Coming Alongside

The greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the one who serves. (Luke 22:26)

As a brash young college student, I attended a lecture by Ramsey Clark, former United States attorney general under JFK and LBJ, and a leading peace and civil rights activist. After the talk, I approached him to see if we could meet for coffee (as I said, I was young and brash). To his associates’ shock, he said, “How about tomorrow for breakfast?”

The next morning we met at the Sheraton Hotel and talked together for over an hour. I peppered him with questions: what famous people had he met? What was it like to be the attorney general in the ‘60s? Where did he think the future would go? When I asked him to name the greatest person he had ever met, without hesitation he looked me in the eye and said, “You first need to know, Michael, that I don’t think of people in those terms. If you want to know which person made the deepest impression on me, it would have to be Dr. Martin Luther King.” He went on to tell me about his friendship with MLK, then he said something to me I will never forget, “Don’t ever seek to be the greatest, Michael. Seek, instead, to do great things. If you aspire to greatness, your greatness will die with you. But if you aspire to do great things, your legacy will live on. And the only way to do this is by being a servant. Lead by serving and you will do great things.”

I was too young in the faith to know that he had lifted those words straight from Scripture, directly from our Lord. Jesus was the embodiment of servant leadership. He didn’t just tell the disciples what they should do, he did it alongside them. They learned not simply from his words, but from his actions. They didn’t just hear him speak, they watched him do.

Can this counterintuitive model be right? Are we really to lead by serving? Does service actually gain the respect of those whom we lead? Should our whole purpose be to serve others, whether we work in the mailroom or the board room?

As I left the hotel that morning and waited to cross the street, a blind man with a seeing-eye dog came up alongside me. I stared at the beautiful Lab. His senses were alert, his sole purpose in life to serve his blind master. Then the light turned green, and very gently, the dog led his master off the curb and across the street. My own vision blurred as I walked to my car. God had sent me a living parable on that street corner, and this brash, young college student learned a lesson that morning he would never forget. Pursue great things, not greatness; lead by serving.