I just finished “I am a Follower” –by Leonard Sweet.
The subtitle on this book is “It’s never been about leadership.” The “leadership obsession” in the church seems to be the underlying purpose for Sweet’s new book. He states early on “ I hope to convince you to quit defining yourself as a leader, stop your aspiring after leadership and instead set your sights on being a “Jesus follower” or “fellow follower” or “first follower.”
His discussion on the “great tragedy” of the church – the focus on leadership – was a theme that ran alongside a theme of greater importance to me. That theme was what it means to be a follower of Christ, following the way, the truth and the life. I found myself loving the follower challenges, and yet being distracted by the attack on the leadership development culture that has risen in the church in the last decades. Having personally witnessed the powerful way God has used the leadership development settings in many churches, including my own, it was hard for me to swallow some of the criticism Sweet was dishing out.
Sweet’s “first follower”, in my mind is just a semantic difference to the “servant leader” that has been talked about historically in the church. To deny that Christ cares about leadership seems overstated. Leadership is a spiritual gift. Scripture tells us to “let them lead”. His disciples certainly led a movement in the book of Acts. The overseers of the early church were leaders. God certainly chose to work through leaders in Israel’s history. Moses, David, Joseph, were all leaders.
I loved what Sweet said about “first followers” and the challenges he presented. Absolutely leaders must be modeling true followership and submit always to the Master. He does cause one to think about where the line gets crossed of chasing after leadership skill instead of Christ Himself. But that is true for anything in life. Not just leadership. Anything we pursue can become an idol, and thus take us away from the focus of Christ.
It’s true, it’s never been about leadership, but about Christ. But this book? I wouldn’t buy it.
