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Jesus didn’t recruit leaders for his ministry

Jesus didn’t recruit leaders for his ministry . . . Jesus wasn’t looking for leaders at all. Jesus was looking for followers . . . This is the great tragedy of the church in the last 50 years: We have changed Paul’s words, “Follow me as I follow Christ,” to “Follow me as I lead for Christ.” Over and over we hear, “What the church needs is more and better leaders . . ." Really?

Jesus said, “Go and make disciples.” We stopped and built worship warehouses. Jesus said, “Follow me.” We heard, “Be a leader.” Paul said, “Do the work of an evangelist.” We’ve done the work of a marketer. Somewhere back in the past half century, we diagnosed the church’s problem as a crisis in leading, not a crisis in following. It’s as if we read Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship and decided we’d rather talk about something else entirely . . .

I Am a Follower: The Way, Truth, and Life of Following Jesus,by Leonard Sweet (Thomas Nelson, 2012), pages 20-21.