RR. Billions Invested in Leadership but Where are All the Good Leaders?

Everybody wants to make a difference. We spend billions developing leaders, and schools, businesses, and churches all talk about raising up the next generation of them. But when Jesus began the movement that would change countless lives, his invitation was just two words: “Follow me.”

In this episode, John Ortberg asks what it really means to be a follower of Jesus. He challenges the idea that followers are passive or weak. A follower of Jesus can be courageous, curious, persistent, and willing to learn through mistakes. Following means letting Jesus shape the way we think, see, love, and act.

John also makes the invitation wonderfully concrete: Do one thing today simply because Jesus said to do it. Forgive someone. Refuse to judge. Offer kindness where you’ve felt hostility. Give your time or resources in service of someone else. What might change if, for one moment today, you let Jesus lead?

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0:00 Why is everyone talking about leadership?
2:42 The leadership industry
3:52 Are all these leaders making things better?
5:01 What does it mean to be a leader?
6:06 Jesus’ invitation: “Follow me”
6:27 Reclaiming the word “follower”
7:21 Jesus follows the Father
8:24 What a follower of Jesus looks like
8:48 If you follow, stay behind him
9:47 Move at Jesus’ pace
10:15 Do one thing because Jesus said to

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Forbes magazine in 2018 said that $86.7 billion was spent on leadership development, on leadership training programs. Our most revered institutions are devoted to this. Harvard Law School says that in its mission statement, it is devoted to training leaders in the legal profession, not lawyers, but leaders that are there. Harvard Medical School says that they exist in order to create a nurturing community of leaders in the health profession, not doctors. Harvard Divinity School, I'm not making this up, says that they exist in order to help men and women serve as leaders in a religious context. Harvard School of Education says that they exist to prepare leaders, not teachers, leaders in education. Now, lest Yale be left behind in this, Yale University has a leadership institute, a women's leadership initiative, a global health leadership initiative, chief executive leadership institute, and an MBA in leadership of healthcare. Dartmouth says that the reason that they exist is to create lifelong learners and leaders. University of Virginia, Georgetown, I can't begin, there's hardly an organization, educational university, college, that doesn't have some kind of a center or institute to develop leadership. Lead America says that they are the leading organization to help high school and middle school students learn to become leaders. There's a girls' leadership initiative. There are periodicals like the Leadership Quarterly, Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, Leadership, which is a British periodical. And in the church world, there actually is a periodical called the Leadership Journal, which I happened for a time to be an editor at large of. If you Google leadership skills for children, you will get 165 million entries in 0.55 seconds. And there are books that are being written that have been published with titles like How to Raise a Leader. This is for children. Leadership for Kids. I am a Leader. From Sesame Street to Wall Street. Actually, that one I made up. I don't think anybody's written it yet, but if they did, they would probably make a whole lot of money. And you have the same kind of thing in the church world. 45 million resources come up in less than half a second if you Google church leadership resources. And they tend to look quite a lot like secular leadership resources. Barbara Kellerman has written a book called The End of Leadership. She's at Harvard Business School, and she refers to what she calls the leadership industry. There are more programs, centers, institutes, classes, seminars, blogs, conferences, retreats, webinars, TED Talks, consultants, coaches who can guide you into leadership than ever before. She said in 1980 there were three books published on leadership. By the end of that decade, it was 23 in a year. Now, way too many resources to be able to count. So what all of this means is at least we got one thing going for us. As messed up as our world is, as troubled as it is, as many problems as we have from places all around the globe, at least we have great leaders in place. At least, thanks to untold billions of dollars being spent on developing them. Every government, every office, every political position, every educational university, every church, every family has a great leader in the spot where they're needed. Our leaders have never been so effective, so sharp, so healthy, so happy, so well educated, so well prepared, so well trusted, right? Well, strangely enough, not so much. Turns out that back in the 1950s and 60s, when people were asked, Do you can you trust the federal government to do the right thing? About 70% of us said yes. By 2011, it was 15%. About that same time, 77% of all Americans said that we are in a leadership crisis. And in the corporate front, it's actually worse. Barbara Killeman says that only 7% of employees said that they could trust their employers, leaders, and managers. And all this, of course, raises the question: where can you go to find a leader? What does it mean to be a leader? Is everybody a leader? How do we know? There's uh 1,500 different definitions of leadership in the leadership industry, 40 different theories. When I first went to a leadership seminar, there was a poster that had a bunch of a team of sled dogs on it, and it said, uh, if you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes. In