Cheryl Schatz

I will be going back through some of the comments and responding as I have time. I am also working on a new post so I want to get it up as soon as I can.

Mark said in comment #5 to Kay:

So why are we warned about not lording it over- this would seem irrelevant if authority was not an expectation for church leaders. We are warned because of the corrupting nature of authority, not to show it doesn’t exist.

Mark’s point seems to be that the warning to not be “lording it over” others proves that taking authority over others was an expectation for church leaders. If this was the case, one would expect that Jesus would have told the disciples how to take authority without lording it over others. But He didn’t do that. He gave a totally different expectation. The expectation was that the one who wants to be great would be a servant. The expectation then is stated as servanthood not authority over others. If one wants to transfer authority into Jesus’ statement about being a servant, Jesus’ point would seem to be lost. After all a servant would be one who had no authority at all.