This week, the Evangelical Christian Publisher’s Association (ECPA) opened its 2010 Executive Leadership Summit with a wonderful keynote address by Dr. Len Sweet, E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew University, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at George Fox University.

Dr. Sweet started his discussion by sharing that our children’s generation is really the TGIF generation. And no, this is not the acronym that you think it is. Instead, TGIF stands for Texting-Google-iPhone-Facebook generation. This generation is the future, and as much as we think of them as a 21^st century generation, Sweet argues that they and the Church are really about influencing the 22^nd century. Most young people under fifteen actually might have a life expectancy to carry them into the 22^nd century, and thus carry significant influence to the Church after 2100. These are the future leaders.

Dr. Sweet went on to mention that more than 50,000 leadership books are published every year and yet each year, there is an increasing gulf between leadership and results. Just look at the leadership meltdown on Wall Street in the past twenty-four months for proof that for all the content and discussion and teaching, there is a vacuum of true leadership.

Instead, Dr. Sweet points to Scripture, and the fact that leadership is maybe only referenced one time in the New Testament, while the art of following (or discipleship) is mentioned dozens of times. Could the true secret of leadership be the art of being the first to step out and follow a new idea or person who has been brave enough to be the first off the bench? Take a look at the attached video and see a humorous example of the affect that ‘leadership’ has when it is coupled by followers, both the initial adopters and then as more and more follow and create a movement.

At a recent TED conference, one of the presenters picked apart this video and explained that the leader was someone who wasn’t afraid to stand out, even to the point of looking foolish, but then embraced the first follower as an equal. The first follower was as much a leader when he risked ridicule and joined the dancing naked man in his dance event. The leader helped him ‘learn’ and then treated him like an equal, which encouraged the first follower to encourage his friends to join the movement. When the third person joined the dance crusade, it became a noteworthy event, and people judged the event worthwhile and the followers multiplied very quickly.

Certainly, the first leader was important, but maybe as important according to Sweet, were the early followers, for they really gave the event the momentum to become a movement.

In the same way, in order to become leaders, we are to become followers just as Paul became a follower of Christ. We look at Paul as a great leader, when in fact, he calls himself a disciple, a follower of the one who came before, and thus helped create a movement that launched the Church.

The power of a movement might be a combination of the leader who invests in the vision, and the first followers who risk much to legitimize the movement.

Is this how you define leadership?

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