What do Christians mean when they refer to someone having a “servant’s heart”? How does this language, so foreign to those outside of a particular kind of religious context, connect to secular volunteer and non-profit organizations? Beyond the meaning of such language, what are its social effects? How is it often mobilized to manipulate and coerce individuals to “giving of themselves” beyond the limits of what is reasonable or healthy? Dan tackles these questions in this week’s episode.
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Hello and welcome to the series, It's in the Code, part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
As always, delighted to be with all of you.
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I want to tackle a topic today that is sort of interesting.
It's a kind of a theme with which I was familiar.
That's one of the interesting things about this series is so much of the topics, so many of the topics, come out of things that I experienced in my time within evangelicalism or that I've encountered since.
And sometimes I don't even realize how, I don't know, weird they are to outsiders or how much my experience was the experience of others until I hear from people Who share these sort of same things that I heard or that were told to me, or these same phrases.
And just to plug again, that's why it's so valuable to me to hear from all of you.
But a topic today that I had heard about from a lot of people and that I recall from my time, both within evangelicalism, but also observations that I've made since then.
It's a topic that, again, has come up with a lot of my clients through the center.
Again, I'm a trauma resolution practitioner.
With the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery.
You can check that out, CTRR, Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery, if that's something that would be of interest to you.
Would love to hear from folks in that regard as well.
But what I'm specifically thinking about is the phrase or the language of having a quote, a servant's heart.
Being told that you have a servant's heart or being told that we need to have a servant's heart or somebody saying they have a servant's heart.
Again, many of us coming out of particular religious contexts might have been referred to in this way.
We're probably familiar with this language.
People not coming out of a religious context may not have heard of this language very often.
Again, it's just one of those turns of phrase that can seem sort of archaic at best, maybe arcane at worst, and just not really understanding what that means.
But for those that are unfamiliar, it might seem strange to hear this, this language of having a servant's heart or the desire to have a servant's heart.
You might even hear Christians sometimes that will pray that God would give them a servant's heart.
So what is this?
The first thing to know is that this sort of strange sounding phrase, it's a compliment.
There are particular New Testament passages in which Jesus says that he has come to serve others, not to be served, but to serve others.
And there are passages in the Hebrew Bible about a kind of strange figure called the Suffering Servant, which early Christians saw as a prophetic reference to Christ.
So to have a servant's heart is an important way to be Christ-like.
It is to have a willingness to serve others.
So the first thing is, if somebody says that somebody in this context has a servant's heart, it's a compliment.
And tied in with that, it's also a kind of aspiration.
That is, within a certain framework, and I think, and I'd be interested in hearing from folks, this is not limited to Christianity, the way that some of the things we've talked about are.
But within a Christian context, certainly, it's an aspiration faithful Christians should have, precisely because to have a servant's heart is to be Christ-like, precisely because there's this vision of Christ as sort of the ultimate servant, as defined by being willing to serve others, it's something to which Christians should aspire.
It's a kind of universal call that all Christians, to some extent, are called to have a servant's heart.
So that's sort of some of the background of what this phrase is.
And the basic idea, like so many of the things we talk about, it's straightforward enough.
It's It's basically the idea that you should be predisposed to do things to help others.
To be a person with a servant's heart means that you seek to serve others.
It's a general insight, but it plays out in particular ways within the context of churches and different kinds of things like this.
It's not an idea that's foreign to most of us.
I think most of us have a sense of, you know, having a sense that we ought to serve others and that some people are really predisposed to this and so forth.
But within a Christian context, in the context of churches and I think other religious institutions as well, even if this specific language isn't used, I think it has a specific dynamic to it.
And to understand this, I think what we have to understand is that churches, most churches, almost all churches, and other religious organizations as well, they are essentially non-profit volunteer organizations.
Most churches are numerically small, and we can lose sight of that.
I've talked about cool kid churches, and we've talked some in this series about mega churches.
We, in the regular podcast, talk a lot about really prominent big churches in the United States and so forth.
