Easter Sunday fan-to-follower sermon urges 'honest' reevaluation

What began as a personal journey for author and pastor Kyle Idleman became a widespread movement. Born of Idleman's own need to get serious with God, Not a Fan. Becoming a Completely Committed Follower of Jesus confronts readers with Jesus's call to a life of obedience.

The teaching pastor at the fifth largest church in America—Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Ky.—Idleman found himself at a loss for what to preach to his congregation and all the visitors who were coming to Easter Sunday services three years ago. 

"I opened up the Bible and I started looking at some of the passages of Scripture where Jesus would have his Easter-type crowds and the most popular times in His ministry when the large crowds gathered," he said. "What I discovered was very much convicting for me and changed, in large part, my approach to preaching and teaching and ministry."

What he discovered was that when Jesus taught the masses, He often didn't deliver a message that was comfortable. "It was very challenging and motivated the people not necessarily to come back, but oftentimes to leave—to go home," he said. 

Looking at his own life through that lens, the pastor began to consider the possibility that he was more of a fan of Jesus than a true follower. 

"A fan is this idea of an enthusiastic admirer—someone who cheers for Jesus when the season is going well, and when things are good, they root for Him, but when things are rough or when life is hard, they grow more distant," Idleman said. "I started writing down, as I studied through the Gospels, the different descriptions of a follower of Christ.

"I had to be honest enough with myself to say, 'I'm not sacrificing a lot. I say I'm a follower of Jesus, but there's a lot of things Jesus did that I don't do, a lot of people He talked to that are not the types of people that I talk to.' I wanted to reexamine, as honestly as I could, my relationship with Jesus based on how He describes a follower in the Gospels." 

Having grown up the son of a pastor, Idleman walked forward one day after hearing his father offer an invitation to surrender all to Christ. 

"I loved Jesus with all of my heart, but what I discovered as I grew older is that although I loved Christ, I began to hold certain things back," he admitted. "There were certain areas of my life that I had not surrendered to Him, or as they came up, I shared them with Him, but I was still the one clearly in control and calling the shots."

In the process of renewal, he was reminded that Jesus called His followers to die to themselves—the ultimate surrender. "I began to pray a daily prayer that reflected the decision I had made as a child that I never really understood," he said. "I would pray daily and still do, 'Today, God, I surrender all that I have to you. Everything I have, all that I am is yours. Today I want to die to myself.' "

Along with a revival his church experienced in hearing the "Not a Fan" message, more than 20,000 people from 16 countries have declared on Facebook: "I don't just want to be a fan of Jesus anymore." 

Idleman acknowledged that the call to follow Jesus is not new, but said: "I really believe there's something about this language—something about packaging it in this way—that opens the eyes of today's culture to understand not just what it means to really follow Jesus, but understand what so many of us who call ourselves Christians have settled for. Then we compare what we've settled for to what Jesus really wants, and change comes about." 

With the online movement growing, the book was recently featured on Rick Warren's Pastors.com Web site and has been endorsed by leaders such as Max Lucado and Mike Huckabee. The message has also spawned a small group discipleship study on DVD from City on a Hill Productions.

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