A Gathering Voices post by Beth Pyles
To lead people, walk beside them ... As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate ... When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves!'— Lao-tsu
The quote from Lao-tsu reminds me of a similar conversation I often had with my then-husband, usually when we were dining in a nice restaurant. Bob was speaking not of leaders, but of waiters, “you never see a good waiter. It’s as if the water appears at your side by magic. A good waiter knows how not to be noticed.”
Bob and Lao-tsu both speak to the servant model of leadership, a popular catch-phrase in the church.
But what does it mean to be a ‘servant leader’? Many Christians point to Jesus’ washing of his disciples’ feet on the night of the Last Supper, and rightly so. Jesus was giving his followers a show-and-tell lesson in servanthood from a leader’s perspective: nothing is so demeaning, that I would not do it for you and have you do it for others.
But what about church leaders, and ministers in particular? What does it look like to be a servant-leader in the middle of a committee meeting? When listening to a congregant’s crisis? When stuck behind a slow driver in the fast lane (who just might also be a congregant)?
Can it all be simply boiled down to the aphorism “lead by example”?
I wish I knew.
Most of the moments in my ministry that bring people closer together aren’t what I think of as leadership moments. When I’m sitting with someone who has just said good-bye to a loved one or when I’m listening to someone’s troubles, or when we’re laughing in the kitchen together, I feel the unifying action of the Holy Spirit in our midst. That doesn’t seem like leadership. It feels like being present.
Perhaps being present, just the ordinary act of showing up is part of being a leader. All I know for certain is that I am forgiven much when I just show up.
But back to Lao-tsu. Being invisible feels counter-intuitive to being a good leader. Don’t people have to see who or what they’re following? And maybe that’s it – it’s the ‘what’ that matters; not the ‘who’. I used to get quite irritated whenever someone offered an idea that they had gotten from me as if it were their own. But I have come to realize that we all do this – take on board the thoughts of others and incorporate them into our own fabric, seldom realizing the origin of the thought from elsewhere.
Maybe it’s akin to seed planting. The garden spends little time wondering where the seeds came from. The garden takes the seeds on and nurtures them into maturity. It matters that I plant the seeds, but it does not matter that the garden know it.