But most churches are really, really numerically small.
Most of them have one Full-time staff, and that's the pastor, and sometimes even the pastor is not a full-time staff.
Sometimes this is something they do part-time, or they have to, you know, sort of have side hustles to make ends meet, and so forth.
And so these churches, and again, this is true of lots of religious organizations, right?
This is not limited to Christian churches.
Some religious organizations are purely voluntary in nature, in the sense that nobody is paid to do it full time.
Which means that to do all the things they have to do, they are dependent on volunteer labor.
And again, if you've come from one of these contexts, you know this.
I think to lots of outsiders, though, this is often surprising to hear this, or maybe they just haven't thought about religious organizations in this way, precisely because they do seem to be so institutionalized, so structured, and so forth.
But they are large-scale volunteer organizations.
And this is true even of those really big churches, even in the cases of churches with hundreds or even thousands of members and professional staff that can number in the dozens.
Doing all the work in Christian terms, all the ministries that those churches do, requires a vast amount of volunteer labor.
So for every paid staff member, there are going to be anywhere from a handful to dozens of volunteer people who are necessary to kind of do all the things that that church has to do.
So within this context, the idea of a servant's heart, it often translates to the idea that There's an obligation that an individual has as part of their religious identity as a good Christian.
And again, I think this can also play out in contexts like mosques or synagogues or other religious organizations, that it is part of one's religious identity That they have an obligation to give of themselves for the ministries of the church, or for the events, or the outreach, or whatever word one wants to put on it, of those religious organizations.
Within a Christian context, and again that's the context I know best, that's the context that I'm most familiar with, This idea supports their mission or their calling as Christians.
Again, this is the distinctively Christian language for this, that they have a mission or calling to do certain things.
And while some Christians may be called to give more of themselves than others, everyone participates in this general calling to some extent, like I said.
So this is the general idea of having a servant's heart, is this sense of being called to give of oneself and specifically of one's time, one's expertise.
So maybe it's the kind of thing where you know how to run a sound system, and so your calling is to help run the sound system for the worship on Sunday mornings.
Uh, or maybe, you know, you like working with kids or something, and so you're involved in helping run the children's programs of the church.
Uh, or maybe it's the kind of philanthropic side, uh, of what the church or religious organization does.
So maybe you help run a food pantry or you help You know, gather funds that are distributed in different ways for people who are in need or whatever.
There can be any number of things and the larger and more complex the religious organization, the more volunteer labor is needed to pull off everything that organization has to do.
So this is the basic idea.
That's the basic idea behind the language of the servant's heart.
And even if you're not familiar with a specifically religious context out of which this language often comes, I think for most of us the idea is not completely foreign.
Many of us donate of our time and our other resources to organizations with whose mission we identify.
Whether that's an environmental group, whether it's a political activist group, whether it's some group, you know, an advocacy group of some kind, we have this sense of believing strongly in what they do, in sharing their concerns and interests, and so we volunteer our time to help them.
And I think many of us recognize that many of those organizations could not function without that volunteer participation, that much like churches, structurally, they may have one or two full time paid staff, excuse me, or coordinators or something like this, but that they really rely upon volunteer labor to do all the different kinds of things.
That they do.
So that idea, I think, is fairly straightforward to most of us, even if the language of the servant's heart isn't.
I don't think that most secular people talk about having a servant's heart.
I could be wrong.
Again, would love to hear from folks if that's the case.
But I think the idea is not foreign completely.
Which raises this question, which is, why does this come up so often, this language specifically within religious contexts?
Why do I hear about it from my religious clients, excuse me, religious and sometimes formerly religious clients, my coaching clients?
Why have so many people emailed me and said, you know, I'd really like to talk about this issue of the servant's heart and things related to that?
I think there are two reasons.
One is that this sense of mission, this sense of an obligation to give of oneself, it's easily abused within the context of churches and religious communities.
I think it's easily abused within other volunteer nonprofit organizations as well, but I think that this is even more sort of intense within religious communities.
