On Servant Leadership

A Presentation to Conference of Catholic Women, Ascension Church, Boca Raton, FL. September19, 2022

This has been a busy month already, with school having started, and parish religion programs starting back up, and our own officers being installed by in a lovely ceremony on September 4. Let’s take a moment to acknowledge our new officers.

These women, and the others who have taken on leadership roles in our organization, whether on the parish, deanery, diocese or national level, all have been called to their positions. But to be a leader in the church, or in a church organization, is not to be exalted but to take on the role of a servant. Servant Leadership is itself a hallmark of Christian value.

The term servant leadership has been around since 1970, but the values of servant leadership predate the coining of the phrase by millennia. A servant-leader is one who is called first to serve; called to serve first and foremost, and for who leadership follows not out of a desire for power, but as a means of increasing one’s service to others. Richard Greenleaf, who coined the phrase, held that “caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is the rock upon which a good society is built.”

We serve in the image of the apostles: not for our own glory or honor, but to lift up our organization, our parish, our community, our Church. In the words of the motto of the Society of Jesus, we serve Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, that is, for the greater glory of God.

So let us go forth, tonight and every night, every day, and do all things in his name, for his greater glory. 

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