“Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them,

and they that are great exercise authority upon them.

But it shall not be so among you:

but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;

And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:

Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto,

but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:25-28, KJV)

The word the Athenians used for their Assembly was Ekklesia, the same word used in the New Testament for Church
(and it is the greatest philological irony in all of Western history that this word,
which connoted equal participation in all deliberation by all members,
came to designate a kind of self-perpetuating, self-protective Spartan gerousia -
which would have seemed patent nonsense to Greek-speaking Christians of New Testament times,
who believed themselves to be equal members of their Assembly.)

- Thomas Cahill, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter



ΦΙΛΟΤΙΜΟ: THE GREEK SECRET

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

How Do Our Leaders Compare?

"Hence Christ also said of 'the good shepherd,' not that he is honored and served, but that he 'lays down his life for his sheep.' This is the meaning of leadership, this the art of being a shepherd, ignoring one's own concerns and being preoccupied with those of one's people. What a physician is, after all, so is a leader - or, rather, more than a physician. While the physician, you see, procures people's welfare through skill, the leader does it through risk to himself. Christ also did this, being scourged, crucified, suffering countless torments."

St. John Chrysostom

Posted by TOCB Moderator at 7:56 PM

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