The Catholic Vision for Leading Like Jesus. Owen Phelps, Ph.D.
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them for a particular audience — the more than 1 billion Catholics in the world who proclaim Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
I am pleased that we have found a member of the Lead Like Jesus movement who is a Catholic family man to step up and take on this task. Owen Phelps, a certified Lead Like Jesus facilitator, has worked for his church for a quarter of a century and has excellent credentials in both the fields of religious studies and leadership training.
It is our hope that others will step forward in the days ahead to help us develop more partnerships of all kinds in other faith traditions. In that way, our vision of Lead Like Jesus as a movement will flower and grow. And even more important than that, we will all be better servants of God.
Ken Blanchard
About This Book
This book is not the definitive text on how to lead like Jesus. We believe the definitive text is Lead Like Jesus: Lessons from the Greatest Leadership Role Model of All Time, by Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges, co-founders of the Lead Like Jesus movement.1 We recommend that all Christians read this book and try to incorporate its principles into their everyday relationships at home, at work, and in their communities. Were it not for Ken and Phil’s work in that book and in their Lead Like Jesus Encounters, this book could not have been written. This book represents an effort to affirm Ken and Phil’s insights about how Jesus calls us to lead and to develop those insights further in light of Catholic teaching, tradition, and experience.
For example, Ken and Phil insist that everyone is called to be a leader. We agree. Because we recognize that Catholicism sees married life as a true vocation and places a great emphasis on the value of families in building a just society and a vital faith community, you will find sections called “In the Family” scattered throughout this book. In these we explore various facets of the call to lead like Jesus in our homes. You will also find sections called “On the Job,” “In the Community,” and “In the Church” sprinkled throughout, where we explore Christlike leadership in those specific contexts.
You will also find that we expand the concept of servant leadership to include steward leadership and shepherd leadership, uniting the three under the banner of S3 Leadership. Our purpose is not to dilute the core insight, captured so well in Scripture and explained so clearly by Ken and Phil, that Jesus calls us to be servant leaders. Rather, our purpose is to add two legs to help balance and stabilize that great truth so that we all might live better, love more, and build the kingdom as Jesus did — with the heart of a true servant leader focused on fulfilling the will of God.
Introduction
Let your adornment be the inner self with the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God’s sight.
1 Peter 3:4
For months, I struggled with a choice. Should I develop my concepts of leading like Jesus around the notion of servant or steward? Then one day I started to wonder: Are you crazy? Why choose one when both are essential? The concept of S2 Leadership was born.
Some months later, I was in an elevator with Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges, co-founders of the Lead Like Jesus movement. We were on the University of San Diego campus headed to meet a graduate class being taught by Ken and his wife, Margie. I saw an opportunity to share my story about the agonizing but ultimately false choice between servant and steward.
“Why not make it S3 Leadership?” Ken asked.
“S3?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.
“Servant, steward, and shepherd,” he proposed. In that moment the concept of S3 Leadership was born.
A very good way to understand and appreciate Jesus’ approach to leadership — His teaching and His example — is to see it in terms of the S3 framework.
• He practiced servant leadership.
• He saw his leadership role as a steward.
• He cared for His disciples as a shepherd cares for his sheep.
If you are committed to these dimensions of Jesus’ leadership — and open to His unconditional love in your life — you can come to lead like Jesus, which will make you a better leader in any context.
The person who wants to build his or her life around Christian principles today faces a challenge. Our society is increasingly secular. A clear majority of us consider ourselves Christian. But we sense that it is not appropriate to mention Jesus — not even God — in the work-place or public square. If you are uncomfortable talking about God, Jesus, or your Christian faith in public, I’ve got great news for you: Leading like Jesus is not about what you say, but about what you do.
As you master what it means to lead like Jesus, some people may ask you about the source of your leadership aptitude. If they do, consider it an invitation to share your Christian leadership perspective. Since they have been impressed with how you lead and the results generated by your leadership, what you say will have real power to influence them. But until then, leading like Jesus is about what you do much more than what you say.
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Ephesians 4:1-3
“Only if we live in the right way, with one another and for one another, can freedom develop…. If we live in opposition to love and against the truth — in opposition to God — then we destroy one another and destroy the world.”2
Pope Benedict XVI
“When we dream alone, we only dream. When we dream together, reality begins.”
Brazilian Proverb
Chapter One
Catholicism’s Two Leadership Challenges
Catholics face two particular leadership challenges. One chiefly concerns the laity. The other primarily concerns the clergy. But in today’s Catholic community, both affect everyone.
With regard to the laity, a huge demographic transformation has had a profound effect on the challenges we face trying to live each day as faithful Christians. In the last half century, the Catholic Church in the United States has seen itself transformed from a church of the urban working poor to a church whose members are leaders in all sectors of society. Catholics make up about 24 percent of the nation’s population. But it’s estimated that Catholics make up as much as 40 percent of the nation’s white collar population. The Catholic challenge today has changed from how to fit into society to how to lead it. We struggle with this challenge because it is a new one and we don’t have a lot of models to guide us. Until recently, the only leadership experience most Catholics had in American culture was in our families. (For that reason, we will frequently draw on examples from family life to illustrate what it means to lead like Jesus in every walk of life.)
Our Church hasn’t helped the laity much with their leadership challenge either. Catholic parishes are often well-equipped to gather their members for worship, dispense the sacraments, help those at the margins of society, and provide social outlets for members who were once shut out of society’s mainstream. But helping members learn how to integrate their Christian faith with their lives as leaders at home, at work, and in their communities is a new challenge. Catholics don’t hear much about it from the pulpit or in their media. This book represents an early step in helping Catholic laity integrate their faith with their lives in the 21st century.
With regard to our clergy (a term that includes bishops, priests, and permanent deacons), the Catholic