The last two weekends I’ve invited high school girls from our group to come over to hang out and watch a movie with me at our place. It’s such a great time to connect and just talk about life, ask questions and look at picture albums we have. On Friday before girls came over I looked at all our movies and said, “Hm…What movie should watch with the girls?” Tyler pipped up with an idea, “How about Peter Pan, Mommy?”

This morning during Bobby’s sermon I thought of how much Tyler likes Peter Pan, especially the part where John leads all the children into the woods and they sing “We’re following the leader, the leader, the leader. We’re following the leader wherever he may go.”

Bobby taught Titus 1:1-9 about the qualifications of leaders in the church. Pastors are held to high standards and they must continually work hard to teach God’s Word correctly. But what stood out to me the most was a cross-reference we turned to.

Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.

Hebrews 13:7

To be a Christian is to be a follower. In Luke 9, Jesus instructs us how to follow Him. In 1 Corinthians 11:1 Paul tells us to follow him as he followed Christ. Many times in the New Testament we are given an example and then commanded to imitate or follow what we’ve seen. We are to follow the example of Christ in all things and one way we can do this is by following the examples of other followers of Christ.

Hebrews shows us that our Pastors are some of the main people that you and I should be following. They are required to live up to the standard of blamelessness (Titus 1:6) so we should be able to watch and learn from them as we do what they do and teach us to do.

Not only do we need to be following godly examples before us, but we need to be leaving an example to be followed. My husband often talks about ministry as a 4-person relay race.

And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.

2 Timothy 2:2

This is a great dynamic where each person is passing on to the next what they have learned and their example of following Christ. Here are the parts of the passage broken down:

#1 - “Me” is your Pastor.
#2 - “You” is you!
#3 - “Reliable men” is someone that you disciple, passing on what you have learned.
#4 - “Others” is the people that they pass on to what you have taught them.

Consider these questions to see how you are doing with Christ’s example: Do you have a pastor who is qualified? Do you follow him? Who are other godly examples that you follow? Who follows you? Are you challenging them to reach out to others?

We need to make sure we’re following the Leader and those He’s given us to follow.