THY 566: History, Theology & Spirituality of the Diaconate: Servant Leadership

Summary:There exists a deep tension between the biblical view of servant leaders and the status that Christian leaders today often desire and pursue. Many pastors and other church leaders, like it or not, struggle with ambition. In this book Craig Hill shows how the New Testament can help Christian leaders deal with this problem honestly and faithfully. - back of book. Table of Contents: The best of disinfectants -- It's only natural -- The example of Jesus -- The teaching of Jesus -- Slow of heart: the disciples -- Status quo Corinth -- Saints elsewhere -- Ambition -- Hierarchy -- In conclusion, where do we start?

Meet the man whose work influenced some of the world's most prominent business leaders and spawned a worldwide movement that is still gaining strength today. Robert Greenleaf's landmark 1970 essay, The Servant as Leader, introduced the now common term "servant leadership" to the world. His work has been cited by leading writers and business people including Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Peter Senge, Margaret Wheatley, and Peter Block and led to the development of Centers for Servant Leadership around the world. This long-awaited biography of Robert Greenleaf, authorized by his surviving children, finally tells his story. Drawn from Greenleaf's personal papers, correspondence, and interviews with family and friends, it provides a fascinating look at the sources of Greenleaf's thought, his friendships with some of the most influential men and women of the twentieth century--including Eleanor Roosevelt, Peter Drucker, the Menninger brothers, Reinhold Niebuhr, Aldous Huxley, Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson, and many others--and how he influenced business history well before his first book was published at the age of seventy-three. At a time when leadership and management fads substitute as wisdom, Robert Greenleaf's life stories provide clues for how each person can make a difference in the workplace, no matter what position he or she holds.

This resource for individual and group study explores what it means to be a deacon in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Addressing both the leadership and spiritual requirements of the position, Your Calling as a Deacon offers new and seasoned deacons the direction, understanding, and encouragement to serve God and church.

Since the early days of his pontificate, Pope Francis has challenged us to reclaim the "good news" of the Gospel and to allow that good news to heal shattered lives. He is an evangelist of hope who models true servant leadership and whose witness to joy has changed the Church and the world. This small volume brings together the reflections of five leaders in the deacon community in the United States on the joy-filled witness of Pope Francis and what his message means for deacons today.

In "To Be and To Serve," Deacon William T. Ditewig explores the important topic of identity for permanent deacons by reflecting on the place of deacons within the local community and the Universal Church. Noting that "it's all about relationships," he takes readers on a journey through Church teachings and pastoral realities to highlight the truth that a deacon lives a life totally given over to the Lord and to those whom he is called to serve.

Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity coexists alongside the quiet subtleties of mercy, and people and nations currently encounter a world in a fresh rendering of the role of leaders as healers, Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity which not even the certainties of existence remain even as grace can sometimes arise under the most difficult circumstances. Ultimately, Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity is a book about the alienation and intimacy at war within us all. Ferch speaks to categorical human transgressions in the hope that readers will be compelled to examine their own prejudices and engage the moral responsibility to evoke in their own personal life, work life, and larger national communities a more humane and life-giving coexistence. In addition to a primary focus on servant leadership, the book addresses three interwoven aspects of social responsibility: 1) the nature of personal responsibility 2) the nature of privilege and the conscious and unconscious violence against humanity often harbored in a blindly privileged stance, and 3) the encounter with forgiveness and forgiveness-asking grounded in a personal and collective obligation to the well-being of humanity. Modernist and postmodernist notions of the will to meaning are considered against the philosophical notion of the will to power. The book examines the everyday existence of human values in a time when we inhabit a world filled as much with unwarranted cruelty as with the disarming nature of authentic and life-affirming love. The book asks the question: Can ultimate forgiveness change the heart of violence? In Forgiveness and Power, people are challenged not only by the work of profound thought leaders such as Mandela, Tutu, but also Simone Weil, Vaclav Havel, Emerson, Mary Oliver, Martin Luther King, Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and Robert Greenleaf. The hope of the book is that people of all ages and creeds come to a deeper understanding and of personal and collective responsibility for leadership that helps heal the heart of the world.
Contents: What is servant leadership? -- Servant leadership in the present day -- The power of servant leadership / foreword by Larry C. Spears -- Balefire: the world of violence and forgiveness / preface by Shann Ray Ferch -- Servant leadership, forgiveness, and power -- A fine grace -- When we rise -- The dignity of life -- The eloquent question -- Of love and human violence -- Emerson on love -- Sand Creek -- The house of light -- Personal consciousness, interior fortitude -- Shame and forgiveness -- The family, the world -- The way of the child -- Martin Luther King Jr. and Desmond Tutu -- The question of love and power -- Before the velvet revolution -- The practice of consciousness -- Servant leadership consciousness and listening -- A narrative of hope and responsible action -- The inward road -- The illumined nature of persuasion -- People of self-transcendence -- Shadow and light -- A Cree man's journey -- The nature of the forgiving touch -- Healing the heart of the world -- Acts of courage and clarity / afterword by Margaret J. Wheatley -- Endnotes.