People Follow People

Last year I read an excellent book by David Murrow called Why Men Hate Going to Church. I would recommend it to anyone, but especially those in church leadership, those who have the ability to change the way we do church. One of the excellent points he makes is that Men follow Men. If there are good male role models within a church then men will be drawn to that. I also think it’s true in general to say that people follow people. If you know someone who’s into football you are more likely to be drawn into watching and maybe eventually liking football.

I want you to think for a moment about your church and your leadership. What are they like? What do they spend their time doing (in work and out of work)? Do they inspire you to follow them?

When I was in my late teens I knew a lot of intelligent people. They went to Oxford and Cambridge and had high academic aspirations. Some of them wanted to gain their degree and then their Doctorate and then return to Oxford or Cambridge to teach. I always thought this was a bit of a shame. It felt to me that you had this section of academia that was stuck in this self perpetuating loop of learning and teaching and learning and teaching… Wonderful minds stuck in a circular movement of self-serving propagation.

Is it though any different within the church? Our leaders, on the whole are there to serve the church, they pastor and they preach and a few of the congregation move into leadership within the church and a very few go on to be pastors themselves. Pastors who preach and pastor and produce leaders and some pastor and so the church goes on. Does this really inspire us to follow?

Now, you’ve had a little think about what your pastor does. If he’s anything like the pastors I know and have known here is a little list of what I can see pastors doing…

1. Preaching
2. Leading Services
3. Leading Meetings
4. Taking Small Groups
5. A bit of Schools work
6. Pastoral Visiting
7. Administration
8. Preparation

Now, each pastor is different and has different priorities and callings, but on the whole can you see pastors that fit that list well? If I look at a pastor through the eyes of this list it’s not very inspiring is it. I don’t look at them and thing WOW!!! I wish I could be more like that!! The list above is a list that serves the church. It is self serving, inward looking, uninspiring.

People follow people!!

What if the list looked a little like this…

1. Feeding the hungry
2. Healing the sick
3. Seeking the lost
4. Visiting the lonely
5. Supporting the addicts
6. Preaching the Good News
7. Teaching Kingdom Values to the community
8. Cleaning the graffiti
9. Preaching the Great Commission
10. Delegating responsibility

What if we encouraged and empowered our pastors to follow this sort of list?

Would you want to follow someone who lived by this list? Let me ask you a question. When was the last time your Pastor brought someone to Christ? When was the last time they went and spent time with the homeless, making them feel special and loved and feeding them?

These are hard questions. They are hard questions for our pastors but they should also be very hard questions for us as people in the pews. What have we required of our pastors? What have we employed them to do? Are we secretly wanting them to serve us or to serve Christ? Are we wanting them to seek and save the lost or build us up?

I have come across people who believe that their pastor is there to serve them, to visit them when they are sick, to guide them etc. I have even heard people say that the church doesn’t care for them as only an elder and two house group members have been to see them when sick and not the main pastor. Have we created pastors who are now simply serving the church. Have we created a group of people who are so far removed from what they should be that we’ve created people even we don’t want to follow let alone people from outside the church? Let us think about who we want to follow and allow, encourage and empower our pastors to be that person.