31 Days of Servant Leadership: What is Chivalry?

Welcome back to 31 Days of Servant Leadership!

What is chivalry?

The word’s first use is from the 14th century. It derived from the French term chevalerie, meaning horse culture. Now, I don’t know about you, but I immediately think of the Dothraki, and that’s not my idea of anything chivalrous. They had rules and customs though. Rather unpleasant ones. Since we’re not in feudal times, in the Middle Ages, most think that chivalry is dead.

Chivalry originally meant courage, training, and service. Over time, it became more refined to mean honor and courtesy, and less martial.

The idea of chivalry brings to mind an ideal. A standard to weight all others.

Chivalry was duty. Three standards: Duty to God. Duty to women. Duty to countrymen and/or fellow Christians.

We have many historians and works of literature to thank that gave us a well-rounded view of what chivalry was and should be. Charlemagne. The Arthurian legends. Leon Gautier. Philip III, the Duke of Burgundy.

In the 14th century, the Duke of Burgundy defined for the Order of the Golden Fleece the knight’s twelve chivalric virtues as ~

faith, charity, justice, sagacity, prudence, temperance, resolution, truth, liberality, diligence, hope and valor.

Isn’t that rather similar to Philippians 4:8?

I found one definition that says “polite, honest, and kind.” I like that one! Don’t we all want our children to be that way? How do we teach our kids to be “polite, honest, and kind”?

We need Jesus.

We need to pray. Constantly, unceasingly, specifically. Who do you want your children to be for Jesus?

Raise your sons to be knights and your daughters to be princesses. We are all royal – princes and princesses of the One True King. Act nobly. {Tweet that!}

Teach them to be strong. Teach them to be polite, honest, and kind. Teach them to love.

It’s easy to be a lazy parent and not be consistent. But if you’re lazy, you can’t get mad at your kids for being children, for having poor manners, for not knowing any better. You have to actively teach them, remind them in love, and guide them by example. Every single day, every single time they do an undesirable behavior. It will pay off.

You can’t be a “do what I say, not what I do” kind of parent. That’s not leadership. {Tweet that!}

This parenting thing. I know. It’s not easy. There are no breaks. It’s a constant erosion of our energy, a wearing down of us spiritually, a tearing of our hearts, a searing of our souls.

We must get our own fill at the Well of Life. We must pray, read our Bibles, ask Jesus for help.

He was the ultimate servant leader.

Are you a servant leader?

You need to be to raise up your children as servant leaders.

Join me as we learn how we can be servant leaders and examples to our children as we follow Jesus and point our families to Him.