Who Do You Follow?

Orly Gunderson walked into the classroom that first day of school and glanced around the room, sizing up his Junior shop class.

Sitting around the large U-shaped table, we in turn sized him up. What was this guy like? Was he going to be strict or lenient, personable or distant, reasonable or unreasonable? The bottom line was, “Were we going to like this guy?”

Orley had a strong Norwegian accent. I could just imagine the wheels turning in young brains around the table. Inside their young minds, I was quite sure several of them were already imitating his accent, dreaming of ways to be funny and get laughs from their classmates.

We were a bit scared of Orly in the beginning, I think. One thing was for sure. He was a pretty macho guy with a strong build and dark, good looks. But as time went on, we wore him down around the edges. We learned that his bark was a lot worse than his bite.

He was a far cry from perfect, we also learned. He had his faults, the worst being that he was extremely impulsive and sometimes he made the same mistake over and over again. When teaching us to weld, he would perform the weld and then try to pick up the hot metal with his fingers, immediately dropping it again and blowing on the fresh burn he inflicted on himself. The crazy thing was that ten minutes later he would, I guess forget and do the same thing again.

Well, as we wore away at Orly’s edges, we found that he was a really likable guy, a good teacher, and he didn’t let all of our cutting up nullify his effective teaching.

There was on thing, though, that he said over and over to us. Realizing, I guess, that he repeatedly made poor decisions due to his impulsive nature, he would say, “Do as I say, not as I do.” He said it a lot.

And there was another thing he said all the time, whenever he thought we were fudging on our projects and lollygagging around the premises. He would say, “How many of youse guise have notting to do? ( How many of you’s guys have nothing to do?)”

Of course, several cut-ups in the class began to mimic him, complete with the Norwegian accent, whenever he was out of earshot. Then they began testing the waters and said it to each other in the classroom in front of him.

“Dale, you have notting to do?”

“Mike, you have notting to do?”

The banter would go back and forth until he would say to all of us, “All right, youse guise! Knock it off!”

Well, to this day, even though we antagonized him, I have a great deal of respect for Orly Gunderson, a really solid guy who genuinely cared about us and was a good teacher.

But there is one thing about his famous saying, “Do as I say and not as I do.” For the most part it doesn’t work.

Perhaps the best way I can illustrate this fact is by referring to an experience I had in the Army while serving at Fort Hood, Texas. At the time I was a chaplain’s assistant. Word got around the base of my talent in playing the guitar and singing. I had also just released my first album, A Brand New Song, and nine of the ten songs were originals that I had written. My chaplain promptly assigned me to lead worship in the services and I began getting numerous requests to sing in churches and events both on and off the base. Another chaplain befriended me and invited me to his house. We became good friends.

Chaplain Sparling and his wife, Carol, had three young children between the ages of six and ten. The family became my second family and I would find myself at their home a couple times a week. I was impressed with their children and on one occasion I complimented the chaplain on his great kids.

HIs reply really said it all. “You can tell them a lot of things,” he said, “but they learn what is important by watching you.”

The best way children learn is by watching you. The same principal applies in any mentor and learner relationship. I might explain to my son how to fall a tree and get it to land precisely where I want it, but if he can watch me actually do it, then he really gets it.

Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of h imself, but what He sees the Father do: for whatever He dows the Son also does in like manner.”

John 5:19 NKJV

My pastor of 25 years talked a lot to me about the importance of prayer, but when I began showing up in the sanctuary at six in the morning and watching him pray for two hours, that made a deep impression on me.

“Actions speak louder than words.” “The saying is entirely true.

The idea of mentoring is a big thing in the church today. Older, wiser Christians are pared with new Christians or younger Christians and the older teaches the younger. It is a function vitally needed in the church if we are going to mature and be able to win unbelievers to Christ.

But as I read scripture and observe natural activities of the body of Christ, I have realized there is another way mentoring develops. It develops without any initiative on the part of the mentor or leader. A mentor and leader are the same thing, or if they are not the same thing, they are certainly close cousins.

This is how it happens. A new Christian wants to grow in his or her faith, so he or she looks for someone they respect or admire and approaches them.

Many questions follow and if the mentor is not too busy or not too irked with the questions thrown at him, he answers the younger Christian’s questions, and voila!

A leader/follower relationship is born.

In the case of my pastor, Pastor Denyes, I began going to his office, sitting with him and asking him questions. Later, when he appointed me an elder, I would ask him to lunch once a month. In the process, I learned a ton. To this day I owed him a great debt.

Now, what I have been describing can be capsulated in the definition of a leader that God gave me one day.

You become a leader when people want what you have and follow you to get it.

That is how a mentoring relationship develops without you, the leader taking any initiative to set it up. It just happens. I think this kind of relationship happened many times in the Bible and I see it happening in life today. If your life is such that others are attracted to your character, you may attract some people who want to follow and learn from you.

Just recently I was able to connect with Bob, who I had lost track of for about 15 years. We had some long conversations on the phone (he is in Florida) and have been catching up. When I was in the video business, I hired Bob to shoot and light video. I was a producer. We became good friends and Bob was a new Christian at the time.

So out of the blue, Bob made a comment to me, that really floored me because I had no idea . . .

“You are my hero. I could never live the way you live, just wildly obeying the Lord and taking the risks that you do. I am what I am today because of you.”

What is the conclusion? People desperately need role models. They need someone they can admire and want to follow.

My challenge to you is this: Live the kind of life that people will want what you have and follow you to get it.

Photo designed and taken by Lorraine