The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller

These letters are candid, real, and connect with the heart of a pastor/professor/mission agency director tending to the hearts and leaders of others in ministry. These are real letters to real people, and are refreshing to read. Especially when you come across a letter Jack wrote to someone in a position you yourself might find yourself in. Grateful for this book!

The late Jack Miller was a man wonderfully used by God to help the American church rediscover the impact of the Gospel of Grace. The ripples of his ministry continue to have impact today. This book, lovingly compiled and edited by Jack's daughter Barbara Miller Juliani, contains many of Jack Miller's letters to all kinds of people- ministers, elders, counselors, and just ordinary Christians. His focus is always Christ and His grace. His message is always clear, humble and loving, and yet very convicting and powerful. These letters were for me, models of applying the Gospel to a lot of situations. Be warned, these letters will stretch you and expose your own self-righteousness and self-protective patterns.The book is divided into sections by theme: Motivation for Serving: The Glory of God; The Basics of Serving: Faith, Humility, and Prayer; Perservering in Serving; and Encouragment. I found myself frequently underlining paragraphs in these letters and have already emailed some quotes to some friends for their encouragement. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in ministry, growing in their faith, or just how the Gospel is for Christians and non-Christians alike!

This is one of the best books I've ever read as a Christian. Jesus and the Gospel of God's grace oozes out of the pores of Jack Miller. Every Christian pastor and leader or anyone who wants to follow Jesus should read this.… I feel like I should re-read this book every month so that God can make my heart more like Jack's and thus more like Jesus'. Jack Miller was truly a rare gift of a person and Christian leader to the church and to our broken and sinful world… And he was the first to admit that he was a part of that brokenness and sinfulness and not simply look down on others…

I'm almost through this book and it has been amazing. I have read many Christian books but this would be in my "top 5" of all time. Jack Miller shows exceptional wisdom and I feel I have been discipled by him as I've read. This is a book you will want to read and reread frequently. Best book on Leadership I can think of at the moment... maybe Transforming Leadership by Leighton Ford is a close second but is a different style of book. THis is a compendium of letters. It's a very personal view of this Godly leader named Jack Miller.

The Heart of a Servant Leader, by C. John Miller Three years ago, I was introduced to the life and ministry of C. John Miller by a Pastor that I really admire. This pastor gave me a copy of the book "A Faith Worth Sharing," which was written during the last year of Miller's life. I was quite simply blown away by the magnitude of the faith of this man as he shared about countless people that he led to the Lord. It was a humbling experience as I examined my own grasp and love of the Gospel, but it was also very encouraging. "A Faith Worth Sharing" was probably the best book on evangelism that I had ever read. Because of all of this, I was very excited to get a copy of "The Heart of a Servant Leader," which is a collection of pastoral letters written over a span of about 15 years. I couldn't wait for the book to arrive, and after reading it, I can truly say that I gained much out of it. The positives are simple. C. John Miller lived an extraordinary life. In each letter, the reader gets a clear glimpse of his heart for the Lord, and his humility. He writes letters in a way that I could only dream of. My letters need more grace, but every one of his letters seems to reflect a heart that has been filled with the love of God. Also, it would be hard to find a book out there that goes into such intimate settings from a pastoral perspective. The book is highly pastoral, and one that should be seen as a model for all pastors. It would be a good gift to get for your pastor if you're looking for something. With that being said, I have a couple of negatives to mention as well. First of all, I found the book to be fairly dull. The heart is there, but since the content of the book is just a bunch of letters, the reader will often find himself reading some similar things over and over again. To be frank, I was pretty excited to finish the book so that I could move on to something else. Secondly, I wish I hadn't read this, but the person who compiled the letters wrote a brief introduction and mentioned that C. John Miller wrote these letters with the hope and intention that they would get read by many other people. Even though, Miller was a very humble man who I admire deeply, I couldn't get away from a nagging feeling that he was writing his letters with a larger audience in mind. I know my own heart, and I may be falsely projecting it onto Miller's heart here, but my behaviors change when I realize that I am doing something for a much larger audience than I originally intend. I try to be more impressive no matter how hard I fight against it. I'm not saying that Miller did the same thing, but it is indeed a possibility. Overall though, it was a good book and I would definitely recommend it for anybody who is in a form of Christian leadership. The book has an appropriate title, because with integrity, C. John Miller lived his life as a servant leader who honored God. And now he is at peace.

A must read for those serving as missionaries! Jack's letters are down to earth and practical advise for missionaries of all seasons of life and situations. They have been very thought provoking as my wife and I read them together.

Jack Miller learned what it takes to be a servant in God's Kingdom. Serving in church ministry (media ministry director) I have come across situations that aren't always easy to manage. One time when I had to "confront a brother in love" I picked up the book and found a letter Mr. Miller wrote to a pastor dealing with the same situation! His answer was so helpful and comforting. God has used this book several times to exhort and challenge me to become more conformed to the image of Christ.

