Servanthood

Review: The Servant Lawyer

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Cover image of "The Servant Lawyer: Facing the Challenges of Christian Faith in Everyday Law Practice" by Robert F. Cochran Jr.

The Servant Lawyer: Facing the Challenges of Christian Faith in Everyday Law Practice, Robert F. Cochran Jr. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514007228), 2024.

Summary: An exploration of the real work lawyers do and the challenges and opportunities for Christians who practice law.

Did you have the same reaction I did to the title The Servant Lawyer? I thought many would think the phrase an oxymoron. Robert F. Cochran Jr, a practitioner and law professor thinks otherwise. In this book he considers the everyday work of most attorneys and explores the servant opportunities for Christian lawyers. While doing so, he also discusses the challenges and pitfalls attorneys face in this work.

He begins with the client and the importance of seeing him or her as someone God has brought into one’s life. This is important because the cases studied in law school and legal practice tend to depersonalize the client. He addresses affording clients with dignity, respect, love, and dispassionate advice, helping clients weigh their options. He discusses choosing clients, encouraging obedience to the law, and refusing to be complicit in injustice.

Cochran describes lawyers as builders and trustees. In drafting good contracts and helping with compliance issues, they help clients produce good products and flourish while conducting their business lawfully. They offer practical wisdom that help clients determine what is in their best interests in a conflict. This also relates to their role as advocates and peacemakers. He discusses the virtue of the adversary system and why it can be good to make arguments you don’t believe, especially when ensuring a client receives a good defense. Peacemaking, the negotiating of good and fair settlements is also part of this work.

This brings up the work of prosecution and defense. He argues the importance of prosecution for the good of society and the good of the defendant while warning of the dangers of the misuse of prosecutorial power. Likewise, defense attorneys make the state prove its case and observe procedural justice. They can have a role of counseling clients at a crucial juncture in their lives.

Much of the work of the lawyer is outside the courtroom, counseling clients, whether in business practice, estate planning, or civil litigation. Even this is subject to pitfalls. The lawyer can be godfather, hired gun, or guru, rather than approaching clients as one would a friend. He addresses the issue of disputes between Christians and with churches. While conciliation can be helpful in many cases, he notes that where the potential for harm exists or where abuse has occurred, legal recourse may be the only remedy.

Perhaps one of the most powerful chapters is on lawyers as prophets and advocates for the least of these. Cochran draws on the historical example of the Clapham sect, including Granville Sharp, in effecting many reforms including the abolition of slavery. He also cites the importance of legal aid work, highlighting John Robb’s work in this area. He challenges lawyers to tithe their time in legal aid, if possible.

Cochran summarizes the challenges of law practice he has touched on throughout. These include cynicism, pride, insecurity, and the danger of a divided life. He concludes by focusing on the societal importance of lawyers in upholding the rule of law and the personal influence attorneys have. Cochran tells the “rest of the story” of Sidney, a criminal defendant he represented early in his career who is now one of his great encouragers.

What so impressed me about this book is its focus on the everyday work of the vast majority of lawyers I know. He gives practical examples of their opportunities to serve and fleshes out biblical principle. I love to give away books and this is one I’d be excited to give to every attorney I know.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Leadership or Servanthood?

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Leadership or Servanthood?, Hwa Yung. Carlisle: Langham Global Library, 2021.

Summary: Contends that, contrary to our focus on developing or training leaders, Jesus was concerned with the formation of servants.

Almost everywhere you turn in Christian circles, (including the organization in which I work) you come across discussions of the urgency of developing leaders and various efforts to “train” leaders. Years ago I heard a lead pastor of a large megachurch speak of how people love being lead well. This pastor later was forced to step down from his position for moral irregularities. And this is a story we hear with nauseating regularity.

The author of this work challenges this focus on leadership. He notes the sparing use of the term in scripture (often negatively) and how the words used for those in roles of oversight largely were terms that might be translated “servant” or “slave,” often translated as “minister.” It is not that there were not people serving in leadership capacities, but that they understood their work in the light of Christ as servant.

The author contends that this is not “servant leadership,”: as has been popularized, because this still centers leadership. He would contend, rather for “leader servants” He notes the work of Jim Collins in Good to Great describing the Level 5 leader as a good description of the kind of leader servant of which he is speaking. In contrast, Christian leaders are often self-promoting, even while they lack spiritual and theological depth.

Yung discusses the matter of authority, differentiating moral, institutional, and spiritual authority. The latter comes, in the case of Jesus, out of his entire submission to the Father. Yung then develops the biblical case for submission as the basis of spiritual authority for leading servants, and how crucial this is for ministry with true spiritual power. This submission includes submission to scripture, to God’s voice in conscience, prayer, conviction, and prophetic word, as well as submission to those placed over us.

The joy of submission is to be utterly secure in the love of the Father. Yung spends a couple chapters on this. He highlights the protection and provision of those who call God “Abba, Father”: we may pray freely, boldly, and simply, we need not be anxious, we are heirs of the kingdom, and needn’t fear anything. This security also means we may uncover our deepest wounds, and experience over time the healing of our memories.

