Servant Leadership in South Africa
Since the International Conference on Servant Leadership is in full swing at this moment and I cannot attend for the first time since 1988, I will assuage my grief by sharing something about the servant leadership I saw in action in Cape Town, South Africa last week. First, thank you Trevor for mentioning my website. Second, thank you Tom for sharing themes from "Insights on Leadership." The people you quote are some of my living heroes.
I was in Cape Town to produce a modest video documentary about a remarkable community of servants who operate a ministry there. My senses and time zones are still scrambled, but following are a few lasting impressions regarding servant leadership principles I saw in action.
Pastor Jerome Pineaar grew up in Clarksville Estates which, it was explained to me, is a "Coloured" neighborhood. During apartheid, Whites ruled the roost. Second in the pecking order were Blacks, then the Coloureds—those of mixed blood. Today, Blacks have replaced Whites at the top but "the Coloured" are still dead last. Back in his crazy days, Jerome was one of the founders of "The Young Americans" gang, which remains as a feared force. His wife Charlene was born in nearby Malawi Camp, a tract of improvised, leaky, windowless shacks built on undrainable land, strewn with and surrounded by garbage. Pictures do not do justice to the impoverishment there, and nothing but a personal visit can help you understand the smell. Jerome and Charlene are servant-leaders who stayed in the blighted communities of their birth to make a difference.
And how do they do that? First they feed people. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Several times a week, every week, without fail. They did not seek money and then design a feeding program. They just gave up their jobs and started cooking, along with a cast of unforgettable characters like Sister Anne who, at age sixty, is such a powerful spirit that Muslims, Hindus and outright atheists seek out this modest Christian to pray for them. To use Greenleaf's language, these people are seekers who put servanthood before ideology, even religious ideology. They figure that to a hungry person, God first comes in the form of food.
Second, Pastor Jerome believes it's his job to train others to be servants rather than to become a charismatic leader himself, ala some of American's TV ministers. Those he trains include Marlon, who was shot in the spine by a rival gang member and now inspires others from a wheelchair, and a strikingly beautiful teenager who lost her mother and sister to AIDS (1 out of 3 pregnant women in this neighborhood are HIV positive). At last Sunday's worship service—a nondenominational affair—I started counting the number of people who led the service at various times and quit counting after seven. Paster Jerome didn't even need to preach a sermon. They were all ministers...and leaders...and servants.
Finally—and I could go on and on—each of these remarkable people takes seriously the power of dreams, intuitions, leadings of spirit and foresight. Every now and then Charlene asks Jerome to drive down a street where sex workers ply their trade. When a girl stands out to her, she asks Jerome to stop the van so she can get out and speak with her. Has the girl eaten today? Does she have a place to sleep? Is there anything she needs? Any message to take to her family? Nothing abstract about this theology. Action equals ministry. Greenleaf's "best test" for a servant-leader writ large.
One day in the Malawi camp a woman followed me around and eventually told me that she recognized me from a dream she had the night before I arrived in Cape Town. In it, Pastor Jerome and I both had wings. No big deal, just part of life lived on the boundary between immanence and transcendence.
I do not mean to romanticize the heartbreaking poverty and dismal lives these people face daily. There is no romance to this lifestyle, but there is community—bone-deep, by-God, for-real community. They inspire me and teach me that servant-leaders are everywhere, tenaciously holding on to a life as servants, like flowers that grow in the tiny, arid cracks of a granite mountain and proudly proclaim the rich colors of life in spite of adversity.
I was in Cape Town to produce a modest video documentary about a remarkable community of servants who operate a ministry there. My senses and time zones are still scrambled, but following are a few lasting impressions regarding servant leadership principles I saw in action.
Pastor Jerome Pineaar grew up in Clarksville Estates which, it was explained to me, is a "Coloured" neighborhood. During apartheid, Whites ruled the roost. Second in the pecking order were Blacks, then the Coloureds—those of mixed blood. Today, Blacks have replaced Whites at the top but "the Coloured" are still dead last. Back in his crazy days, Jerome was one of the founders of "The Young Americans" gang, which remains as a feared force. His wife Charlene was born in nearby Malawi Camp, a tract of improvised, leaky, windowless shacks built on undrainable land, strewn with and surrounded by garbage. Pictures do not do justice to the impoverishment there, and nothing but a personal visit can help you understand the smell. Jerome and Charlene are servant-leaders who stayed in the blighted communities of their birth to make a difference.
And how do they do that? First they feed people. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Several times a week, every week, without fail. They did not seek money and then design a feeding program. They just gave up their jobs and started cooking, along with a cast of unforgettable characters like Sister Anne who, at age sixty, is such a powerful spirit that Muslims, Hindus and outright atheists seek out this modest Christian to pray for them. To use Greenleaf's language, these people are seekers who put servanthood before ideology, even religious ideology. They figure that to a hungry person, God first comes in the form of food.
Second, Pastor Jerome believes it's his job to train others to be servants rather than to become a charismatic leader himself, ala some of American's TV ministers. Those he trains include Marlon, who was shot in the spine by a rival gang member and now inspires others from a wheelchair, and a strikingly beautiful teenager who lost her mother and sister to AIDS (1 out of 3 pregnant women in this neighborhood are HIV positive). At last Sunday's worship service—a nondenominational affair—I started counting the number of people who led the service at various times and quit counting after seven. Paster Jerome didn't even need to preach a sermon. They were all ministers...and leaders...and servants.
Finally—and I could go on and on—each of these remarkable people takes seriously the power of dreams, intuitions, leadings of spirit and foresight. Every now and then Charlene asks Jerome to drive down a street where sex workers ply their trade. When a girl stands out to her, she asks Jerome to stop the van so she can get out and speak with her. Has the girl eaten today? Does she have a place to sleep? Is there anything she needs? Any message to take to her family? Nothing abstract about this theology. Action equals ministry. Greenleaf's "best test" for a servant-leader writ large.
One day in the Malawi camp a woman followed me around and eventually told me that she recognized me from a dream she had the night before I arrived in Cape Town. In it, Pastor Jerome and I both had wings. No big deal, just part of life lived on the boundary between immanence and transcendence.
I do not mean to romanticize the heartbreaking poverty and dismal lives these people face daily. There is no romance to this lifestyle, but there is community—bone-deep, by-God, for-real community. They inspire me and teach me that servant-leaders are everywhere, tenaciously holding on to a life as servants, like flowers that grow in the tiny, arid cracks of a granite mountain and proudly proclaim the rich colors of life in spite of adversity.
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