When I met Jamie Smith 18 years ago, the first thing he told me was that he wanted our church to host a neighborhood corn feed. I was just hired as the head pastor at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, and Jamie and his family were some of the first parishioners I’d met.
At that time, Jamie was the president of our congregation and wanted to find a way to better engage with our neighbors. When we began planning the event, we hoped we could get enough people to eat the food we prepared. On the day of the feed, we had over 200 people from around Sioux Falls in our churchyard enjoying sweet corn, watermelon, and smoked pork sandwiches. Jamie had smoked the pork himself, sliced it, and spent the entire evening serving our neighbors with a smile on his face.
I knew then that Jamie didn’t just talk about servant leadership, he lived it…