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The Difference Between "Government" and "Servant Leadership"
A typical definition (per wiktionary) of GOVERNMENT is:
The body with the power to make and/or enforce laws for a country, land area, people or organization.
A group of people who hold a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in a given territory.
The state and its administration viewed as the ruling political power.
The management or control of a system.
The tenure of a chief of state.
A typical definition (per Greenleaf) of SERVANT LEADERSHIP is:
"The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature."
Government correlates primarily to LAW and enforcement.
Servant Leadership correlates primarily to LOVE and forgiveness.
Human church organizations rely primarily on GOVERNMENT
The Church of God relies primarily on SERVANT LEADERSHIP
Government mostly operates on the “GET” principle
Servant Leadership mostly operates on the “GIVE” principle
Government brings out the WORST in people
Servant Leadership brings out the BEST in people
During the kingdom age GOVERNMENT and SERVANT LEADERSHIP will work together in perfect unity and harmony.
Back in the February 1939 Good News magazine Herbert W. Armstrong, then Pastor General of the Worldwide Church of God organization, said the following in an article entitled: DID CHRIST Reorganize THE CHURCH? He wrote:
“What has split and divided up the saints in the Church of God? Nothing but ORGANIZATION----which has let to politics, ministers lusting for rule and for power----striving against each other, lining up the brethren on THEIR side, against the other! It is SUCH PREACHERS who have split up and divided our brethren!…..Organization and church GOVERNMENT has brought us only strive, jealousies, divisions, and bitterness! It is not of God, and it can bear no other fruit.”
Mr. Armstrong’s words (I believe) were prophetic and inspired. History has already proven that he was correct!
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