Lead or Follow?

Have you been in a group where everybody wanted to be a leader? Everybody wanted to lead? Everybody wanted to be the boss, the big man, the one who calls the shot? If not, congratulations! You are in a perfect world! Lol…

Anyway, I attended a church last Sunday and the pastor explained how leadership is such an overrated word nowadays. In school, they teach you how to be a leader. At work, they encourage everybody to have a leader in each team. In sports, somebody has to be the team captain or the leader. And even at church, they teach you how to be a leader. I have read books about leadership and I believe this is also the reason why I am in my position right now. But I also believe that being a Christian, we don’t need to be a leader. We just need to be a follower. 1 Corinthians 11:1 and Matthew 16:24 states that we need to be follower of Christ. It didn’t say we need to be a leader for Christ. It just clearly states to follow Him. The ultimate leader, boss, manager, team captain in our lives should be Jesus Christ and we need to follow him.

In order for a basketball team to win, there is a coach, team captain and several different positions such as center, forward and point guards. Not everybody can be a coach and a player at the same time (except for Jaworski or Pacquiao), nobody can play all the positions. Guess what, somebody has to learn how to follow the coach or team captain. What is the key word there? Follow…

Don’t get me wrong here, being a leader is good. But when it comes to the church, I believe we need to be followers. I myself have been a leader at church and at work. But most of the time, I have lead the people in the wrong direction. Jesus didn’t recruit leaders in His ministry, He recruited followers. This culture that we have right now has created too much leadership obsession. Everybody just wants to be the leader and the voice of their team.

So if you are a leader right now, I suggest that you throw away all your leadership manuals, books and titles. The day has come for us to be a better followers.

Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ – 1 Corinthians 11:1

Then Jesus told his disciples, “if any would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me – Matthew 16:24