But to serve

 

Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;

whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.

For the Son of Man did not come to be served

but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." 

Mark 10:43 - 45

Pope Gregory I, in an attempt to out-manoeuvre John IV, archbishop of Constantinople (who claimed for himself the title of Ecumenical Patriarch), called himself the Servant of the Servants of God. It remains a title of the Roman Pontiff.

The desire for power or self-aggrandizement has accompanied humanity on its journey through history, and it has produced extraordinary, ordinary, disappointing and disastrous leaders. Some are acutely aware of their charisma, of their responsibility, of the effect their actions have on others, while others walk all over others in the process of achieving their goals.

What we do know, is that the model of leadership that places service to others as its priority is, on the whole, rare to see. Its proponents have tended to be deeply committed to an ideal:  St Carlos Acutis, Mahatma Gandhi, St Teresa Bojaxhiu, Dalai Lama Tenzn Gyatso, Martin Luther King, Dag Hammarskjöld, Desmond Tutu, St John Paul II Wojtyla, Nelson Mandela, Dorothy Day, Mary MacKillop, Francis. Their service for others is driven by compassion and empathy, a desire to improve and transform lives, a willingness to listen, to draw others into a new vision and to manage resources with wisdom for the benefit of all. They may wield enormous power, political, religious and sometimes economic, but in essence the ideal must be achieved with a persistence, energy and strength that can only be the result of a lifetime’s effort.

While the concept of servant leadership has its beginnings in the market place of the 1970’s it was Robert Greenleaf who explored the need for a new leadership that would value autonomy and human dignity. The Christian servant leader goes further to model themselves on the person of Jesus. The scriptures are rich in images of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, as the good shepherd, Jesus breaking open the Word on the road to Emmaus, being welcoming, challenging. 

We have our share of disappointments with elected leaders, no doubt, and there are some we may note whose ambition for leadership has not been realized in office. But I firmly propose that while there are some great international exemplars of servant leadership, we meet servant leaders every day, and these people require no title, no honorific in order to serve those in need. They labour for Vinnies, Gran’s Van, Camp Quality, Eddie Rice Camps, Youth Off The Streets and a myriad of other causes.   

Peter Douglas

 

 

RE-SHAPING THE CHURCH

 by Kevin Bates SM

The first session of the Plenary Council has come to a conclusion and work is now underway shaping the decisions that will be taken at the second session next July.

According to reports, the spirit at the Council was frank, respectful and reflective of the faith of the 280 members who took part. The voices of young people were heard and the wide variety of views apparently represented those present in the wider church.

No doubt the hopes of many will be met and the hopes of many others will not. Such is human nature and the nature of a community as large and steeped in tradition as the Church. However, the spirit of synodality, of shared responsibility for the life and mission of the Church, seems to have played some part in the course of the week’s meetings. 

There were many key aspirations that people across the country have held as the Council sessions approached. It has been widely hoped that the voices of women would be heard and their role in the Church be enhanced, that our First Nations peoples would find a new place in the Church’s consciousness. It was hoped that young people would be able to play a greater role in the renewal of the Church’s life and that the message of the gospel could reach them in ways appropriate to their age and culture.

There was a general desire that the processes of governance in the Church become more collaborative and certainly more transparent so that the secrecy and clericalism that has pervaded much of the governance of the Church would be replaced with openness and trust.

Underlying all these matters is the desire that the profound wound of sexual abuse in the Church be healed, that justice be done to all those so damaged and that processes be put in place to ensure the protection of the vulnerable into the future.

At this point we are not privy to the nature of the conversations that took place in the Council meetings. We hope that progress was made in the issues needing to be addressed.

As people who care deeply about the Church and its place in society, its mission in the world, we may espouse one or other of the causes mentioned above. It’s possible for us to lower our sights and focus on these issues, work hard to see that our agenda is brought forward and engage in lively debate.

We can do this out of a deep desire for the Church to recover its essential spirit and come to our debates prayerfully. It’s also possible that we become so caught up in one or other cause that we treat the Church as a business or corporation that needs reform and we use the tactics of the corporate world to try and achieve our goals.

Our efforts at reform can easily become a kind of power struggle in which we long for our view to prevail over those of others. It’s very easy in this mode to lose sight of the real nature of the Church and to treat it as our own battleground.

While each of us has responsibility for the life and mission of the Church, we need to remember that it is God’s Church and that we are commissioned to bear the gospel in the world in God’s name. Even leaders in the Church, our Bishops and others who have influence in the community, are meant to lead through service and not through structures of power.

It would do us well to listen for the lead of Pope Francis as he calls the Church to become a “Field Hospital” for our broken world, whose leaders have the “smell of the sheep” on them. A renewed Church is not about one set of views having dominion over others. A renewed Church is more like the humble, transforming gift of one who lowers himself to wash our feet!

Father Kevin is parish priest of Holy Name of Mary Parish, Hunters Hill, Sydney.