To start the new year, I want to talk about followership because – and I’m going to give away the point of the message this morning – there is only one leader who does not follow, and that is God. We Christians are called to be followers of Jesus before we are anything else. Great people follow great leaders well before they lead well. It is inevitable and necessary that we understand followership, or this enterprise of life in our culture and in our church is going to fall apart.
We talk a LOT about leadership. From the time we are in elementary school and everybody wants to be the “line leader,” we are drilled with the idea of being leaders and not followers. Be a trend setter; be innovative.
If I see a conference advertised for Christians, it’s almost always about leadership. (‘Church leadership conference’: 20 million hits on google. ‘Church followership conference’: 135,000 hits, and a quick look at the list showed half the title contained the word ‘leadership’, as if the whole point of learning how to follow Jesus well is so you can lead. So…not really about followership after all. It’s seen as a means to a more important end). I’ve yet to get a mailer for a Followership conference. If I did, I doubt it would be held in a stadium. Maybe a classroom somewhere.
Nobody takes pride in our culture in being a follower. We associate it with weakness. You never hear at a funeral, “They were trend followers. They knew how to line up behind good leadership. They knew how to follow so well.”
We live in a culture that devalues the art of good following. And I think that’s a problem.
I get it: terrible things have happened when people blindly follow a leader. I remember as a kid reading about Jim Jones and his cult, and wondering how on earth people could be so gullible. The history of racism in our country was often the result of followers blindly accepting a grossly unjust status quo, and it was leaders (often Christian ones) who challenged this.
So, yeah, it’s important that we not be “sheeple” (docile, foolish, easily led by other people).
But…have we considered that the first recorded rebellion against God was because we (humanity) didn’t want to follow? We wanted to lead, and it was not our place. The best thing Adam and Eve could have done in the Garden was to follow God, and they didn’t. When you read the stories of the primary figures in the Old Testament, their problem over and over is that they try to lead without having first learned how to follow the God who placed them in leadership.
In the New Testament, the term “leader” as we think of leadership[1] in the church community is rarely used. More often than not, ‘leadership’ carries with it the idea of being an example. When words that more closely align with our idea of leadership are used, they are surrounded by cautions:
· “Not many of you should desire” it (James 3:1)
· It’s going to look a lot like being a servant or a slave to others (Matthew 20:25-27).
· It’s not going to be the kind of leadership the world values: it’s not for your gain; don’t ‘lord’ over others (1 Peter 5:3).
Following – “imitating Christ” or “being a disciple” – is the focus over and over again. Any discussion of authority or leadership stems from one’s passing on the message of Jesus and exemplifying the life of life of Jesus in words and actions. Over and over, this is about following Jesus – following him into radical self-sacrifice as seen in the “broken and spilled out” part of communion; following him into servanthood by doing lowly but honorable things, such as washing feet, etc.
In God’s church design, ‘leaders’ are Christ-followers exemplifying Christ-followership and then helping other Christ-followers flourish in following Christ.
Only some have this as a formal appointment, but we all have this as a calling.
I’m not going to talk today about leadership and followership between people. Maybe that will show up this year because it’s an inescapable part of human community –we need good leaders, but not everybody is (or should be) leaders at all times or in all ways; we also need followers, which all of us are at some point or in some way. But that’s going to have to be a sermon for another time.
I want to talk about Foundational Followership: Following Jesus. I will use three categories to help us think about this today (Rod Dempsey at disciplemakingblog.wordpress.com wrote the original list that informed my thinking here).