And the second reason, and this is within a more narrowly Christian context, this sense of having a quote-unquote servant's heart, it also ties into a valorization of suffering in really complex and troubling ways.
And I noted at the outset that there's this language within the Hebrew Bible of the suffering servant, and it's picked up by the early Christian community and sort of ascribed to Jesus of Nazareth.
It means that this language of service can also be tied in with a valorization of suffering.
I want to look at that next episode.
What I want to tackle in this episode is the first of these considerations.
The notion of how this sense of mission or an obligation to give of oneself is basically can be abused, can be manipulated, and so forth.
And this is what I hear from A lot of people about, and we're going to pick up sort of a continuation of that into that suffering dimension in the next episode.
But here's what can happen, okay?
The sense of mission The sense that we have a religious obligation to give of ourselves can morph effectively into a demand for free labor on the part of the church.
This is what often happens in churches, and this is the issue about which people have contacted me.
And sometimes people reach out, not about the language of the servant, but they will say, let's talk about how the church, you know, manipulates people into giving free labor.
Or people working full-time for the church for free and so forth.
This is what they're talking about.
And I've talked to people who have left the church because their quote-unquote volunteer labor effectively became a second or a third job that they were doing for free.
I've encountered people, and many of you listening will know this, people who spend 20-30 hours a week Donating time to their church or their religious organization with no compensation, where some people even have like official job titles with the church or other religious organization, and they are not paid, but they are expected to give huge amounts of time from them.
And I think in the worst cases, and by worst, you know, we're talking about the highest control cases.
So often we're talking about high control religious environments.
In the most intensive of these, people talk about feeling explicitly manipulated and guilted into giving as much time as the church could possibly demand from them.
Their faith commitments were called into question if they didn't.
They also had to face the logic of measuring up to the kind of ultimate servant.
And I know for some of you, this language will be familiar.
And for those, maybe for the languages unfamiliar, the mechanism will be, which is basically this and says, well, you know, Jesus said he came to be a servant and his servanthood ultimately led to the fact that he died.
And not only did he die, To serve the church.
He died for you, individual Christian.
He died for you.
His servanthood led him to make the ultimate sacrifice.
So how can you complain about being asked to give so little in comparison?
We just want some of your time, right?
To be Christ.
Nobody's asking you to give yourself to death.
Just some of your time.
And we can hear how manipulative that can be.
And so I hear and speak with people all the time, and I've experienced this to some extent myself, to people who deal with burnout, with ongoing feelings of guilt for setting boundaries on the time they give, people who face rejection from family and friends if they don't give extravagantly of their time and so forth, right?
And here's a really key part of this, and I think some of you listening, again, will be able to identify with this.
This is a point at which the dynamics of this are not unique to religion.
I think many non-profits, many volunteer organizations of different kinds, they could be explicitly not religious, they could be anti-religious, I think structurally they do the same thing of preying on volunteers' sense of mission.
They often squeeze more labor out of volunteers than is healthy or appropriate.
Even in the case of paid staff, those people are often radically underpaid, with the organization depending on their sense of mission to hold on to them.
In other words, you can get a lot of these nonprofits or volunteer organizations that have a paid director, but that person is very poorly paid, and the only thing keeping them there is the sense of obligation to the mission, right?
And so I think that this dimension that so many people reach out to me about from within a religious context, I think it's typical of non-profits and volunteer organizations beyond religion.
And oftentimes, I think this isn't strategic.
It's often a pattern that cash-strapped nonprofits fall into.
They can't function without that volunteer labor.
There are not enough volunteers to kind of do everything, and so they lean too heavily on those who do volunteer.
So they just have limited resources, and one outcome of this is the abuse, functionally, of volunteer labor.
You also get the sense that when you have staff, even paid staff, who are underpaid, undervalued, they often are themselves sort of cultivated in this context, and they pass that on to others.
In other words, they have been taken advantage of by the organization.
This is the model they know, and they carry this on to volunteer staff.
