I Am a Follower: The Way, Truth and Life of Following Jesus
Leonard Sweet
Thomas Nelson, 2012, 240 pp., $15.99

Leonard Sweet diagnoses an important problem for Western Christianity in I Am a Follower: Many pastors have been so focused on being leaders of their churches they have forgotten to be followers of Jesus. Sweet masterfully diagnoses the problem by providing two simple facts: “1. Jesus is the Leader; 2. We are his followers” (p. 27). Many times in this new book, Sweet cuts right to the bone in laying bare the Western Church’s over-reliance on popular leadership techniques and our under-reliance on the Holy Spirit.

What keeps I Am a Follower from being a book I’d recommend to others are two things: First, Sweet narrowly defines leadership to be a Western-style, top-down approach commonly found in corporate America. If one were to get a picture of the American church by reading this book alone, one would gather that just nearly every church in our country was obsessed with attendance numbers and consumer research. Many of Sweet’s criticisms are really just easy, cheap shots against a straw man he has set up.

Second, Sweet offers no practical advice for how a pastor-shepherd ought to fulfill his or her duties. If leadership in our culture as we know it is not biblical, then what does it mean to be a pastor, teacher or prophet–all roles within the church that are found in the New Testament? In short, while I Am a Follower has flashes of prophetic brilliance (the chapter titled “From Knowledge to Spirit-Led” is a must-read), Sweet spends so much time being an iconoclast that he fails to offer a compelling solution to the problem he presents.
–Benjer McVeigh

Typical Leonard Sweet—which is a good thing. He challenges our conventional wisdom and our previous perspectives. Simply refusing to use leader for anyone but Jesus and utilizing first follower for those who are willing to join the dance of Jesus, he confronts our traditional approaches to leadership development and what’s appropriate in the church. Divided by the concept of Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life, Sweet leads the reader through a delightful journey down productive paths of thought.

At the end of each significant section of text there are numerous guides for discussion and further thought. One key strength of this section is the variety of approaches. There’s something here for nearly everyone to consider. This book is loaded, which is one of its inherent weaknesses.  There is so much packed into each section (usually only 3 to 4 pages), requiring thought and consideration, that the reader needs to build more thought time into the process than actual reading time. It also makes the discussion sections too remote. There is simply too much good material to consider by the time the reader comes to the end of the section to be able to remember and ponder it. As a leader of groups, you would want to consider which discussion guides you found most helpful and schedule discussions throughout instead of at the end of the major divisions of the book.

In some cases, Sweet goes off on tangents that are a bit hard to connect to the flow of thought. Occasionally, it appears he uses a text to stimulate ideas rather than because the text directly addresses the specific issue. The only other concern would be whether the main idea can be maintained realistically. First followers is a great choice of terminology, but in many ways it is just that, a vocabulary choice. They are still leaders in the church. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to follow Jesus. I would give it to any first follower in the church.
–Chuck Sackett

Leonard Sweet, in his book I Am a Follower: The Way, Truth and Life of Following Jesus, does an excellent job of challenging the status quo of leadership that is so prevelant in churches today. He asks all the right questions and gives compelling answers that bear consideration. The book is divided well, and the argument flows easily. This would be a good book for youth leaders as they consider what it means to lead through followship. This book addresses an urgent problem in the Western Church: Too many are following this world instead of following Jesus.
–Pastor Jeff Campbell, Bethany Baptist

As I read Leonard Sweet’s book  I Am a Follower, I was drawn in by the many images he used in his illustrations about being a follower. His illustrations made it easy to picture them in your mind as he told the stories of the follower. One example was the “follow the leader” game we all played as children, and his point was that without the first follower, there could not be a game.

As I continued through the pages of this book, I was challenged by the idea of being a first follower and being the person of influence over the new followers who would come later. For years, I have taught that the best leaders first have to be good followers. Sweet appears to support this premise in his book, but never actually calls followers to become leaders. We always are to be followers of Christ, who is our leader leading us to God. It is our role to be first followers of Christ bringing other people to be followers, as well.

As I read the book, I was drawn to the word follower as many are using that word these days, comparing being a Christ follower to being a Christian or being a follower and not a fan as another author has written. The title of the book minus the indefinite article “a” tells us our role–“I AM Follower.” Be encouraged and be challenged as you read Leonard Sweet’s latest on “the way, the truth and the life of following Jesus.”

As a youth leader, I could see using this with a small group. The group would have to commit to the time to read it, but the interaction would be great for the weekly (or bi-weekly) gatherings of your group. I would also use it as a motivational tool for the whole group, taking excerpts to challenge my teens to action.
–David L. Taylor Jr., 26-year youth ministry veteran, ordained deacon in the United Methodist Church

In certain ways, we in youth ministry tend to develop or lean toward a messiah-complex–trying to save teenagers for Christ. Leonard Sweet calls out the church to reassess its view of leadership and reclaim the biblical concept of followership. Though you may not agree with all of his conclusions, this work is a needed opportunity for youth workers (and church leadership in general) to wrestle with their concept of leading people to Jesus.
–Andrew Hedges

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