"Servant Leader" and Pride

I had the incredible opportunity to participate in Willow Creek's Leadership Summit via satellite this past week. It was an amazing experience that I would encourage anyone who ever gets the opportunity to attend. (more about this in my next post)

One of the speakers was Ken Blanchard, who along with Phil Hodges, wrote a book called "The Servant Leader." One of the first things they address is managing the demon of Pride. I found this line very thought provoking. "When the origin of an idea is more important than the idea itself, that's a matter of pride." How easy is it to base our self-worth, our ministry, anything, on whether or not someone liked/used MY idea or the way I planned something? But that's a matter of pride. We have to let pride go in order to effectively minister as a team. Most importantly we have to let God guide us as we seek His kingdom. We can only be servant leaders when we are serving God and serving others. In thinking about Pride, to me this means to not let our "toes get stepped on" when someone else has a different (or even better) idea than ours. It meas truly working together as a team within your ministry. Sometimes that might even mean that "plans" we have made will be changed to better serve God and the people we are ministering to. We need to be open to God and to others and not let our own Pride drag us down or get in the way of what God may be trying to do.

And that's easier said than done....

Two questions from "The Servant Leader" to contemplate:
-Are you thinking more of yourself than you should?
-Who is your primary audience in life - your God, yourself, or otheres?