{"id":3968,"date":"2008-09-02T11:35:34","date_gmt":"2008-09-02T17:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=3968"},"modified":"2013-06-11T07:43:40","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T13:43:40","slug":"kingdom-of-god-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/kingdom-of-god-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Kingdom of God leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been reading <strong>Frank Viola&#8217;s<\/strong> &#8220;<span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.reimaginingchurch.org\/\">Reimagining Church<\/span>&#8221; over the last week or so. It&#8217;s been a great companion to go along with <strong>Brian&#8217;s<\/strong> message series (<a href=\"http:\/\/encounterthis.com\/tag\/priests-in-the-hood\/\">priests in the hood<\/a>). The book also seems to apply directly to what I envision for our community groups at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.encounterthis.com\">encounter<\/a> (and beyond).<\/p>\n<p>This morning I read Luke 22:25-26:<\/p>\n<p><em>Within minutes they were bickering over who of them would end up the greatest. But Jesus intervened: &#8220;Kings like to throw their weight around and people in authority like to give themselves fancy titles. It&#8217;s not going to be that way with you. Let the senior among you become like the junior; let the leader act the part of the servant.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>As community group leaders\/facilitators\/hosts I think Viola makes some great points about what we should avoid striving for and what we should strive for:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>in the gentile (secular) world, leaders operate on the basis of a political, chain-of-command social structure &#8212; a graded hierarchy. in the kingdom of God, leadership flows from childlike meekness and sacrificial service.<\/li>\n<li>in the gentile world, authority is based on position and rank. in the kingdom of God, authority is based on godly character. note Christ&#8217;s description of a leader: &#8220;let him be a servant,&#8221; and &#8220;let him be as the younger.&#8221; in our Lord&#8217;s eyes, being precedes doing. and doing flows from being. put differently, function follows character. those who serve do so because they are servants.<\/li>\n<li>in the gentile world, greatness is measured in prominence, external power and political influence. in the kingdom of God, greatness is measured by humility and servitude.<\/li>\n<li>in the gentile world, leaders exploit their positions to rule over others. in the kingdom of god, leaders deplore special reverence. they rather regard themselves &#8220;as the younger.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I hope and pray that we&#8217;re all being leaders\/facilitators\/hosts that fit in with the kingdom of God model and not the gentile\/worldly model that surrounds us everywhere we go. I also pray that each of us are encouraging our group members to do the same. By becoming servants to all, leadership will be a natural extension to them all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been reading Frank Viola&#8217;s &#8220;Reimagining Church&#8221; over the last week or so. It&#8217;s been a great companion to go along with Brian&#8217;s message series (priests in the hood). The book also seems to apply directly to what I envision for our community groups at encounter (and beyond). This morning I read Luke 22:25-26: Within &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/kingdom-of-god-leaders\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Kingdom of God leaders<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31,560,18,19],"tags":[364,1426,1313,760,327,1427,1425],"class_list":["post-3968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-club","category-community","category-faith","category-reflections","tag-community-groups","tag-core-groups","tag-frank-viola","tag-kingdom-of-god","tag-leadership","tag-reimagining-church","tag-servants"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-120","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11173,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3968\/revisions\/11173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}