One of the courses I just finished up for my doctoral program was focused on “Advanced Church Leadership,” which involved reading a whole stack of books on the topic of what it means to be a leader, successful leadership strategies, managing change, the life of the leader, etc. We read a lot of books written by business people and a few by clergy, but the focus seemed to always be the same: that it’s good to be a good leader. Go to Barnes and Noble and you’ll see a whole section of books dedicated to leadership. There are leadership tapes and leadership motivational calendars and posters.
What you don’t see, however, in the midst of all this leadership discussion is very much about being a follower. I mean, all these leaders have to be leading somebody, and if being a leader involves leading followers then shouldn’t those followers have some guidance as well?
That was the question that Harvard Business Review writer Barbara Kellerman asked herself, which led to her book Followership: How Followers Are Creating Change and Changing Leaders. This was also in my stack of books for the course and I found it to be the most intriguing of the lot. Her thesis is this: “So long as we fixate on leaders at the expense of followers, we will perpetuate the myth that [followers] don’t much matter.”
We’ve all been taught to aspire to leadership, but what would it mean if we first aspired to be good followers? What makes a good follower and how does following in some sense promote leadership?
These are some of the questions that came to my mind this week as I was studying this text in Luke 3 about John the Baptizer who, in my mind, is really one of the best examples in history of someone who became famous and revered not by being number one, but by intentionally knowing his role as a follower. He appears on the stage in each of the four Gospels, but Luke gives him significantly more ink. By doing so, I think Luke wants his readers to recognize that who we follow and how we follow is an indicator of how we will lead and to what purpose we will dedicate our lives.
Luke tells us from the beginning that John was born for a specific purpose. In that repetition of angel visits in the first two chapters of Luke, one of them comes to the old priest Zechariah, whose wife Elizabeth is barren, and tells Zechariah that they are going to have a son whom they will name John. The angel gives Zechariah John’s mission statement in 1:13-17—
14He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth.16Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. 17And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."
In other words, John was going to have the very specific mission of preparing the way for the arrival of God’s anointed one. He would go into the desert to preach and baptize, which recalls the movement of Israel into the desert after their liberation from Egypt. His ministry would be one of preparation and announcement, calling the people to repentance in preparation of the judgment to come and to give their true allegiance to the Lord and his anointed.
John baptized individuals, but his baptism symbolized something much larger—the “forgiveness of sins.” Remember that in first century Israel, sins were only to be forgiven through the sacrificial system in the Temple. What John was offering, however, was not merely the forgiveness of individual sins, though that was part of it. What he was really doing was enacting a sign for the whole nation of Israel—a sign of the redemption for which they had been longing for generations.
That word was rather popular and intriguing to a people long oppressed, so many flocked out into the desert, to the Jordan River, to hear John preach and go down in the water with him. Given the fact that it’s about 15 miles from the hill country of Jerusalem down to the Jordan River Valley, seeing John meant making a significant trip in those days which is an indication of the kind of crowds he was drawing and how his message was catching on.
It’s no wonder, then, that people began to ask John the inevitable question: Hey, since you’re drawing all these crowds doesn’t that make you the one we’ve been waiting for? Expectations were high—maybe, they thought, John was himself the Messiah.
I wonder if it was a temptation for John to think so…that maybe there wasn’t a little tug of that idea that he could be the leader everyone wanted. We don’t know how John thought about that privately, but we do know what he answered the crowd looking for a leader:
"I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 17His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
“One more powerful than I will come…” That’s the statement of someone who knows his role, knows the big picture, knows what it means to be a follower first. John knew that he was not the Messianic leader and was able to say so.
Notice, though, that unlike our negative conception of being a follower, it is precisely John’s faithfulness as a follower that makes him one of the most significant people in the biblical story.
Look ahead a bit to Luke chapter 7, beginning at verse 18. John himself had been wondering if Jesus was the Messiah he had been preparing for, and it’s no insignificant question given the fact that to this point in his ministry Jesus had already ticked off plenty of people. John wanted to know whether his work had been in vain. Of course, it wasn’t—Jesus sent word back to him that the Kingdom work was being done. But then Jesus says this (beginning at verse 24):
24After John's messengers left, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John: "What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed swayed by the wind? 25If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear expensive clothes and indulge in luxury are in palaces. 26But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 27This is the one about whom it is written:
" 'I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.'[a] 28I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he."
Here we see the principle in action: John was the ultimate follower, one so aware of his mission and purpose that he was able to step aside for the Messiah Jesus, the one in whom God called “son” and in whom God was “well pleased.” Interestingly, in the Gospel of John, John the Baptist says about Jesus, “He must increase and I must decrease.” But that’s not a negative—it’s the ultimate statement of strength and faithfulness.