other words, the definition of a leader there is someone who can get all the other dogs to look at the rear ends of other dogs so that the leader can enjoy a really nice view. This is a funny thing. If you were to ask the question, uh forget about definition, that's above my pay grade. I don't know how you define a leader, but if you were to ask, what program, what movement has had the biggest impact on personal development, on human being development, on the change of life, on catalyzing or stimulating human beings to grow, to change, to become better in their relationships, to recover from addictions, to sacrifice, to be generous. Hands down, whatever you think about this movement, it would be one day when a carpenter in Nazareth closed up his shop and became a rabbi and went from one person to another and offered a single opportunity to follow me. Very interesting. He was deliberately looking for followers. It's very strange. We live in a world where everybody wants to be a leader and nobody wants to be a follower. Jesus asked everybody to become a follower and didn't ask anybody to become a leader. I believe that there is a great need in our day to redefine that word follower. I think one of the problems is we have all kinds of stereotypes in our mind about leaders being strong and healthy and courageous, and followers being docile and compliant. And that is not at all what Jesus had in mind when he offered people the opportunity to follow him. This is from George McDonald, one of his sermons. He writes about how when Jesus asks us to follow him, you know, we learn by following. Uh when we're born into this world, the way that we become able to walk and talk and dress ourselves is that we follow the example of somebody else. We must follow first before we're able to initiate, before we were able to lead. And the kingdom is built on following. Here's what George MacDonald writes. At the same moment Jesus says, follow me, he is following the Father. His face is set homework, homeward. He will have us follow him because he is bent on the will of his father. And by the way, Jesus as a follower of his father is a person of fierce will. He is all for the Father, McDonald says. We must be all for the Father too. Otherwise, we are not following him. To follow him is to be learning of him, to think his thoughts, to use his judgments, to see things as he sees them, to feel things as he feels them, to be of the same heart, soul, and mind as he is, so that we also may be of the same mind with the Father. That is what it is to deny self and to follow him. I don't know what a leader is, but I know what a follower is if you take a look at it based on the New Testament. It is a fiercely committed, question-asking, mistake-making, risk-taking, growth-loving student, particularly student of Jesus, who is marked by peculiar persistence. That's a follower. And we are going to reclaim and redefine and redeem and recapture the grand adventure of being a follower. Two last thoughts. If you want to make a commitment to be a follower of Jesus, um, I was on a walk uh in the woods with one of my kids when they were quite young, and they really wanted to lead the way, but I kept getting out in front of them, and finally they just said, Dad, if you're gonna follow me, you gotta stay behind me. And that's kind of followership one-on-one. We all will follow someone. We all we follow causes, we follow values, we follow our hearts' devotions. Um to think that followership and leadership, as we often talk about it, are contrasted or opposites or two different groups is a badly misguided notion. If you're gonna follow Jesus, you gotta be behind him. You gotta move at his pace, you have to listen to what he says, and uh you have to do what he does. So today, today, as we're beginning this journey to follow and and we'll kind of deconstruct leadership along the way, there's an awful lot of toxic, ego, narcissistic stuff going around on the leadership front. Jesus had a lot to say to that. Nobody ever understood this stuff like Jesus did. Uh, today, if you want to follow Jesus, just do one thing because Jesus said to do it. You don't have to spend time asking yourself, do I believe? How much do I believe? Just ask, did I do a single thing because he said to do it, or did I abstain from anything because he said to abstain from it? Have I made a commitment today I will not judge? And then I see, or I will forgive someone, or I will do something kind to a person where I have been feeling hostile towards them. Have you given a moment of time or any of your money or possessions or skill in the service of somebody that asked you? Or spoken words of love to somebody simply because Jesus would want you to do it. Today, do one thing, because Jesus said to do it. Try following.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

In a world obsessed with leadership, this is a great teaching. Who are you gonna follow? Who are you following today? Who is your model? I love what John said. Jesus didn't ask anyone to be a leader, but he asked everyone to follow him. How will you follow Jesus today? At Become New, you can spend 10 minutes every single weekday with Dr. John Orper to receive a scripture for the day to hold in your heart and your mind throughout that day to get a fresh and grounding perspective and a practice that you can take with you into your day as you're becoming more like Jesus. I hope that you'll stick around. You can subscribe to this YouTube channel, follow on podcasts, or better yet, just text the word new to our number 51504, and we'll send you a text every time a new video comes out, completely for free, just to help you in your journey with Jesus. I'm Tim, I'm the channel host. I'm glad that you're here. Looking forward to next time.