William Arthur Ward said,

“We must be silent before we can listen. We must listen before we can learn. We must learn before we can prepare. We must prepare before we can serve. We must serve before we can lead.”

For me, thus describes the servant heart. Not in its totality perhaps, but in a well-balanced, general sense. You see, a servant heart must know when to be silent. Only then can it deeply listen. A servant heart is always eager to learn; feedback is diligently sought to help better prepare the servant heart for all that lies ahead. What lies ahead for the servant heart is opportunity — opportunity to serve. Service, of necessity, is a choice left up to each of us. When presented with that choice, a servant heart says, “Yes.” Sometimes, a servant heart is asked to do more, in large part because of the love they express in their service. When people see love as a natural extension of your service, they are most inclined to follow you where’er you go because they want to be near you and near the love you radiate. In time, that expression of love is naturally translated as leadership. Leadership without love, they learn, is no leadership at all.

You choose to serve. They choose you to lead. Such is the journey of a servant heart.

We at NorthFork want to bring more attention to servant hearts. And we want you to help us. It is our delight to open a discussion each day with the hope you will keep it going for days without end in areas of your life that encircle family, friends, school, places of worship, recreation, work and, of course, social media.

By launching a series of tweets (one tweet each day) that highlights one remarkable aspect of the servant heart, it is our wish to shine a small light on the servant heart. Each tweet in this series will begin with, “It takes a #servantheart …” From there, we hope you will re-Tweet it, share/tweet your own thoughts and experiences related to that particular aspect of a servant heart, introduce us to someone who possesses such a servant heart, recommend someone to #follow, share a blog post or video link that resonates with the day’s sentiment, tweet additional related quotes, and the like. To help us collect and share your wonderful thoughts and contributions, we ask you to use the hashtag #servantheart on each tweet. We, in turn, will find ways to conveniently share the joy of a servant heart with you in subsequent blog posts, live updates, etc.

What all of us, I believe, would like to see come from this outgrowth of community is action. We want folks to share what they learn with others. We want folks to take some of these thoughts and considerations out into the streets. That is to say, we want folks to find ways to explore the influence of a servant heart by preparing and serving in their own cities and towns. And we want you to report back so all of us can celebrate with you! You see, the world is in desperate need of servant hearts. We can talk about servant hearts all day but talking does precious little to feed the hungry, show compassion on the down-trodden, get water to the thirsty, visit those who are alone or afraid. A servant heart, well, serves.

Don’t forget. Look for the hashtag #servantheart. Better yet, don’t hesitate to send out a few #servantheart tweets of your own! Here’s our first one:

”It takes a #servantheart to deeply listen to others.”

Please know we are deeply listening to you. Do drop by to tell us what servant hearts have been up to in your community. And let us know what we can do to help servant hearts around you, young and old alike, do even more.