So all of these dynamics are true of most churches as well, and oftentimes that language of quote-unquote the servant's heart or needing to have a servant's heart, that is what is masked there.
That is what lurks there, is this kind of demand to give of yourself to the point of exhaustion and beyond.
And it becomes manipulative.
It becomes coercive.
And this is where I think, while that use of volunteer labor is not unique to religious organizations or churches, I think there's a sense in which there is still a distinctive feature.
And here's what I think that that is.
This is what I think makes it distinctive, is that a religious context can intensify that sense of mission, that sense of obligation, to a kind of ultimate degree.
We don't just share in the mission because we're good people.
We don't just share the mission because we care about others or we care about the planet or we want to to see, you know, people have equal rights or something like that.
We care because we are called by God to give of ourselves.
Our sense of mission transcends us, right?
It's not just about us being good people or fighting for things we believe in or whatever.
It's a sense that we are fulfilling God's purpose when we do this.
It's not just about what we value.
It's about what God values and commands.
And what that means is that within religious organizations that operate in this way, and not all of them do, this is not universal.
Please don't hear me saying that every religious organization does this to its volunteers.
They don't.
But this tendency that I think is common to lots of nonprofit organizations, it's kind of intensified.
So it's harder for people within these contexts to push back against that felt obligation to give of themselves.
It is harder to draw boundaries.
Because if you're drawing boundaries, it might mean not just that you're looking out for yourself or you don't buy fully into the mission.
No, you're going contrary to what God calls of you.
And again, there's this hyperbolic case of Jesus of Nazareth who gave himself to the point of death, of dying for our sins.
That's what it meant to be a servant.
So compared to that, with that as the measure, how could we possibly draw boundaries of any kind?
You also get a sense that you're not just drawing boundaries about the church or an earthly organization, you are drawing boundaries around God, that you're You're not just failing the organization, you are failing God when you do this.
So there's a sense in which I think churches and other religious organizations, structurally this isn't unique to them, but I think it's intensified in a way that it isn't always in other kinds of non-profit or volunteer organizations.
And this is what I hear about from so many people.
People who say that this is part of their experience of religion negatively is that they were taken for granted, they were coerced, they felt like their time and their skills were sort of demanded by high control religious organizations to a point where, as I say, they were working it as a second or a third job.
Without compensation or kind of without recognition and when they would try to bring up concerns about things like burnout or setting boundaries or we might call it a work-life balance, basically they were dismissed on the grounds that they were failing to fulfill their divine calling, right?
So to sort of sum all this up, the idea of a feeling of a sense of mission or calling, it's not something unique to religious circles.
The idea that one would give of themselves to fulfill that calling, it's not unique to religion.
But I think within a religious context, precisely because the sort of drive behind this sense of calling or the source of that call transcends us, I think it's a right field for taking advantage of people and manipulating and coercing people into giving Beyond what is reasonable or even healthy in a way that I think goes beyond other non-profit or volunteer organizations.
I think in addition, and this is what we're going to get into next episode, beyond this you also have something that I think is a distinctive feature of Christian contexts where this language of servanthood is also tied in with the language of suffering.
The call to serve others also turns into a call to suffer for others or for the mission of the church.
And this is where I think it becomes really, really sort of horrifically destructive in ways that go beyond what is typically going to be experienced in other non-profit or volunteer organizations.
So I want to pick up on that theme, that element of this next episode.
We need to wind this episode down.
But I want to conclude, as I always do, by again thanking those of you who listen.
Whatever you're doing right now listening to this, you could be listening to something else, and I value that so much.
Please reach out to Daniel Miller Swaj at DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
Keep the ideas coming.
Always with the caveat that I know I do not respond to every email.
I try to respond to as many as I can.
Sometimes it's delayed, but please know that I read them.
I value them.
I thank you for your support.
And again, broadly, on behalf of Straight White American Jesus, thank you for your support of the podcast as well.
Until we meet again virtually here, please be well, keep the ideas coming, and I look forward to sharing again with you in our next episode.
