Analysis Of John Mcknight's Article Why Servanthood Is Bad

John McKnight author of the article titled “Why Servanthood is bad” describes what service means to him and his dislike on the concept of serving. In his article he talks about the dangerous actions of those who are considered “servers” of the community. One of the negative actions of serving is constantly stealing money from the poor. Half of the money that corresponds to low-income communities is stolen and given to the federal, state even county officials. A great example of this is tax money each person considered low income has to pay taxes and most of the time the government own these people money that they never will obtain back. Another problem that Mc Knight mentions is that often times the service system turns to community organizations to solve the problems of

Instead of churches and pastors building a community through they do not want to deal with the responsibility and instead they turn to professionals of the community to solve the problem. Reading about Mc Knight’s opinion of service one of the ideas that appeal to me is when he adds what Jesus said in his last commandment. In his article, he says “there is no greater love than this; to lay down one’s life for one’s friends… It is not right to be hung back by service and servantry. The goal is to be a friend.” This idea of Mc Knight’s article appealed to me in so many ways. When I first began my service learning experience I often thought about the concept of service as something voluntarily but something required that I was expected to do. Signing up for my service learning site I knew that I was required to complete at least thirty hours of community service. I thought to myself and said “cool! I have to do community hours but it is okay it will be just like high school. To me, the concept of serving was still not clear. Once I began to attend the first class meetings and when I had the opportunity to choose my site my opinion of service slowly changed.