This is filled with pastoral wisdom and encouragement for anyone in Christian ministry. He writes as a peer and one who wrestled deeply and still came through with his faith intact. I was introduced to him several years ago when I read his book Come Back Barbara, which was about one of his most difficult struggles. I am reading HSL for a counseling class, but I would recommend it to anyone in ministry.

I have no idea who Jack Miller was! This is a recommended text for my biblical counselling course, so I must read it! Yet, it does not matter if I don't know what Jack Miller had done in his life. In these pages, I read about his heart as a servant leader. It is not a biography but knowing someone's heart is more than we know many people around us.The book is a collection of his letters to others. Once again how sorry I am to see that writing letters is a dying art of our age and a dead practice of our life! We are also very privileged to be let into these letters as these are very intimate and personal situations Jack was advising on.In today's biblical counselling scene, I think we are quick to inject secular wisdom into informing our relationships. At the moment on my course, we are learning how to conduct conversation that will deepen our relationship. We are taught tricks to get the other party to talk more and talk more personally about themselves. It almost becomes a goal in itself under the drive of "getting to know people; getting people to open up".Reading this book helps me see what Christian relationships are like without the gimmicks of secular wisdom. It is plain and simple - Christ, and to connect to our fellow human beings (believers and non-believers), we pray. One feature stands out that runs through all these letters is prayer. All the contents have been run past prayer if they are not themselves records of prayers. In these letters, we are dealing with heart issues of Miller and of the letter recipients. They are deep conversations with God about one another. This is what makes Christian relationships different from our deep conversations about one another and also shows the centrality of Christi in them all."For Jack, living for God's glory meant first acknowledging the real Head of the church - Jesus Christ - and then going on to do "Christ's work Christ's way."" (p.35) The root heart issue of them all is pride (self-dependence instead of Christ-dependence). It goes deep and is very insidious. It is in our fabric and if we are not on our guard we will naturally revert to, doing "Christ's work Our way!" The line is very fine and blurred in our blind spots. It happens all the time with ourselves and we see it happen in ministry, especially in the leaders. It is so easy to behave as if we lose confidence in God's truth and look to gel the church family by modern music and sharing the stage during Sunday service under the modern virtue of love that can do no wrong. Christ's church should be populated by people who come for hearing Christ proclaimed and exalted, and God's truth. We should not trust our insights but Christ's. Where can we gain them? Through means of grace - study of His Word and prayer and fellowship with one another. Prayer must underpin everything. "It is in prayer together that we find grace to give up control to the Father, rely exclusively on the Spirit, and see the demons subdued. It is here we get our life, vigour, zest, and authority for the battle...Without constant adoration, thanksgiving, intercession, and confession together, we are going to teach people to rely on our traditions, plans, technologies, and methods rather than on grace." (p. 158) Sadly I think many churches are modelling that and leaders are not discerning where they may err. "Prayer breaks dependence on other people and increases dependence on God alone." (p.238) "I am convinced that prayer, effective praying, is a divine gift that comes while praying... there is praying which gets results and that is fine, but then there is praying that gets into the centre of God's will and gets bigger results and also leaves the soul at peace, satisfied that God's will has been contacted and God has responded with peace in the heart." (p.22) Leaders, teach the church to pray!This bit on praise is so true: "It is not possible certainly just to sit down and will praise. Praise grows out of God-given perception of reality, a seeing that God is infinitely good and infinitely good to me in Jesus Christ in every circumstance. To have that kind of praise, you need to take time, to wait upon the Lord in prayer and meditate upon His greatness and grace and the might of His kingdom." (p.201) Do we feel tongue-tied when comes to praising God? Is it far easier when we pray our do-lists?We wonder how we do pastoral care. This is a book showing us how to. The guidelines are pretty simple: there is no special case that the gospel can't change or save; there is only one formula - only Jesus, only Jesus! This is comforting. It boils down to whether we have faith in God's power to change those with the deepest problems. I believe this is the premise of biblical counselling.In these relationships, I find rebuking in love is the trickiest. There are a couple of letters where Miller demonstrates how to. I wonder how they went down with the recipients! Go back to the bible teaching. All in all, the foundation of Christian relationship is constant prayer, repentance and confession, and knowing God's Word with a vision of carrying one another to the place where Christ wants each of us to be respectively. Listening is an important skills and leaders particularly have to be sharp listeners. Here is what listening looks like: "But we can all grow in listening skills: to hear them with a quiet spirit where possible and with deliberateness and respond to what they say both with directness in confronting them and yet with the gentleness of Christ (Gal 6:1-2)..." (p.203) .

This was exactly what I needed. Jake has given me so much information. And enceages me to pray for myself and others more. I have lot of missionary friend and now by reading this book I want to do more for them by sending letters of encouragement

Every church / ministry leader should read this book - it is both instructive and encouraging. The wisdom of this humble man has helped me incredibly in my own walk of faith.

I'd recommend this book to any Christian who has any position of leadership, or even none. It is as if the words of encouragement, empathy, truth and compassion speak straight to the reader and set clear and joyful priorities to tackle the difficulties of life.

A lovely book containing letters to his colleagues and family. Shows his love, passion and thoughtfulness for those around him. Definitely recommend.