For a couple of years now, I have been struggling to understand the meaning of true leadership. Whether it is at home, school, work, church, clubs, organisations, politics, everywhere, my conviction is that leadership is taken for granted! Those who are more vocal, push for things to happen, powerful, rich, educated, etc. As they say, ’those who can influence others’, ’those who are capable of establishing followers’. Is this the kind of leadership that God had in mind when He created each one us? When we look at the various levels of leadership all over the world, from family level to national, is what we see and experience the God’s design of leadership? I am particularly troubled as an African with the experiences of the kind of political leadership even within countries that profess to be ’Christian’. I have read numerous books on leadership and my conclusion is that, there are two types or categories of leadership; man’s (earthly) leadership and God’s leadership. God demonstrated His style of leadership through Jesus Christ our Lord. According to Jesus, those who want to be leaders must be servants. Where I come from, people who work for the Government are called ’civil servants’, government ministers refer to themselves as servants or stewards of those who elected them into the positions they are holding! We know the kind of servanthood that Jesus referred to, because He lived it. His was not just rhetoric.

The question that I would like to put forward is how to recapture the lost original design of servant leadership in Christ’s church. Are there nations, communities, churches, that practice this kind of leadership? Is it easier to talk about it than to live it? What is that can be done, so that even today, people may remark “see how they run their affairs, they must be followers of Jesus Christ”.