updated August 2026
Jesus told his disciples that leadership among them would run in the opposite direction from leadership everywhere else. The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over people. Among his followers, greatness runs downhill: the great one serves and the first one is slave of all. Church leaders lead from moral authority, not from rank.
But Jesus called them to him and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." - Matthew 20:25-28
The context matters
We usually meet these verses on their own, printed on a leadership retreat handout. But Matthew gives them a setting, and the setting changes how they land.
Two verses earlier, the mother of James and John came to Jesus with a request. She wanted her sons seated at his right and his left in the kingdom. She asked for the two best chairs in the room. When the other ten hear about it, they're indignant (Mt 20:24), probably somebody beat them to it.
Jesus isn't lecturing a room full of humble men about a temptation they've never felt. He's talking to twelve people who all want the same thing, as he's about to walk into Jerusalem and be executed. That's the backdrop for "give his life as a ransom for many." He's not describing a management philosophy. He's describing what he is on his way to do.
What Jesus is not saying
Before we get to practice, let's clear away two misreadings, because both of them are common and both of them are comfortable.
He isn't telling us not to lead. Read the sentence again: "whoever would be great among you must be your servant." He doesn't say stop wanting to be great. He doesn't say ambition is sin. He says the road runs the other way. He redefines the path, not the goal.
He isn't telling leaders to give up authority. He's telling them not to lord it over people. Those aren't the same thing. A leader still decides, still sets direction, still says no. What changes is who the authority is for and how it is wielded.
Remember, serving people is not the same as pleasing them.
Picture two team meetings. Same leader, same agenda, same decision at the end. In the first meeting, everyone leaves feeling heard and nobody is upset. In the second, one person leaves angry, because the decision went against what she wanted and the leader told her so plainly.
Which leader was serving?
Most of us want to say the first one. But we don't actually know. We can't tell from how people felt walking out. A leader who tells you what you want to hear may be serving you, or he may be serving his own need to be liked. A leader who disappoints you may be failing you, or she may be doing the hard thing that's actually best for you.
The servant in Jesus' illustration isn't the one who keeps everybody happy. He's the one who choose to do what was best for everyone. Servant leaders are responsible to do what is best, which may not always be what they want. It may not be what the team wants either.
6 marks of a Leader who Serves
1. Know the people you lead.
You can't serve people you don't know. A servant pays attention: what someone is good at, what drains them, what they're carrying at home this month, what they actually want out of this work.
Good leaders take the time to learn their team as people, not as slots on an organizational chart. But it can't be fake, and it can't be a one-time offsite exercise. People can tell the difference between interest and technique.
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2. Work for the team, not for yourself.
"The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve." That's the test question: when I make a decision, who does it benefit?
Every leader has a story ready about why the thing that helps his career also happens to be best for the team. Sometimes it's even true. But if you can't remember the last time doing right by your people cost you something, that's worth sitting with.
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3. Know the priorities.
Servants don't get to do whatever they feel like doing. They do what's needed.
So find out what you're actually trying to accomplish and make sure you're working on that. Effort spent on the wrong thing isn't service. It's just busyness with a good attitude.
4. Seek the good, not the glory.
You can do a lot more good when you don't care who gets the credit. Be content playing second fiddle.
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The corollary: never take credit for someone else's work. That destroys your trustworthiness, and trust doesn't come back easily. You'll know your team has stopped trusting you when they stop telling you things.
5. Share what you know.
Never hoard information.
Hoarding is a hierarchy move. It's how you make yourself necessary, how you stay the only one who can answer the question, how you keep a little more control than your title gives you. It works. That's why people do it.
It's also the opposite of service. Your job is to make sure the team has what it needs to succeed, and information is one of the things it needs.
6. Give people room to do the work.
If your team has the resources, the decision belongs to your team. Don't hand someone responsibility and then keep the authority. If you genuinely need more than you have, go get the people who oversee you and the resources involved.
And remember that risk is a resource, just like money or people. Too little risk starves an organization. Too much burns it out. Deciding how much your team carries is part of your job, not something to pass down quietly.
Three ways to make a Team Miserable
Patrick Lencioni argues in The Three Signs of a Miserable Job that three things make work unbearable, and I think he's right. A servant leader is in a position to fix all three.
- Anonymity. People are miserable in a job where they believe nobody notices them.
- Irrelevance. People won't stay at a task they believe matters to no one.
- No visible progress. People won't keep working when they never see any fruit.
None of these are fixed by a better process. They're fixed by a leader who knows his people, tells them the truth about why the work matters, and shows them what their effort produced.
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Why this Doesn't Run on Results
Here's where I want to be careful, because everything above appears in secular leadership books too, and for good reason. It works. Teams led this way tend to do better.
But that's not the reason Jesus gives.
He grounds the whole thing in himself: he came to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. He served us when it did not work out well for him. He was not paid back, thanked, or made successful by it. He was killed by it.
Which means servant leadership that lasts only as long as it produces results was never the thing he described. That's a technique. What he's after goes further down than behavior. It asks what you actually want.
Do you want to be useful, or do you want to be seen as useful? Would you still do the unglamorous, uncredited, load-bearing work if no one ever found out you did it?
Jesus would. He did.
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