Living with Strength and Kindliness

The first and most important choice a leader makes is the choice to serve,

without which one’s capacity to lead is severely limited.

Last week we had the pleasure of inducting our College’s Student Leaders for 2022! It was a lovely event, celebrated out the front of the College in the presence of our beautifully restored fountain.

We began our day celebrating with a liturgy, joy-filled at the commencement of a new school year. The final section of our College’s Opening Liturgy called our Student Leaders to respond to a leadership pledge; where they declared they would lead us by example and guide us on our journey throughout 2022.

We inducted a Student Leaders group of 36 House Leaders, 6 Beacon Leaders and our whole cohort of Year 12 students. However, all members of our school community are invited to step up and play a leadership role in our College. 

Christian history demonstrates many different models of leadership, from mystics who provided wise counsel from the wilderness, to Popes who influenced politics and negotiated with influential leaders. But the main source of inspiration for all these leaders was Christ himself. Jesus, a humble leader met people where they were at. He radically changed what it means to lead in a humble, selfless way, and in true accompaniment with others.

At St Joseph’s College our preferred model for leadership style is servant leadership; Jesus is certainly the inspiration for this way of being a leader.

The vision of a servant leader is an individual who shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible. Servant leadership puts aside the traditionally authoritative style, approaching leadership as a servant first. 

Gospel stories such as John 13:1-7 provide pertinent examples of this style of leadership. In fact, most of the stories about Jesus’ ministry in the Bible have withstood the test of time and inform the model of servant leadership as we know it today.

The story from John is an exemplary story to illustrate this point. Jesus, at The Last Supper, takes it upon himself to wash the feet of his disciples. The disciples, particularly Peter is aghast at the thought that his leader would wash his feet. However, Jesus iterates to him that, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me…..” . Peter relents and Jesus then washes the feet of all the disciples (even the one he knows will later betray him).

After the act of foot washing is finished, Jesus turns and meets the gaze of every single one of his disciples, stares into their soul and tells them, “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Please, hear me, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”

The last line of our pledge last Tuesday was 'We thank you, our student leaders, for responding to the call to leadership.  We will support you and work with you to make our College a sign of God’s love'. Not that we will necessarily be washing everyone’s feet but hopefully our student leaders will work hard to build a culture whereby we instinctively undertake acts like the foot washing for each other every day.

We wish our College Leaders well in 2022. We ask them to wear their new badges with pride. We congratulate them on the great work they have undertaken so far; there have been many wonderful images of our Student Leaders in action since the commencement of the term. They are certainly showing us what servant leadership looks like!

Let us pray:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,

No hands, but yours,

No feet but yours,

Yours are the eys through which he looks compassionately to the world.

Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;

Yours are the hands, with which he is to bless his people now.   

(Teresa of Avila)

Kirrilee Westblade

College Leader - Catholic Identity