Musings on Followership

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I've been thinking a lot about followership lately, and talking some about it, too.

So, I've decided to do a post about it. This may turn out to be random thoughts or maybe something more coherent. If it ends up on the blog, you'll know I didn't delete it.

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More and more, I think it's important to realize that Jesus didn't offer Himself to the world as a leader. He did, very directly, challenge people, "Follow me." He didn't come to lead. Rather, He came to be followed. The two are very different things.

If church people want to walk "in His steps," (1 Peter 2:21) they will need to stop trying to be leaders and start being disciples who walk in a way that creates an example people will follow.

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I've been thinking about the leadership/followership thing in terms of what I achieve in my job because my job is to be a leader.

As I often repeat, I have a job on the management team in a supermarket. Ultimately, as I say ad nauseam I use the job to function as an ambassador of the Kingdom of God.

However, to do the ambassador thing, I actually have to do the job the store pays me to do.

I hope you don't judge me as being self-aggrandizing, of praising myself. What follows is genuine.

As a matter of self-analysis, I'm pretty certain that I do the job well, though there are never job performance reviews in the store. One can guess they're doing well by receiving a raise or being offered a promotion.

I've been promoted to a higher position than I wanted to be in. And, the position I'm in has been elevated in its influence since I became the person holding the job, and that is both humbling and mystifying to me.

I've said before, I don't do the technical part of the job as well as any of the four managers in the department. As hard as I try to improve, I know that, in terms of doing the job itself, I've hit my ceiling. I'm adequate, obviously, but no more than that. Management colleagues and the people I lead seem to accept me for my shortcomings.

What I seem to do well, I think, though, is achieve followership. Or, as most choose to think of it, lead. Bafflingly, in this context at least, I appear to be a good leader.

The people I, uh, "lead," shock me by the degree to which they willingly do whatever I ask. In fact, they frequently do more than I would ever ask. Stunningly, knowing my various shortcomings, they volunteer to do for me what I don't do well, or can't do at all.

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to think this through.

There's a degree to which I think it may be a matter of my personality. I don't take myself seriously even though when I am in charge what I say must be taken seriously. It was my expectation that, because I'm not serious about myself, others wouldn't take me seriously.

I honestly guess that, on the job, people take me seriously precisely because I don't take myself seriously, though I don't understand that.

I also believe that my "theology" of work creates followership.

I'm very serious and highly intentional about the theology of what I do and how I do it.

There are two components of how I think about what I do. They're very Jesus-oriented.

First, in every difficult moment in interpersonal interaction, I picture Jesus on the cross. I'm reminded that there was no limit to His self-denial and sacrifice offered to people who did not deserve to be shown mercy. How, then, can I not deny myself and sacrifice for others?!

Second, I think of Paul's description of the attitude disciples should have: The same as that of Christ Jesus who...made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant...and humbled Himself....

I suspect that it is because I have this theology of work that I was promoted to the leadership role.

I must also be very clear. Imagining Jesus on the cross and reflecting on Paul's description of His attitude are ideals...goals...I set for myself...

...and fail to achieve numerous times every day.

Thinking this way is exhausting. Encountering the inevitable, repeated failure can be discouraging on the inside but it gets rave reviews from people on its receiving end.

Additionally, I think that my sincere, failed struggle to be like Jesus aids me in achieving followership, even, maybe especially, among people who don't believe.

I don't know why or how, really. But, I'm often stunned by the degree to which I achieve followership on my job.

One thing is certain. I don't envision myself to be a leader nor do I ever attempt to lead.

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It seems to me that, in the parts of the institutional church I know, there is no effective leadership precisely because there is no followership.

By definition, one is not leading unless people are doing the action of following. Leading is reflected in what others do, not in whether or not they agree with you or think well of you. In this way, I see no leadership.

As I think about this in a big picture way, I think that an essential problem is the provider/consumer culture that people who hope to lead the church buy into.

The people the people church leaders want to lead get a seriously mixed message from them.

On one level, as providers of religious products and services, the people the people church leaders want to lead have been taught that their role as the laity is to faithfully consume the religious products and services provided for them.

I believe that many in the laity are convinced that they ARE following by virtue of the fact that they are consuming.

So, for example, a consumer of religious products and services can consider themselves to be following by listening carefully to a sermon on following church leaders, i.e., the consuming is itself, not following in the real world, is the following.

Therefore, as a concrete macro example, to vote to approve a Strategic Plan is thought to be following, even if the people who vote to approve it have no intention of putting the plan into action.


My guess is that the people who want to lead in the church are going to have to very seriously repent of the clergy/laity way of being church for genuine followership to happen.

Remember the clergy, laity idea is entirely foreign to Jesus and His first followers. Jesus called people to follow, not consume.

This is enough musing for one post.