Bob K commented on Random Thoughts after Good Council Meeting, “It would be refreshing to get perspectives on servant leadership from one who is in the position to offer it. :)”
The only thing I can say right now .. it’s an uphill struggle. The greatest battles are often internal and hidden from the sight of the public eye. After reading the quote by Gordon Cosby awhile ago on Groups after 60 years, I think we better listen to the man who’s wrestled with this all life in and through the ministry of Church of the Savior (thanks to Vineyard Cutting Edge and Todd Hunter for introducing me to this amazing man, church and ministry).
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On vision…
“The most crucial gift of a leader is the capacity to see new possibilities, new combinations of energy and life coming together and to see now, in imagination, that which is not yet but which ought to be.”
“My task is to get close enough to Jesus Christ for him to do through me what he wants to do, which is the call that he has placed on my life.”
On hope…
“In War and Peace Prince Andre says of Austerlitz, ‘Our loss was not much greater than that of the French, but we said to ourselves that we would lose it, and we did lose it.’ In other words, we lost because we told ourselves we would lose. Militarily it was not quite that simple. But the point is clear. Fatalism saps the will and produces the situation it prophesies.”
“Hope is a form of faith and tends to produce what it sees. Despair is a form of faith and tends to produce what it sees.”
On “empathic universalism” (as opposed to empathic provincialism):
“The great leader sees and feels himself or herself as a part of the whole – identified with the totality.”
“The great leader never feels it is us verses them. He or she is for everybody. To be for one interest group is never to be against another. To be for those without power is surely not to be against those with power.”
On waiting:
“Are we willing, after we have done all that we know to hold the vision, and to carry it with hope, and to let it be a part of the totality, and to give it our best – are we willing then simply to wait when we have done it all? And simply to suffer, and to let our vicarious suffering be the means by which God ultimately brings the kingdom?”
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From “By Grace Transformed”, Chapter 2 – The Nature of Christian Leadership via Gordon Cosby Quotes on What is Church? weblog
Thanks. I’ll need to go get a copy of the book. I have an almost crutch like dependence on the grace of God to keep moving. Could use the occasional reminder.