What John teaches us, I think, is that being a follower isn’t a passive way of living, nor should we stigmatize followers as being something less than leaders. You can’t have one without the other, after all. When followership is done at its best, the cause is advanced.
What makes for a good follower? Well, first we need to realize that there are different types of followers, based on their level of engagement with the leader and the cause. Kellerman categorizes followers into five different types.
- Isolates: These are the folks who are barely aware of what’s going on around them. They don’t care much about the leader or the mission and largely stick to the shadows of the organization. Says Kellerman, “By knowing and doing nothing, these types of followers passively support the status quo…unwittingly, they impede movement and slow change.” Isolates are completely detached from the process and purpose of the organiztion.
- Bystanders: Bystanders can also drag down an organization, but the difference between them and the isolates is that they know what’s going on around them—they just choose to not take the time, trouble, or risk to get involved. Witness the number of people, for example, who will stand by and do nothing when watching a crime being committed (the bystander effect). Bystanders have no internal motivation to change the status quo.
- Participants: Participants, unlike isolates and bystanders, are engaged in some way. They will invest some of what they have (time or money, for example) to try and make an impact. Participants are engaged at some level, but are not “all in.” Think of it as the mid-level of involvement.
- Activists, on the other hand, are people who feel strongly about their leaders or organizations and act accordingly. They are energetic, eager, and engaged. They are heavily invested in people and in processes so they work hard on behalf of their leaders. There are usually a much smaller number of activists in any organization because of the commitment it takes. They will work longer hours and take more risks to further the mission.
- Lastly, there are the diehards. These are people who are prepared to go down for their cause—whether it’s an individual, an idea, or both. Diehards usually emerge when there is a crisis and they are willing to endanger their own health and welfare in the service of their cause. Think of a soldier who throws himself on a grenade to save his buddies or the whistleblower who risks their reputation and even their life to bring corruption to light.
John the Baptizer was, I think, an Activist. He maximized his subordinate role and poured his energy into a cause that he seemed to intrinsically know he was not going to be able to see all the way through. He saw his own life not as the center and focus of God’s plan, but as the means to advance it forward another step before passing it off to the true leader who was to come. He saw his life’s purpose as always pointing to someone else. That’s what drove him into the desert and it’s the reason we remember him today.
Jesus, of course, was not only the Messiah but also a follower himself—one who dedicated himself to the redemptive mission he had come to execute and was fully engaged in a constantly prayerful relationship with the Father. We could mark him as a diehard because he followed that mission all the way to the cross. If even Jesus was a follower, then it means we need to examine how we are followers, too.
How are you following Jesus this morning? What category would you place yourself in?
- Are you an isolate, not really caring that much about Jesus or his mission? My guess is that there aren’t too many of those here this morning. Isolates probably wouldn’t care enough to get in the car and come!
- But maybe there are some bystanders—folks who will want to benefit from a relationship with Jesus or connection to a church but who won’t take the risk or the effort to engage in the work or the mission. Bystanders are often good at offering critique, but never want to be part of the solution. If you’re a bystander, I invite you to consider taking the risk of becoming a participant and see what God has in store for you.
- Like most organizations, a church has a lot of participants—those who attend, give some of their income, volunteer on occasion. Being a participant is a good thing…
- But the call of discipleship is, I believe, a call to move up a level in our engagement with the mission of God and in our relationship with Christ. John the Baptizer invested his life in that mission, realizing that he probably would never see the final result (he was beheaded by Herod Antipas not long after baptizing Jesus because he called out Herod for taking his brother’s wife). To be a disciple, I believe, is to be an activist. Maybe you’re not there yet, but I want to encourage you to focus this year on the task of working on your own relationship with Christ. The deeper you engage in that relationship, the more you begin to see clearly the mission of God and your role in it.
- As for diehards, well, Christianity has been blessed by many—people who sold themselves out completely for Christ. Their example can inspire us and drive us. We learn much from those who have sacrificed everything for Christ. It was that kind of commitment that took the disciples and Paul around the world preaching the Gospel. Perhaps we need a fresh infusion of that kind of followership in our own time.
What constitutes a good follower? Kellerman says that first and foremost there is this:
“Followers who do something are nearly always preferred to followers who do nothing.”
As a follower of Jesus, like John, are you prepared to do something?
When Jesus called his disciples, the invitation was simple: “Follow me.” John followed his call. The disciples followed theirs. Jesus followed his call all way to Calvary. Where will God’s call take you in the coming year?
Source:
Kellerman, Barbara. “What Every Leader Needs to Know About Followers.” Harvard Business Review. December 2007.
