Since we have moved to Nashville, Lisa has gone from what I call her internal oven to saying almost every night, Jeff, I'm cold again. And she's not kidding. Maybe it's the Nashville weather. Maybe her hormones are finally regulating again. But the moment the cozy earth double bubble cuddle blanket arrived, say that three times fast, all that changed. Every evening that she had in her home, They curl up under that blanket in front of the fireplace with the Christmas lights glowing. Sometimes they're doing devotions. Other times they're watching a show or just enjoying time as family. But I'll be honest, when Lisa calls something her go-to for warmth and comfort, that means something. Number one, I'm not used to her trying to get warm. She's normally sweating, which is why she likes the Cozy Earth pajamas as well. But, you know, Cozy Earth products, they have the viscose, crafted with viscose from bamboo, designed to create a calm elevator sanctuary at home. Their bedding keeps you at the right temperature. Their fabric is incredibly soft. Their products are just built with a 10-year warranty and 100-night sleep trial. so if you're looking for the perfect Christmas gift this Christmas something that wraps the people you love a real comfort their bamboo sheet is set as an easy win their double bubble blanket will keep you warm and snuggly in front of the fire or even if you don't have a fire but go to CozyEarth.com and use the code ECHOES for an exclusive discount 40% off Again, that's discount only for Echoes Through Eternity listeners. And if you get a post-purchase survey, just say you heard about Cozy Earth from this podcast. It helps keep bringing partners like this to you. Again, Cozy Earth wraps the ones you love in luxury. Marcus Aurelius said, what we do in life echoes through eternity. What is your life echoing through eternity? Welcome to Echoes Through Eternity with Dr. Jeffrey Skinner. Our mission is to inspire, engage, and encourage leaders from across the globe to plant missional churches and be servant leaders. So join us and hear the stories of servant leaders reverberating lives as God echoes them through eternity. Brought to you by Missional Church Planting and Leadership Development and Dynamic Church Planting International. Welcome in to Echoes Through Eternity. I am your host, Dr. Jeffrey D. Skinner. What is God echoing through your life today? Well, today, I want us to, I have entitled today's episode, The Dark Side of Servant Leadership. Why good leaders fail and how the church recovers. There's a few questions we can't avoid. Several years back, I sat in a room with leaders who were stunned. They weren't angry. They were not defensive, just stunned. They kept asking the same question, how did this happen? The leader had preached humility, talked about servanthood, modeled sacrifice, and still everything collapsed. That moment forced a hard question, not for me alone, but for many others that were sat on that board. If servant leadership is central to our theology, why do we keep watching our leaders fall? Why do churches face public collapse? Why do ministries implode? Why do people get hurt under leaders who talk constantly about serving? This episode is not about gossip. It is not about tearing down leaders. It is about telling the truth so the church can grow healthier. because the problem is not servant leadership itself. The problem is the dark side of servant leadership. And I'm not talking about this as an outsider. I'm a pastor. I've led teams. I know how easy it is for isolation to creep in, which is what breeds this failure that we talk about, a lack of accountability. This isn't about those leaders. It's all about us. It's about all of us. So we've got to define the dark side. Servant leadership is a phrase that we love in the church. We quote it, we teach it, we build leadership covenants around it. My entire doctorate framework was based around the servant leadership concept, whether it be corporate leadership, educational leadership, or pastoral leadership. Servant leadership was the model that we used. But there's a tension. Servant leadership language can exist without servant leadership structure. Here's the simplest way I can define the dark side. The dark side of servant leadership appears when humility is preached, but power is not shared. When the tone is gentle but the structure is untouchable when leaders talk about serving but no one can question them Servant leadership without accountability becomes performative humility. It sounds spiritual, it feels right, but it can hide power. And hidden power always drifts. Before we go further, we need to define what servant leadership actually is. Servant leadership is not a corporate trend the church borrowed. It begins with Jesus. Jesus said, whosoever wants to be great among you must be your servant. He washed feet. He rejected status. He laid down his life. Leadership in the kingdom has always been cruciform. It bends low. It gives itself away. The modern phrase servant leadership was popularized in the 1970s by Robert Greenleaf. He worked in the corporate world, but he drew deeply from the example of Christ. He defined a servant leader this way. The servant leader is servant first. The Jesus, the desire to serve, comes before the desire to lead. and he offered a test. Do the people being led grow? Do they become healthier, wiser, more capable of serving others? The church embraced that language, and rightly so. But here's where we have to be honest. Servant leadership language