching Commentary Peter's and Isaiah's Confessions Jesus calling the disciples from their fishing appears in Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20, and Luke 5:1-11. Yet only Luke makes the beaut...

One of the best stories of humility is that of a man who arrived in 1953 at the Chicago railroad station to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. He stepped off the train, a tall man with bushy hair and a bi...

The unjust steward who, hearing he is going to be fired, doctors his master’s accounts to secure another job, is commended precisely because he acted. The point does not concern morality but apathy. H...

Your best servant is the person who does not attend so much to hearing what he himself wants as to willing what he has heard from you.

A Highly Practical Text Often we come to scripture passages that require a bit of interpretive twists and turns to find ways of connecting the text to our modern-day lives in the 21st century. But oc...

The true leader serves. Serves people. Serves their best interests, and in so doing will not always be popular, may not always impress. But because true leaders are motivated by loving concern, rather...

For reading in unison: Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied him...

preaching commentary The Servant Leader The servant leader is the hero of this text.  And the example,  par excellence,  is the Apostle Paul. He has never shied away from holding himself up as a pe...