The Myth Of Servant Leadership
Meta Modernity, The Cultural Soup, And Words We Don’t Actually Mean
Let me put this right out there at the top: so much of our church's language and policy is the byproduct of a highly emotive, matriarchal reordering of society—one that has absolutely dominated Western Civilization.
And no, it isn’t “creeping into the church.” That implies someone might notice and cast it out. Nah, bro. This stuff got welcomed in, baptized, and given a seat on the elder board. Pentecostals? Chief sinners.
It all traces back to the Seeker Sensitive Movement—that failed leper colony of church thinkers who gave us an anthropologically centered epistemology (read: people-first theology). That was the Trojan Horse. A hundred bad ideas came galloping in behind it, and Evangelicals signed for the delivery.
I know, that last paragraph was a doozy. So let me unpack it.
It sounds noble to “care a lot about people.” Who’s gonna argue with that? “Yeah man, we forgot about others—we need more empathy.”
Cool. Be kind. Be winsome. Be emotionally intelligent. Like a complete sociopath trying to manipulate a mark. (The irony writes itself.)
But don’t lose the mission.
Luther said, “Truth at all costs.”
Modern Protestants? “People at all costs.”
And they beat that “people are everything” drum so hard their kids picked it up, ran with it, and deconstructed—using the very same people-first hermeneutic. Now when they read the Bible, Jesus is just a guy who hugged marginalized people.
“Imagine how that person feels—rejected and alone. My heart breaks. Let’s change the rules to include them.”
That’s empathy.“Imagine how that person feels—rejected and alone. My heart breaks. Let’s show them that God’s way will heal them.”
That’s Biblical compassion.
The Seekers brought people to church.
They just forgot to bring God and the Bible with them.
In their hasty rush toward cultural empathy, they began rethinking Christian doctrines—not from the seat of Scripture, but from the couch of the postmodern hearer. Maybe the sexual ethics stayed technically intact, but the rest?
Massaged. Reworded. Softened.
Less abrasive terminology. More therapeutic packaging.
And “Servant Leader”—that’s the one I’m aiming at today.
“Nathan,” you say, “how could you possibly have beef with Servant Leadership?”
Oh, I’ve been waiting for this one.
And look, it’s not even the term itself. It’s the ideology that now festers beneath it, and what’s been lost along the way.
If you use the phrase Servant Leadership, I’m not raining on your parade.
But I am pulling the car over to check what’s under the hood.
Because here’s the thing: we have an authority crisis in the Church.
People don’t believe in it anymore.
And that’s part of the reason Servant Leadership even became a thing:
To soften the blow.
To rebrand authority so it wouldn’t scare the sheep.
But at some point, we’ve got to ask:
Are we ashamed of Scripture?
Are we embarrassed by how God actually governs the world?
Here’s my full dry, sweet peppers and onions, dip on the side, giant Chicago Beef with Servant Leadership ideology:
