On the way home from church this morning, my son informed my husband and me that he learned something in Sunday school. He said that he learned about being a servant leader. My husband and I were pretty impressed at this sophisticated terminology. It's not very often that you hear a 3 year old talking about servant leadership. So naturally, we were curious to know what he learned about being a servant leader. He was a little stumped by this question, but he said he knew he was supposed to be a servant leader. He said he just wasn't sure how. I almost giggled when he said that, because I know plenty of adults who don't get this concept either.
It occurred to me that leadership is a valued concept in our society. Go-getter, bossy people are often praised for their leadership abilities. And this seems to be something that we promote in our children. We want them to be the team captain, the drum major, the doctor (as opposed to the nurse), or the lawyer (as opposed to the paralegal). This emphasis on leadership, however, seems to do a disservice to all of the people who don't know how to be led. Very few people are actually taught followership (a.k.a. servant-hood.)
Becoming a follower has not been easy for me. I had to learn this concept pretty quickly working in a hospital though. It didn't matter how horrible the doctors treated the nurses, we were still supposed to follow and obey. And it especially didn't matter how nasty the patients and their families were, because our job was to ease and please our patients. I am thoroughly convinced that anyone who can handle working with surgeons and nasty patients can learn to work under anyone (even lawyers.) Yet, I must say, that working in the hospital taught me what it meant to be a servant leader.
I once worked with a surgeon who was fantastic. He called me at all hours of the night shift to check on his patients. He would make rounds on Saturday mornings where he would spend a good half hour with each patient. He also made it his own personal policy to be the person who changed his patient's dressings and to help them up to the chair on their first day post-op. All I had to do as the nurse was to get his supplies and be his back-up. He literally did my job for me. But he did it because he cared about providing the best possible surgical care for his patients. As a result, all the nurses wanted his patients. We would have jumped through hoops for his patients, because we knew that he had our backs as well. This surgeon was the epitome of a servant leader. He went above and beyond for everyone, even though he didn't have to.
I want to be able to teach my son to be like that surgeon and to go above and beyond for everyone else as well. I can already see that he is smart and gifted and is a natural leader (he is first-born after all.) But I want him to see that God has given him these gifts and abilities to use for other people. God makes leaders out of those who are willing to do whatever it takes to be the best for others. Those who are willing to work and "employ" the gifts God has given them for the sake of others can be a witness of God's grace to the world--even if that means doing grunt work.
Wouldn't it change the world if we really could instill the servant-leadership mentality into our children at the age of 3? Thanks New Life Kids for the lessons you've taught my family this week.
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By the way--The song I was struggling with so much last week went pretty well today. Praise and worship was really awesome this morning! As the words of the song state, "Oh magnify the Lord together, exalt His name forever!"
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