Then he said to all, “Anyone who wants to follow me must put aside his own desires and conveniences and carry his cross with him every day and keep close to me!” Luke 9:23
What we need today is more leaders! Right? Wrong, says Joe Stowell! And who is this negative voice? He happens to be one of the day’s foremost Christian leaders. For 18 years, he served as president of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, that’s one of our leading Christian colleges with more than a century of history.
Dr. Stowell says that he feels a bit awkward in contending that our greatest need is not for leaders because everybody sends their offspring to colleges and universities expecting them to emerge as tomorrow’s leaders. Stowell, though, is convinced that God designed us in such a way that our supreme need is to follow Jesus Christ.
In his book Following Christ he wrote, “That following is what we were originally designed for is almost self-evident in the fact that everyone can follow but very few have either the talent or the opportunity to lead” (Following Christ, Zondervan, 1996, p. 36.).
Coining a word for what he believes we need, Stowell calls it followership, the habit of learning to follow implicitly Him who challenged the disciples, saying, “Anyone who wants to follow me must put aside his own desires and conveniences and carry his cross with him every day and keep close to me!” (Luke 9:23).
Long ago, scientists discovered that when a mother duck fails to teach her young to follow her in the first two days after the eggs are hatched, the ducklings will follow a block of wood pulled by a string as a substitute for the mother who just isn’t there. Furthermore, contends a medical doctor who cites the discovery, over a period of time there is emotional attachment to the block of wood (S. I. McMillen, “How are we Imprinting,” Christian Life, Feb. 1996, p. 30).
In dealing with the issue of what he calls followership, Joe Stowell meets head-on the greatest flaw of Christianity today. Scores of men and women, fearful of losing control over their lives and destinies, name the name of Christ and attend church without really making a commitment to follow Jesus.
Making this personal, do you ever struggle with the issue of commitment to what Jesus asked, thinking that if you should sign on the dotted line and really follow Him, you will be thought of as a fanatic, you will be mocked as a person who’s out of touch with the world, that you will be deprived of your independence?
Jesus Christ calls us to a relationship whereby He is at the center of our very existence. It is our hesitance to yield at this point that produces a dichotomy of faith and practice. We know better than we do, so we often make token commitments to what we think God wants, hoping that we can satisfy Him, and that in the end, the scales will weigh in our favor.
A generation ago, Frank Sinatra crooned, “I Did It My Way.” He has lots of company—we still prefer to do it our way. That’s the way we were born, and many never go beyond that to understand that God’s purpose and will is better than ours because He knows the end from the beginning.
A closing thought. Your concern as to where following Christ may take you is overcome when you understand that following is a day by day, step by step walk. When you follow Him, you will get to know Him, and when you really know Him—not the image you may have grown up with—you will love Him, and when you love Him, you will obey Him and walk with Him.
No, Dr. Joe Stowell is right. What we really need today is not more leaders, but many, many more followers. Only then will we be fully committed to Christ, and be willing to walk where He leads us.
Resource Reading: Luke 9:57-62
