Servant Leadership

In my leadership class today, we discussed core values and their importance in shaping our lives. We learned the core values of individuals like William Wilberforce which helped him to persevere in pursuing his calling. We also did an exercise to identify our core values. Everything went well as planned until one student asked THE question I've been anxiously hoping to avoid: "Sen, what's your core values?" There was a deafening silence for about three seconds, into which I felt many years of studying, teaching, researching, and living were squeezed. Then I began to answer, "I will tell you just one of them It's making a positive contribution to the world through academia in the field of leadership."

I then proceeded to tell them that my heart resonates with the idea of servant leadership. I believe that to a large extent, everything rises and falls with leadership (for better or worse, that is). I also believe that servant leadership is most God-glorifying, Christ-exemplifying, Spirit-enabled approach of leadership (which I did not elaborate in class for reasons that have to do with political correctness). Thus far I believe that I should spend a good portion of my life introducing the biblical concept of servant leadership into the organizational and church life, despite its slow and small trickle-down effect.

History taught us that the academia is a well-beaten path towards incubating and disseminating significant, lasting ideas. A case in point: I recently co-authored a blind, triple peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Management Studies. The painstaking process took nearly 2.5 years (though in the end I'd it's worth doing since it's one of the top-tiered journals in the field of Management).

Everyone who has published in peer-review journals has experienced rejections by journal editors or reviewers or both. They are not easy to accept, particularly if you have spent months and years writing a particular peace. Many years ago, I thought that I should be resilient because, to use Nietzsche's catchphrase, 'what does not kill me makes me stronger'. But upon further soul-searching (I am only doing this once in a blue moon), I believe these words penned by J. Gresham Machen best capture my motive in persevering the publish-and-perish academia setting. The quote is taken from his article Christianity and Culture published in The Princeton Theological Review, vol 11, in 1913:

"What is today matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires. In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combatted; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassionate debate. So as Christians we should try to mold the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity."

Post-note: On the day I received in my mailbox the hardcopy of the article, I also received in my email inbox that my other paper got rejected. God has His way to ensure that I stay humble, to always remember my created-limited-corrupted nature.