A Phenomenological Exploration of Jesus and His Leader Development Process

Developing leaders to serve communities and institutions across the world is
increasingly becoming a matter of concern. A crisis of leadership development exists.
The question of how one prepares leaders to lead is not simple to answer. This study
explores the process of leadership development as practiced by Jesus; then it seeks to
extract observations, ideas, and principles that may lead to a cohesive model of
developing servant leaders.

Servant Leadership is gaining recognition from theorists and practitioners alike. By
studying the leader development process of Jesus, this project will seek to link twentyfirst
century concepts of servant leadership with the first century practices employed by
history's greatest leader. This dissertation is a qualitative study seeking to describe the
process Jesus implemented to prepare a strong base of leaders who would launch and lead
the world Christian movement.

The four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, offer an excellent data set from
which this study draws upon. The phenomenology of the growing relationships between
Jesus and his disciples are at the core of this study. Each relational interaction between
Jesus and his disciples, using Moustakas' presentation of phenomenological research
methodology, introduced originally by Husserl, is studied through a process involving
Epoch, phenomenological reduction, imaginative variation, and finally synthesis. This
study explores the relational processes that transpired between Jesus and his disciples as
they relate to or influence the preparation of Jesus' disciples to launch a movement that
has transformed lives through twenty centuries.