This paper is based on a retreat in which vocational rehabilitation professionals examined their own developmental experiences in community settings and related them to their professional role. Vocational rehabilitation professionals are required to act as leaders as they facilitate the process by which people who have experienced traumatic loss or disability find their way into community. "Servant leadership" is an expression of the values and responsibilities of public service in a democratic society. To succeed in leadership, one must have the capacity to discern the developmental process of community and the range of relationships that occur in it. As part of the framework for discussing the process of community, two levels of community are proposed. The nurturance community is composed of relationships such as family, friends, and support groups that develop an individual's capacity for personal authority (empowerment). The vocational community comprises relationships associated with one's public expression of inclination and work, and provides the vehicle by which internal authority derived from the nurturance community is moved into public expression. Other aspects of this model include traumatic experience or disability as estrangement from community, the role of the inspirational leader in articulating mission, and the administration of rehabilitation becoming subordinate to the authority of the community. (SV)