I recently read this in an article by Mary Hulst. She wrote:

“Following isn’t a skill that most of us are encouraged to develop. If you want to learn how to lead, there are books and conferences galore. Workshops, classes, seminars, and videos abound on the topic of leadership. But what if your most important job is to follow? Not all of us are called to lead. But each of us—every last one of us—is called to follow.

And you know what? We don’t want to. That’s why there aren’t any conferences on following. Because no one wants to follow. That’s why it takes 13 weeks of 24/7 discipline to train a Marine. Following is not appealing. Following is doing what someone else wants you do to. If we are straight up honest, we don’t want to follow.

This, however, is Jesus’ first invitation: “Follow me.” It was the invitation of a rabbi to potential disciples. And not unlike Marine boot camp, a rabbi expected his disciples to follow him in the way he ate, slept, walked, prayed, and thought. A disciple was to follow his rabbi so closely that he would be covered in the dust of the rabbi. The disciples were supposed to imitate the life of the rabbi. This is why Jesus says in John 13, “Now that I, your Lord and Rabbi, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.”  Now that I . . . you also. That’s the essence of following.

While we don’t always want to follow Jesus, we know that we should. We should follow him. We should follow him in the way we deal with our anger, our money, and our sex lives. We should pray as Jesus taught us to pray. We should care for children as he cared for children.

Jesus is our Lord. So even if we don’t always want to follow and we don’t often follow very well, we do know that we should.”

Following the Master… That is our call. In following we learn to serve and lay our lives down for each other. In serving perhaps we truly learn to lead. What is better than a servant leader?

How can you enrich the lives of your co-workers this week?