Stop Going To Church // Week 2 Teaching Notes
Stop Leading, Start FOLLOWING
We’ve all heard the cliché about being a leader and not a follower, but…when should we follow?
What if we told you you should focus more on developing followership skills? Let’s take a closer look at what this is, why we should do it, and how God wrote “followership” into our Made For This.
First, what exactly is “followership?”
Followership can essentially be defined as…following. When you are following you are complying with or imitating your leader. Maybe this doesn’t sound like a positive thing at first, but that’s only because culture has conditioned us to believe that leadership is a virtue and followership is a vice. When we really explore the idea, though, we were made to be followers.
The reason we are telling you to stop going to church is because we believe you were made for more than that. You were actually made to follow. Genesis 1:26 says, “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” God created each of us in his image. We are essentially imitations of him. Following isn’t just something we do. It’s part of our very nature. We are followers by nature.
So..where does this leave leadership? Leadership, like us, is naturally very “followery.” The verse we read above continues by saying, “…And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” After God created us like him, he gave us dominion over his creations. We are naturally followers, but we are functionally leaders. We see this here in the Old Testament, but we also see it later in Jesus’ life.
Jesus was the greatest leader in history, but his key to being such an incredible leader was that he was also the greatest follower in history. He tells us this in John 5:19 saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.” Jesus was an excellent follower.
We also see Jesus celebrating the Roman Centurion’s understanding of followership in Matthew 8 and Luke 7. The Centurion, according to Jesus, possesses the greatest faith in all of Israel, and the man’s reason for having such faith was his thorough understanding and appreciation for both leadership AND followership.
This is where our series comes into focus. The reason we are saying STOP going to church is because that isn’t the complete picture. Trusting and following Jesus is a 168 hour per week lifestyle. Yes, we are called to lead as ambassadors for Jesus (as we discussed in the last post), but in order to lead well we must follow well.
Now, we want to hear from you. Tweet us, message us, email us…whatever it takes: How will YOU develop your Followership skills?