“You’re either a leader or you’re a follower.” I don’t think that’s a true statement. I think it’s possible to be neither: that makes you a wanderer.<\/p>\n
Part of the frustration of leading others is trying to lead them, but they refuse to follow along. As a leader, you are always aware that you could be doing a better job leading. So when others don’t follow, it often confirms that you should be doing a better job. “If only I was a better leader, then I would see better results.”<\/p>\n
I think there’s a lot of truth to that. After all, in my “profession,” there are many pastors who I perceive to be much better leaders than myself, and in all cases, they are able to develop maturer (is that a word?) disciples of Christ than I see myself doing. I have a lot to learn about how to lead people along in their walk with Christ.<\/p>\n
But on the flip side of the coin, I don’t think it’s always the fault of the leader that others won’t follow. It doesn’t only require a great leader, but willing followers. And sometimes, a leader cannot do anything more to help followers who refuse to follow.<\/p>\n
And if followers refuse to follow, can they even claim to be followers? That is the question for those of us who call ourselves Christians–followers of Jesus. Are we following Jesus? If not, not only can we not call ourselves leaders, we can’t even call ourselves followers! We are wanderers.<\/p>\n
Churches feel obligated to have some sort of follow-up plan in place when people make decisions for Christ. Yet, I stumbled across these words from the late Keith Green a few days ago:<\/p>\n
In my studies of the life of Jesus, it has amazed me that He never had “a follow-up program.” It was usually His habit to let people “follow Him<\/strong> up.” He never had to go door to door, looking for that fellow who He healed last week, wanting to share another parable or two. He always seemed to have the attitude of, “If they want life, then they’ll have to come and follow Me.”<\/em><\/p>\n What if we had more of that approach in churches? This puts more of the responsibility on the follower than the leader. Should it be the leader’s job to try to get people to go a certain direction? Sometimes I feel this is a futile cause. If someone wants to follow, they will. If they don’t, they won’t.<\/p>\n My fear is this: if we took this approach, how many would follow? It seems to me that so many people need leaders to not only hold their hands, but also pull them along. Otherwise, very few people will get involved or move ahead. I don’t think there are many followers out there–most of us are wanderers.<\/p>\n I even look at my own life with Jesus: I feel like I wander more than I follow.<\/p>\n “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, O take and seal it. Seal it for Thy courts above.”<\/em><\/p>\n Is it worth the energy to try to get people to move forward in their faith when it seems like it takes so much just to see them budge a little? Or should we take more of a hands-off approach like Jesus did with the crowds that “followed” Him?<\/p>\n What’s a leader to do with wanderers?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “You’re either a leader or you’re a follower.” I don’t think that’s a true statement. I think it’s possible to be neither: that makes you a wanderer. Part of the frustration of leading others is trying to lead them, but they refuse to follow along. As a leader, you are always aware that you could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-god","category-our-culture","category-the-church-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1259"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1264,"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions\/1264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}