A Familiar Servant-Leader

(9 minute read)

In the first post of this series I wrote about my perspective. An atheist with degrees in theology and career achievements in media and academia.

I’ve always been curious about life. A seeker, really, who has come to the end of seeking for answers to the “bigger questions.” Remaining ever curious, however, it may surprise some of you with the servant-leadership example provided in this essay.

I write about the Christian tradition because it is the one I am most familiar with. Had I been born in another country or culture I likely would be writing about those traditions. The Christian tradition is not exclusive as every faith holds similar themes and universal truths. Compassion for one another, seeking truth and meaning, a rejection of worldly things are just a few.

As others have noted, over recorded history there have been over 4,000 different religions. 4,000 plus. And those are the ones we know about. How many have been lost? The odds that the Christian faith is the right one, the one that’s truer than all others …is more than astounding.

I use the man-god (sic), Jesus, as an example not because of the glorification bestowed upon him, but despite it. We start by setting aside the fact that the earliest known writings about him occur 30–40 years after his death. The last gospel, John, more than 2 times that many years later.

But, assuming the gospels historicity is not the point here. What is the point is that there is an attempt to record the oral narratives about his life and death. What information the generations after him had and what they thought was important is what we are left with. For this exercise it is more than good enough.

Jesus made it clear from his first appearances that he had a better way to exist. Nothing really different here. Every religious teacher has said as much. His intention, like so many others that came before and after him, was to teach people how to live. Not just exist but to live a life with love, compassion, peace, justice, and freedom. His ultimate want in life was that everyone would live that fullness of life (John 10:10).

To say that he was a bit of a contrarian would be an understatement. For example, in that culture, students typically sought out teachers. By contrast Jesus went against type and recruited students. This was something very different.

Not only did he buck the education system, but he was also inclusive in his recruitment. Those he welcomed into his circle (class) were women, tax collectors, “racial inferiors,” sinners, and social outcasts. The hapless, hopeless, bedraggled dregs of society. People thought to be unclean, unworthy, and unteachable. Those who would have NEVER been allowed to be students of any other teacher. They would have quickly been rejected.

The parables he used, his preferred teaching method, were relatable and deeply engaged the everyday lives of his students. He told pointed stories about farmers, fishermen, cooks, homemakers, thieves, and tax collectors. Through these morality tales, he instilled values while challenging the religious and educational systems.

Through these stories he conveyed his radical ideals. Love your enemies, pray for those who hurt you, turn the other cheek …were all absolute departures from the “eye for an eye” justice taught by other teachers and ingrained in that society.

And that was the point of his parables. Stories told to teach his students to look at the world differently. To challenge their prejudices, they’re assumptions about the way things were. These were often familiar stories told but with a new or surprise ending. They were delivered in a way that challenged expectations and, yes, even scandalized his audience. Anything to get them to wake up and smell the coffee (or roses if you are so inclined).

He was very effective at this. Mark notes that people were astonished at his teaching. He taught them not as the other teachers, but as one having conviction, power, and authority (1:22). Apparently this is something that other teachers lacked. Jesus was never given an official status as an educator by the establishment. On the contrary they condemned him for his unorthodox methods of teaching. Compared to Scribes and Pharisees, however, he and his teachings were more relatable to his students.

Today, because of their literal religious myopia and lack of imagination, Evangelicals miss this about the life of their Savior. Jesus’ authority was awarded not because he was the son of god. That is a later construct of the faith. His teachings were so effective students experienced liberation, empowerment, and transcendence and THAT was what astonished his students.

He taught students to “be of the same mind as his” and adopt a servant-leader attitude. “Whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:19). For Jesus, the greatest would be recognized as those who served their fellow man and woman as he did.

His mandate was to teach others to live that life (Matt. 28:16-20). He assumed his students would become educators as well, emulating the servant-leader model. By inference, the Christian tradition teaches that the mandate is also expected of future followers. Evangelicals would be wise to get off their high-political-horse and heed this part of the gospel.

No matter the topic, education is about liberation, empowerment and transcendence. We start to fulfill that mandate by providing opportunities for students to challenge their worldview. Fostering them to see the world differently becomes a priority.

To help them we must be willing to challenge our own worldview, our intentions, and purposes on why we teach. Too many of my colleagues regard academia akin to something to be conquered. Writing, research, and lecturing all serving to soothe their ego and further their career. Some have an attitude that they are to be served instead of seeing themselves as servants first. The good news is that they are in the minority. The bad news is they bring scorn on their institutions.

Perception vs. Reality

In Derek Bok’s, Our Underachieving Colleges, he painstakingly calls academia to task while addressing the outside criticisms facing higher education. One of those criticisms is that faculty cedes their teaching responsibilities to others.

While Bok admits that this is a reality for some faculty, it is not for most. Citing statistics from the DOE, “faculty members, on average, spend more than half their time on matters related to teaching and less than 20 percent on research.”

That is very good news. The egomaniacs are few and far between in academia. Eighty percent of teachers already have the internal motivation to be in the classroom, fostering their students.

“Those who describe themselves as teachers,” writes Bok, “who claim to care more about teaching than research, greatly outnumber those who regard themselves primarily as researchers. In fact, fewer than half of all professors publish only one article per year. …Overall, then, there is no convincing evidence that faculty members frequently neglect their students.” (emphasis mine)

However, Bok does call faculty to task on is what he calls a subtler problem. It is this next problem that contributes to most of the shortcomings and outside criticisms facing academia today.

“However much educators care about their teaching,” Bok writes, “nothing forces them or their academic leaders to go beyond normal [tasks] in fulfilling classroom duties. There is no compelling necessity to reexamine familiar forms of instruction and experiment with new [instructional] methods in an effort to help their students accomplish more.”

In other words, we can become lazy and the teaching get stale. Without reflecting on what is working and what doesn’t, faculty have a tendency to plow through their material, settling for regurgitating the information.

Finally, Bok highlights a serious issue in academia today. The contrasting perspectives on the role of the university. Perception between student and faculty couldn’t be more divergent, as outlined before.

Faculty has one aim of “challenging, discovering, and transmitting knowledge and ideas.” In other words, the intent of faculty, especially in a liberal arts college, is to broaden the students intellect. However, most students only wish is to focus on information necessary for their careers. The difference of intentions between faculty and students can often be near impossible to overcome.

“Undergraduates now place much greater importance on making money than they did 40 years ago,” writes Bok. “Students attending college for this reason are less likely to share a love of learning for its own sake and are more inclined to value education chiefly for its utility in achieving the material success they regard so highly.”

To make inroads in altering this perception, faculty needs to own the solution to this problem. If enough faculty take the time to discuss the intentions outlined above it’s possible to slowly change course.

To change course for one class let alone an entire institution is monumental. But so is maneuvering a cruise ship. How does a cruise ship change course? Unlike a smaller boat or ship, they change direction slowly and incrementally. It takes time.

But time is something that we always have until we don’t. Starting now and solving these problems is the best course of action we can take now.

(Read the conclusion of The University in Crises, Pt. 13)

Sources:

• John Crossan, The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images, Castle Books, 1998
• Robert Greenleaf, Servant Leadership – A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness, Paulist Press, 1977
• Derek Bok, Our Underachieving Colleges – A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More, Princeton University Press, 2006