This security leads to an unself-consciousness that allows the leader to serve with humility: doing the lowly but needful things, appreciating the contributions of others, while being self-effacing. Other qualities that characterize humble leaders are compassion, faithfulness, and sacrifice. All of this arises through a process of transformation as we move from self-sufficiency to submission as God breaks and remakes us.

In the conclusion of the work, Yung asks if all are leaders, as servants. He allows for the distinctiveness of gifts, that some may serve as organizers or administrators. Not all have these gifts but all may aim for serving. Above all, in submission to Christ, all should seek to serve in his authority, enabling us to be effective wherever we are called.

This book comes as a breath of fresh air, challenging Western leadership models that have so often been patterned after worldly values. As a Malaysian, he comes as a voice from outside, raising important questions of how we read fleshy leadership into scripture rather than following the pattern of Jesus the submissive servant who comes with spiritual authority. He challenges us to the harder work of character transformation rather than picking up a few leadership skills.

There has been a great exodus from ministry, indeed from Western churches, in recent years. Perhaps with the need to raise up a new generation of servant-shepherds, it is time to re-think how they are first recognized and then prepared. Do we call those who have proven themselves in humble service to God’s people? Do we look for those whose lives are already marked by the spiritual authority of submission to the Father? Yung’s book comes at an important inflection point, a time where the old paradigms of leadership have failed.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Servant of the Lord and His Servant People

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The Servant of the Lord and His Servant People (New Studies in Biblical Theology #54), Matthew S. Harmon. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021.

Summary: A study of the application of the term “servant” to a number of key figures in scripture culminating in Jesus, and the way these were used by God to form a servant people.

In most contexts the idea of servitude at very least is an undesirable state, and, if involuntary, a breach of human rights. Yet one of the curious themes in scripture underscored by this book, is the idea of being a “servant of the Lord.” Matthew S. Harmon notes the cultural overtones, but also addresses the dignity of those who serve the Lord.

This work centers on key figures who “serve the Lord” through scripture: Adam, Moses, Joshua, David, the servant of Isaiah, Jesus, and the apostles. There is another group as well. Throughout scripture, it becomes clear that God is out to form a servant people–first Israel and then the church. Harmon devotes a chapter to each of these key people or groups of people.

We begin with Adam the servant of the Lord who rules over all creation and is the priest and guard of God’s garden-temple. Adam fails in his task, but in his descendants God continues to call servants–Noah, Abraham, and the patriarchs through whom God begins to form a people. Then Moses becomes the servant of God, a kind of prophet, priest, and king. Harmon traces the language of “servant” relative to Moses through the Torah and the Prophets and Writings. Then Joshua follows as the faithful servant who does what Moses commands, through whom God works similar acts, and who calls Israel as a people to serve the Lord at the end of his life.

Yet when the generation who led with Joshua dies, Israel turns to serve other gods, and are given over by God as prey for the surrounding nations. They want a king. Saul fails to serve God wholeheartedly and David is anointed and becomes the next servant of the Lord. He is not only the king through whom God gives Israel rest in the land from their enemies, but priest who prepares for the construction of the temple, and prophet who wrote songs to God. One of the songs is about David’s greater son. Solomon starts out well but is drawn off to other gods, as are most of his successors. Israel and Israel’s kings have failed at their servant calling. Isaiah writes about this failure and about the servant who will fulfill the service in which Israel fail, suffering for the sins of the people as he does so.

And so we come to Jesus, the culmination toward which all the other servants looked. One of the distinctive aspects of Harmon’s treatment is that he shows how Jesus fulfills what the other servants anticipate. He reverses Adam’s failure in his victory over Satan in the wilderness. He is the prophet greater than Moses, the Joshua who brings his people into eschatological rest. He is the Davidic king whose rule never ends. His whole history from his exile in Egypt on recapitulates Israel’s story. He is the servant whose death and resurrection save his people–all people.

The final two chapters focus on groups. First there are the apostles who speak of themselves as servants of the Lord, even his two brothers, James and Jude. He traces this through the letters they wrote. But there is another group, and we are part of it. The church is portrayed as the servant people of God. It is a people who follow Jesus in his sufferings, but also fulfill the Adamic call to reflect the character of God to all things.

In his conclusion, Harmon considers the implications of this call to be a servant people. It is a call to a new freedom from the tyranny to self, sin and Satan. It is a call to be shaped in a community in the form of love that serves each other, washing each others’ feet. It is a call to be a light to the surrounding world, that others would find their way into this community as we did through repentance and faith. Finally, it is a call to become servant leaders, exercising the kind of kingship of the king who stoops to serve and even die.

This monograph cannot help challenge the contemporary church’s quest for power and influence, the celebrity culture, and the obsession with political influence and access at the expense of humble service. It indicates how little the Servant of the Lord captures our imagination and our allegiance. What may be equally challenging to think about is why we hear so little of this overarching biblical theme from the pulpits of many of our churches. It may be that we are working off the wrong script.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.