Servant leadership is not for wimps

The number-one motivation of a servant-leader is to love God and serve His people out of a heart of love. If your primary motivation is to have a prosperous, wonderful small group, then your leadership will be misguided. Your first motivation must be to love and serve Jesus, love and serve His people and love and serve those who do not yet know Jesus. When you do this, the natural result will be a prosperous, healthy, exciting small group.

Your motivation as a small-group leader will certainly be tested at times. God may bring people into your small group who are hard for you to love. One night a young man stopped by our home. He had been a part of a Bible study that I had led. But he was backslidden and had been drinking, and he vomited all over himself in the driveway in front of our home. We took him into our home, loved him and helped him through this situation. God had given us an opportunity to practice the principles of the kingdom of God with proper motivation. We were learning how to serve.

Larry Kreider, What Every Small Group Leader Should Know (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2010).