Charles Swindoll in his popular book, Improving Your Serve, tells of how he was at first haunted and then convicted by the Bible's insistence that Jesus came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45)." The more he studied what the Bible says about servanthood, the more convinced Swindoll became that our task in this world, like that of Jesus, is not to be served, not to grab the spotlight, and not to become successful or famous or powerful or idolized. Our calling is to be authentic servants who genuinely give of themselves without concern over who gets the glory.

For many of us, that term servant may conjure up an image somewhere between an African slave named Kunta Kinte straight out of Roots, and those thousands of migrant workers who, at harvest …