The Critical Following Leader

Here I am at my 15^th Summer Camp at the Blue Horizon Lodge and Retreat (http://www.bluehorizonlodge.com) in Panama City Beach, Florida. The owner, Dirk Langlotz and I have long since become great friends. I have watched him get older, marry a wonderful new friend, have two kids and keep the family ministry going. This place is anointed.

For 15 years I have led people here, taught other people’s kids here, worked with leaders and just watched teams and youth groups. Every camp structure is pretty much the same. Teams of workers come with directors (what I call “top dog” leaders), support staff, emerging leaders and college type leaders. Top Dogs are those who either have their position because someone put them in charge, or they may actually know what they are doing.

Support staff are the shining stars of the Summer Camp leadership structure. These awesome leaders have either retired from Top Dog positions or have determined that they are not to be Top Dog leaders. Many of the leadership gurus indirectly put down people such as this by inferring that we all should strive to be Top Dogs. Those gurus are fools in my opinion because the Support Staff play the hardest and most critical role in the leadership orchestra – second fiddle (but more on that another day!) These leaders are so qualified that they could do the Top Dog’s job alone, but instead they help the Top Dog do his job.

The college type leaders are simple and easy. They know that they know nothing and are really just happy to help and be with the youth and share Jesus Christ and a smile.

Then there are the emerging leaders, or what I call – the Following Leaders. These Following Leaders are the most dangerous of all leadership groups. They have realized that they can learn to do the job of the Top Dog, and many of them aspire to that task. Since they are interested, they have great new ideas, but they also don’t know enough to know that many of their ideas are simply “reinventing the wheel” and don’t need to be tried again. They simply don’t have the battlefield experience to be trusted on their own and to trust themselves. They lack the scars and wounds of the Support Staff. These Following Leaders are exactly what they should be called – emerging leaders. More than anything they need to test their skills under the guidance of the experienced. They need to be humble and to listen more than they lead. They need to watch problem negotiation, resolution and see how experienced warriors don’t fall into the melodrama, overreaction, emotion versus logic, failure to think, quick to judge, “I know all the answers” errors.

Unfortunately, most splits in teams and most destruction of leadership units comes from this class of Following Leaders as they struggle with what are great new ideas, a growing set of skills and the flesh battle that we all have with the need to be in charge. Worse than the oppression and confusion of teamwork that happens to the kids and to the other leaders is the division that comes when these leaders shift from questioning, watching and learning to critiquing and disregarding.

Following leaders should be listened to and their questions answered. Time should be given to them. They bring the next generation of revisions and will if they survive be naturally selected to become the next generation of Support Staff and Top Dogs.

But following leaders should be very quiet, very humble and very respectful. They do not know, cannot do it all and when they become critical to those who are actively trying to lead the task, team and them – they derail ministry. The critical following leader is dangerous when he or she becomes the “leadership teenager” who knows it all and then rejects all those who are actually in charge for the “new advanced knowledge.”

Are you a Following Leader? Or are you a Following Critic? Do you question His rules or follow them?