Dr. Alvin Jackson
"The test of your leadership is this: While your people are being served, do they become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, and more likely to become servant leader themselves."
MISSION POSITIVE
Long before Dr. Alvin B. Jackson, Jr. managed city budgets, led congregations, sat on community boards or earned advanced degrees, his life had already been altered by a moment he was too young to remember.
He was 18 months old when violence erupted between his biological parents. His father, who had been abusive toward his mother, pulled a gun on her. She ran from the house, then realized her young son was still inside and returned. A struggle over the weapon followed. The gun fired, killing Alvin’s father.
It could have ended differently in more ways than one.
What followed became just as important to Alvin as what came before it. Raised in Eustis, Florida, he became the son of a bishop who served as General Overseer of a national Pentecostal church organization. His adopted father gave him another picture of manhood and authority: leadership grounded in compassion, faith and concern for people.
Alvin believes that example changed the direction of his life.
The boy whose earliest years were touched by violence grew into a man whose work has largely centered on serving others.
Education became part of that preparation. Alvin earned a bachelor’s degree in government and politics from the University of Maryland and later pursued graduate theological studies at The Thomas Brown Bible College in Jacksonville, earning both a Master of Ministry and Doctor of Ministry.
For him, education was never optional. It prepared him for two demanding callings that have run alongside each other for much of his adult life: more than 41 years in public management and 36 years as a pastor and religious leader.
One required him to understand government, budgets, personnel and public policy. The other required him to understand people.
In Alvin’s life, the two have never been entirely separate.
Today, as City Manager for the City of Bunnell, he is responsible for the operations of a municipality, approximately 65 employees and a $70 million budget. His days can involve long-range planning, staffing, finances, legislation, intergovernmental relationships and the daily decisions required to keep a city functioning.
The details are administrative. The responsibility is human.
Behind every budget are services people depend on. Behind every personnel decision are employees and families. Behind every policy are residents who will live with its consequences.
That way of thinking reflects a philosophy Alvin began putting into words decades ago.
In the mid-1980s, he wrote a personal mission centered on his Christian faith and the belief expressed in Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me.” But achievement was only part of what he meant. His mission also called him to touch people positively, expect nothing in return and find satisfaction simply in knowing he had helped someone.
That belief followed him beyond city government and the pulpit.
Over the years, Alvin has served in areas ranging from affordable housing and economic development to workforce issues, historic preservation, cultural arts and community redevelopment. He currently serves on the boards of AdventHealth in Flagler and St. Johns counties and SMA Healthcare.
He has also found language for his approach to leadership in the work of Robert Greenleaf, whose servant-leadership principles ask whether people become healthier, wiser, freer and more capable because of the person leading them.
For Alvin, that question matters more than the title attached to the leader.
Yet decades of helping people eventually forced him to confront something more personal.
Service can become consuming.
A career can demand more than a person realizes he is giving. Ministry can do the same. Alvin eventually recognized that public management and pastoring had taken places in his life that needed to be reconsidered. One of the triumphs he is proudest of was not a promotion, degree or appointment. It was realigning his priorities.
He came to understand that the person he says he loves should feel like a priority too.
That realization changed his definition of balance.
A man accustomed to caring for cities, congregations, organizations and communities began paying closer attention to the life waiting beyond those responsibilities. His faith remained central, but so did presence. So did relationships. So did recognizing God’s grace in the life he already had.
Alvin describes difficult experiences as having taught him that pain can serve a purpose. He has come to see himself through the idea of the “wounded healer”: someone who does not erase what hurt him but finds ways for those experiences to deepen his concern for others.
At 65, his hopes for the years ahead sound less like another list of accomplishments and more like permission to enjoy what he has spent decades working toward.
He wants happiness. Travel. Quiet time. Walks. More life with his special lady.
There is something fitting about that simplicity.
After years spent learning how to lead, Alvin is still learning how to live.
And perhaps the clearest measure of that life remains the one he has carried for years: that if he can help someone along the way, his living will not have been in vain.