Life Goes On

My in box is crammed with admonitions to attend this leadership conference, buy this leadership book, or be coached to become a more effective leader. I don't hear anyone talking about the importance of "follow-ship". That is anyone but Jesus. If I remember correctly, His command was "Follow Me." Paul picked up on that and encouraged those to whom he wrote to essentially "follow me as I follow Christ". I came across an interesting article in WordSearch; The Discipline of Following Thus leaders are also followers, followers of Christ, and willing to accept the leadership of others. This turns out to be the harder discipline. Almost all aspire to be leaders; few aspire to be followers. Following involves the recognition that we must operate not as a cluster of independent individuals but as the body of Christ. God has designed the body for interdependence, not codependence or independence. On a deeper level, following requires personal humility and

I'm currently reading David Platt's book "Radical: taking back your faith from the American Dream". In addition to being convicted, challenged and chastised, I've been forced to re-think the process of disciple-making. The truth of the matter is that most of our current disciple making "programs" are extra-biblical at best. There is no place in the Bible that even hints that disciple making involves taking a course, or completing a curriculum. When I look at the example of Jesus, I see Him spending 24/7 with 12 men for 3+years. He taught by word, deed and assignment. The closest I've seen any contemporary plan to that is the pattern that Reach-out Ministries (in the old days) had. That pattern was "I do it; I do it and they are with me; they do it and I'm in the background; they do it and I've moved on." I used to have a sticky note on the dash of my car which read D.D.A.A. It stood for "Don't Do Anything Alone"