spread faster than the servant leadership structure. We embrace the tone of humility, but we didn't always build systems of shared accountability. We celebrated leaders who served, but we didn't always ensure they were known. Certain leadership is still the right model, but it only works inside accountability, accountable communities. That's where the shadow side begins. I want to tread carefully here. These are real churches, real people, real pain. I'm not interested in dissecting stories. I'm interested in learning from their patterns. Over the last several years, multiple high-profile ministries have entered public crisis. Gateway Church in Texas faced a major leadership scandal after abuse allegations surfaced involving its founding pastor. IHOP, Kansas City, entered a season of investigation and leadership separation after allegations against his founder became known I knew some people that were directly involved in that, and they were hurt deeply and wounded as a result of it Hillsong faced global scrutiny and resignation at senior level The meeting house in Canada forced the resignation of its lead pastor After an independent investigation into abuse of power Each case is different Each situation involves real people and real pain But there's a pattern And that pattern is familiar It's a strong personality It's a strong platform Weak shared accountability The servant leadership language can also serve as a shield And that's what happens Because they're seen as such a great servant or a great servant leader Sometimes there can be a culture of intimidation Of questioning or holding those leaders accountable And even surrounding themselves with leaders who will hold them accountable Servant leadership language remained but accountability structures failed. This is the dark side. Robert Greenleaf said the test of leadership is whether the people being served grow, do they become healthier, wiser, more capable of serving others. But when leaders become untouchable, that test disappears. No one questions decisions. No one raises concerns. No one wants to challenge the servant leader. so that's the question this is what we'll delve into today and dive into and and dissect and and recognize the patterns again not to criticize but to make the church healthier when accountability disappears even sincere leaders can drift because isolation changes people Pressure builds, back shrinks, blind spots grow. Leaders rarely wake up and decide to fail. Failure grows slowly in isolation. Recently, I attended a discipleship gathering in our own tradition called People of Grace. It was led by a gentleman named Sam Barber. He's the director of Sunday School Ministries International, or SDMI, Sunday School Discipleship Ministries, for our denomination. He laid out a framework for disciple-making using the acronym BECOME. B-E-C-O-M-E. Begin again. Encounter the Spirit Connect with people organize your life make yourself accountable engage But here's what matters. That accountability piece he emphasized is not new. It's not original to him. It reaches back to John Wesley, and he admitted that. In fact, he opened the session by saying, we simply need to recover what John Wesley knew. Wesley built early Methodist communities around class meetings, small groups that met weekly. People confessed sin, encouraged one another, asked hard questions, and prayed. He also had a separate group called bands, and that's where the accountability was practiced for the leaders there. And he asked hard questions. I won't go through all those questions today, but you can look them up for yourself. One of them is, have you sinned this week? And another one was, have you lied about anything that we've talked about today? So they practiced what Wesley called watching over one another in love. Now, again, accountability has become a word of judgment today, and that's not the way he used it. It was a way of, as he says, building each other up in love, watching over one another in love. It wasn't surveillance. It wasn't control. It was love. It wasn't bashing people. It wasn't shaming people. We talked about shame last week. Shame has no place in discipleship. Barber wasn't inventing something new. He was recovering something old. Early Methodists asked one another direct questions. Where have you sinned this week? Where have you been tempted? Where did you see God at work? How is it with your soul? That kind of honesty kept leaders human. It prevented isolation. It exposed blind spots. It formed humility. Wesley understood something we are relearning the hard way. Isolation eventually distorts leadership. Peter's life shows this clearly. Peter begins again. Peter encounters the Spirit. Peter connects with people. Peter reorganizes his life. Peter is held accountable. Peter engages the mission. Peter is corrected constantly. Jesus rebukes him. He restores him, redirects him, sends him again. He didn't shame Peter. He simply reached him. He just corrected him in love. Jesus had authority, but he never let alone. He sent disciples two by two. He corrected publicly. He invited questions. He lived in shared community. Accountability is not an optional add-on in the New Testament. It is central. Every major discipleship collapse we have watched shares the same soil. Isolation, lack of shared oversight, culture of deference, confusion between charisma and character. If you remove accountability from servant leadership, you do not get healthier leadership. You get unchecked authority with a humble tongue. The issue is not