Kingdom Perspectives
1. There is only one King that we follow. (Eph. 1:21; Rev. 19:6).[2]
2. Our job is to help others follow this King. When Paul says, “imitate me,” it’s paired with “as I imitate Christ.”
3. We are stewards who follow the vision of our King. Our successful stewardship will compellingly point others toward the King and pave the way into the kingdom. “Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and will glorify God on the day he visits.” (I Peter 2:12)
4. Humble obedience is a badge of honor for a good steward; it is the way in which the King plans for His followers to flourish, and by which the name of the King is made great. “Do you want the Kingdom run like the Romans run their kingdom? Their rulers have great power over the people, but God the Father doesn’t play by the Romans’ rules. 26 This is the Kingdom’s logic: whoever wants to become great must first make himself a servant; 27 whoever wants to be first must bind himself as a slave— 28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life as the ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:26-28)
Kingdom Principles
1. To represent the King, we must spend time with Him:
· his mission: save lost people
· his orders: spread the good news
· our design: in His image (value, worth, dignity)
· our purpose: glorify God by becoming like Christ
· our worldview: the values of the King (God-others-self; people over things; love everyone as Christ loves us; be stewards committed to shalom)
2. If we spend time with Him, we become like Him. To be a good follower of the King, we must “be” before we “do.” (Like the Minions say, “be-do-be-do-be-do.”) Otherwise, when we go on mission, we run the risk of misrepresenting the King. I don’t mean we should passively wait until we are perfect. I mean we need to spend time with the King even as we go about the King’s business.
3. A follower is a “doer” and not just a “be-er.” Followers don’t study the Bible and congratulate themselves on how smart they are. They do something with it. If we don’t – if it doesn’t change our lives in radical ways – we are deceiving ourselves (James 1:22).
4. God’s word is our textbook. Not Forbes, not the WSJ or the Washington Post, not CNN or Fox or The Constitution or somebody’s blog. Not our favorite preacher or teacher.[3]Followers of God have one primary text by which all other texts are judged. Be ready to feel the tension between the texts of empire and the Text of Kingdom.
Kingdom Practices
1. Followers connect new followers to the King. We are ambassadors or diplomats, tasked with representing the heart of the King, the message of the King, and the values of the Kingdom.
2. Followers follow the King together. Our King demands Kingdom community; forsaking community is not followership. That means face-to-face, dysfunctional, messy, hard, annoying and deeply meaningful family community.
3. Followers are vulnerable and teachable. Leave no thought undiscovered, no behavior unexamined, no pattern unshaken, no assumption unchallenged, no attitude unchecked, no talent unexplored. #surrenderistotal
4. Followers Follow the Mission: preach the gospel, and make disciples.
“[What] did Jesus first command us to do? “Come, follow me” (Matthew 4:19). In fact, it’s His first command, period. Maybe the place to relearn following is the place where we strip away all we have followed and find the core of what, why and whom we should follow.
“Come, follow me.” In His language, Jesus was asking His disciples to come away or come out. “Follow” did not mean to trail behind someone like a groupie waiting for an autograph but to choose to leave behind one life and completely enter another. Followers were to turn their backs to all other loyalties and priorities and turn their faces to Jesus alone. It was a radical change of focus.
That others do not want to follow our Jesus may have something to do with the reality that we do not leave behind the things we should. We talk about following Jesus, but our political, cultural, economic or personal glasses continue to filter every decision we make and every opinion we form. We are the tourists traipsing along behind the tour guide, getting sidetracked by sore feet and street vendors when our Guide is trying to point out the great kingdom sights for which we came.
If we want the church to be a place people come to practice followership, we need to follow Jesus — not a political party, country, doctrine, church style or type, leader, or celebrity. Just Jesus.” Jill Richardson
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[1] 1 Corinthians 12:28 is a close definition of what we think of as leadership. “2941 kybérnēsis – properly, someone who steers (guides) a ship; (figuratively) the divine calling which empowers someone to lead in affairs relating to the Church. ("a helmsman who steers") refers to a pilot (a captain, as in Plato) – a director who guides, administrates, etc. (Abbott-Smith). Kybérnēsis only occurs in 1 Cor 12:28.).” Even then,“others would take it tropically here, and render it wise counsels.” – all quotes from Biblehub.
[2] “First, no one can be an effective leader until they first learn how to follow. Second, the heart of the Christ life is not leading – it’s following. The clarion call of Jesus to all who would listen was, “Follow me!” Finally, Jesus also made it clear that the greatest among us are those who serve others (Mt. 28:11).” - James Emery White
1. 1 Corinthians 3: “One of you says, ‘I follow Paul’; another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; still another, ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul?” Um, no.