“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.” ~Mark 10:43

We’re in the last stages of the nomination process here at Central as we select additional shepherds to lead our church family. In preparing for this Sunday’s sermon I’ve been reacquainted with some important words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together:

“Jesus made authority in the fellowship dependent upon brotherly service. Genuine spiritual authority is to be found only where the ministry of hearing, helping, bearing, and proclaiming is carried out. The desire we so often hear expressed today for ‘authoritative personalities’ springs frequently from a spiritually sick need for the admiration of men, for the establishment of visible human authority, because the genuine authority of service appears to be so unimpressive.

The bishop is the simple, faithful man, sound in faith and life, who rightly discharges his duties to the church. His authority lies in the exercise of his ministry. In the man himself there is nothing to admire.

Genuine authority recognizes that it can exist only in the service of Him who alone has authority. Genuine authority knows that it is bound in the strictest sense by the saying of Jesus: ‘You have only one Master and you are all brothers’ (Matthew 23:8). The Church does not need brilliant personalities but faithful servants of Jesus and the brethren. Not in the former, but in the latter is the lack. The Church will place its confidence only in the simple servant of the Word of Jesus Christ because it knows then it will be guided, not according to human wisdom and human conceit, but by the Word of the Good Shepherd.

Genuine authority is determined by the faithfulness with which a man serves Jesus Christ, never by the extraordinary talents which he possesses. Pastoral authority can be attained only by the servant of Jesus who seeks no power of his own, who himself is a brother among brothers submitted to the authority of the Word.”

Peace,

Allan