The Prologue

Welcome to week 1~ prologue.

Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23

    Today Pastor Adrian asked an important question of the congregation; Why are you here?  It honestly didn’t occur to me that I should have to answer ‘why’ I was at church this morning.

I think another good question should be- why are we doing this study?

That leads to the question asked by Kyle Idleman in his book—are you a fan or a follower?

Are those easy questions?  The first one is, for me.  I know why I went to church this morning.  I went for Him.  I’ve found that I really want to be closer to God.  I want to eat, breathe, and exist for Him.  I just have a problem doing it all of the time.  I know I am weak.  So I go to church to study His word.  It helps me get through another week.

The second question was harder for me to answer.  When Pastor Adrian announced that he’d like the entire congregation to somehow take part in the study I tried to find a study group that fit my inane schedule. There wasn’t one.  So I asked Adrian if he thought some of the group leaders would be willing to e-mail with me so I could still take part in a study.

    Then I prayed about it... and it hit me. If I was having this scheduling conflict—someone else in the church was probably having the same issue.  I kept praying because I didn’t like what the Lord was saying to me… “Heather, you’ve studied Servant Leadership... you could and should lead a group”.  I had so many excuses as to why I should let others do it. But as I’ve learned (usually the hard way), you cannot run from God.  So here I am ‘hosting and leading’ an online study.

It’s not that I really didn’t want to lead... I just feel so ill-prepared.  I feel like it’s something a ‘better’ Christian should be doing.

That leads me to the third question: Are you a fan or a follower.  This one was really hard to answer.  I so badly want to be a follower… but there are so very many ways that I fall short...and into fandom.  I wonder, is that because it’s so comfortable to be a part of the crowd?  I know that as I age I am finding it easier and easier to care less about what others think of me.  It’s a lot easier to wear my religion on my sleeve, so to speak.  I am quite happy with someone calling me a ‘Jesus freak’.  I think where I fall into fandom is when I try to (as Pastor Adrian said today) customize my Christianity. I actually hear these words coming out of my mouth: “I know it’s not very Christian of me... but...”

Not only is this fandom, it’s just wrong.

In the prologue of Not a Fan,  Idleman mentions that so many of those following Jesus turned back when they realized he was going to stop feeding them.  That made me wonder—do we really use Jesus as our meal-ticket?  When we do work for others- do we expect something in return?  Do we tithe so that we get something in return?

I know I’ve found myself praying for something I want or need far more times that I’ve prayed to say ‘thank you’.

Have you ever fallen into this cycle?

Idleman warns us that this book will make us uncomfortable.  Well, he followed through on that for me.  He immediately rubbed my fur the wrong way, so to speak.