Creed, Confession, and Cooperation
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 67, No. 2 - Spring 2025
Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
Hwa Yung is Bishop Emeritus of the Methodist Church in Malaysia and hails from Penang. The development of his keen fluency in Western culture can be traced, in part, to a decade spent studying abroad in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He completed an undergraduate program in organic chemistry at the University of Tasmania in 1970, read for theological degrees at the University of London (BD, MTh), and earned a Doctor of Missiology in 1995 from Asbury Theological Seminary.
In addition to pastoral roles, he served as principal at Malaysia Theological Seminary and founding director at the Centre for the Study of Christianity in Asia at Trinity Theological College in Singapore. His extensive international ministry involvement includes serving as chair for the council of trustees at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies and member of the International Board of the Lausanne Movement. Leadership or Servanthood offers a welcomed contribution at the intersection of Christian theology and leadership theory by assigning biblical priority and sequence to the concepts of leadership and servanthood.
The author presents his case across nine chapters. The first two articulate the call to servanthood and associated trends in the contemporary church. The next two treat power and authority and give special emphasis to submission as the pathway to spiritual authority. The fifth and sixth chapters engage the filial relationship between the Son and the Father, and the believer’s corresponding security. The seventh addresses the servant’s character formation. Chapter eight looks at God’s process of transformation. The author’s final chapter clarifies some of the boundaries of his argument.
Yung responds to the global proliferation of leadership studies and training by calling “Christians who seek to serve Christ in the church or Christian organizations” to prioritize an attitudinal antecedent to any proper expression of leadership: biblical servanthood (95). He contends that leaders who lack a foundation in servanthood predictably fall into a seductive cycle of self-serving ambition. To avoid this pitfall, Yung suggests an alternative brand of leadership defined as “the result of practicing genuine servanthood wherever we are and in whatever position we are called to by Christ and his body, the church” (130). This conceptual variant assumes leadership-related outcomes to be a natural byproduct of biblical servanthood. Rather than attempting to supersede leadership with servanthood, Yung asserts an urgent need for quality leaders and aims to link leadership effectiveness to submission to the Father’s will and servanthood.
Ensuring the sustainability of Yung’s definition of leadership compels him to warn Christians against uncritically accepting leadership models that do not cohere with orthodoxy. To that end, he juxtaposes biblical servanthood and Robert Greenleaf’s popular servant leadership theory—a model that Yung finds to be distracting and unhelpful for Christians. Instead, he tethers his claim for the relative superiority of servanthood with respect to leadership to a review of pertinent biblical content. While the passages and word studies are germane and compellingly presented, his efforts focus on the New Testament and stop short of a more comprehensive treatment of servanthood using a broader canonical methodology.
Yung’s seasoned global perspective manifests regularly in diverse illustrations. The tone of this monograph is charitable, spiritually mature, and ecumenical within the boundaries of Christianity which bolsters the work’s appeal to a broader audience. While gentle and respectful, Yung does not shy away from challenging some related assumptions of the Pentecostal–charismatic movements (61) and the implications of power deriving from the Confucian roots in the Asian cultures with which he is personally familiar (35). Yung’s considerable wisdom and submissive posture tempers the likelihood of offense stemming from these admonishments.
The author’s Asia-centric lens frequently contributes to a modest cross-cultural tension throughout the book. Christianity in the West seems to occupy the simultaneous roles of useful partner and occasional scapegoat. Yung values Western higher education but encourages those following in his academic footsteps to return to their respective homes for service rather than remaining abroad after graduation. Against the backdrop of his argument that Christianity’s center of gravity has shifted to what Shahidul Alam coined the Majority World, Yung questions why churches in the Majority World should look to ecclesiastical leaders in the West—where the church’s influence is in decline—for training. While his rebuke of Western Christianity is warranted in some instances, perhaps Yung employs this critique too broadly and stokes disquiet beyond what is necessary to make an otherwise salient point.
Leadership or Servanthood is poised to be a uniquely helpful resource to current and aspiring Christian leadership scholars and ministry leaders of all types. Yung’s insightful contribution further demonstrates the need for academic work at the intersection of Christian theology and popular leadership theory.
