In the name of jesus and serving the leader

Stahl-Wert and Jennings introduce the concept of the serving leader with the story of Mike Wilson’s journey to understanding himself and his father through their mutual journey in learning how to make the serving leader teachable and learnable. Throughout this journey, Mike develops an illustration of what the serving leader does that looks like an inverted pyramid. In Henri Nouwen’s In the Name of Jesus, Nouwen describes a similar idea as “downward mobility. These concepts are central to answering the questions that follow. In responding to the questions below you should not only draw upon what you read in The Serving Leader and In The Name of Jesus, but also from your readings in Hauer & Young, and the Bible. Your responses should be written in paragraph form and should be detailed and well developed, such that the final product should be between 500-600 words.

RESPONSE QUESTIONS 

(type answers in paragraph format on separate sheet of paper)

1. What do you understand “upending the pyramid” to mean according to Jennings & Stahl-wert? 

2. What connections to you see with In the Name Jesus? What dissimilarities? Who seems to be better describing Jesus as you have experienced him in the biblical readings for this class?

3. How does the idea of upending the pyramid relate to your experiences of having led or having been led by others? How about the idea of “downward mobility?”

4. What moments of learning similar to Mike’s have you have experience in your life’s journey thus far? What moments like Nouwen’s learning from Bill have you experienced? Why are we sometimes more open to transformative moments that at other times

The 2 books that are required to use to write this paper are; Nouwen, Henri J. M. In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership. New York: Crossroad, 1989.

Stahl-Wert, John and Ken Jennings, The Serving Leader, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003.