always moral failure first. The issue is structural isolation first. Let me slow this down. Wherever you are listening right now, just ask yourself one question. Who tells me the truth? Who can challenge me and remain safe afterward? Who sees my blind spots? Who has access to my life? Where am I accountable? And where am I isolated? The church does not collapse because leaders are human. It collapses when leaders are alone. So what does real accountability look like? No leader above correction. Shared decision-making. Financial transparency. Clear reporting pathways. Peers who can challenge. repentance before crisis. It also means leaders invite accountability, not after failure, but before it. At the gathering, Barber framed accountability not as punishment, but as formation. He challenged leaders to organize their lives around Jesus' priorities and invite others into that process. So I have a prayer for us today that you can write down or if you have podcasts, you can get it from the transcript. But the prayer is to, Lord, organize my life around your priorities. Send people into my life who will tell me the truth. Hold me accountable in love. Send me. This prayer has all the elements. It checks all the boxes. The accountability, the love, the permission structure to ask the hard questions. And then finally, sending. So the rebuking and the holding of accountability is not to pull one out of ministry, but to restore and rescind if restoration is needed. And hopefully because of accountability we don face crisis That prayer is dangerous in the best way because it invites God to disrupt isolation So what is the way forward Servant leadership works when it is anchored in community. It fails when it becomes personal branding. The church does not need fewer leaders. It needs healthier leaders, leaders who are known. And when I say known, I don't mean famous. I mean known. People who know them intimately. And I don't mean their family, just their family. Leaders who are questioned. Leaders who are accountable. Leaders willing to begin again. Peter denied Jesus. Peter failed publicly, but Peter began again. Peter was restored in community, and Peter led with others. That is the model. Not perfection, at least not moral perfection. We all struggle with our sin, and part of Christian perfection in a Wesleyan sense is knowing our capacity to sin. So it's not just perfection, and it's not moral perfection. It's not an image management. It's not what I say holiness can become hiddenness. We don't want that. So it's not image management, and it's not isolation. It's shared life, shared truth, shared responsibility. If the church wants to rebuild trust in this generation, we must recover accountability rooted in grace. Servant leadership must be accountable leadership, or it will not remain servant leadership for long. If you're a pastor or leader listening right now, ask yourself, Who can confront me and remain saved afterwards? Who sees my blind spots? And who has access to my life? Where am I accountable? Where am I isolated? And if you're a part of a church, ask, Do we practice shared leadership? Do we practice transparency? Do we practice discipleship? Do we watch over one another in love? The future of the church does not depend on perfect leaders. It depends on accountable. And here's a final prayer for us all. Lord, begin again in us. Empower us by your Spirit. Organize our lives around your priorities. Send us people who will tell us the truth. Make us leaders who serve and leaders who are accountable. Amen. If you've enjoyed this podcast today, I ask you to like and subscribe. part of our road. We continue to grow. I appreciate that. I'm reaching out to new sponsors, hoping we can get some sponsors for the show, help defer some of the expenses here for advertising and promotion of the show. Again, not to build my personal brand, but simply to get the word out because I think everybody needs to know that God is echoing something in their lives. And so that brings me to my final question. What is God echoing in your life today? If you enjoyed this, please like and subscribe. All that changed. Every evening that she had made in her home, they'd curl up under that blanket in front of the fireplace with the Christmas lights glowing. Sometimes they're doing devotions. Other times they're watching a show or just enjoying time as family. But I'll be honest, when Lisa calls something her go-to for warmth and comfort, that means something. Number one, I'm not used to her trying to get warm. She's normally sweating, which is why she likes to, Cozy Earth pajamas as well. But, you know, Cozy Earth products, they have the viscose, crafted with viscose from bamboo, designed to create a calm and a sanctuary at home. Their bedding keeps you at the right temperature. Their fabric is incredibly soft. Their products are just built with a 10-year warranty and 100-night sleep trial. So if you're looking for the perfect Christmas gift this Christmas, something that wraps the people you love a real comfort. Their bamboo sheet is set as an easy win. Their double bubble blanket will keep you warm and snuggly in front of the fire, or even if you don't have a fire. But go to CozyEarth.com and use the code ECHOES for an exclusive discount, 40% off. Again, that's discount only for ECHOES for returning listeners. And if you get a post-purchase survey, just say you heard about Cozy Earth from this podcast. It helps keep bringing partners like this to you. Again, Cozy Earth wraps the ones you love in luxury.
