Read this. Yes, you. I need your help.

About a month ago I figured out that there's something wrong with leadwithtweets. Mainly because it really doesn't require anyone to do anything, and that's not really the point. Leaders are supposed to do things. But leadwithtweets has just become a collection of inspirational thoughts/quotes/verses that I post every day.

So I'm changing things around a bit, and I need your help.

I have lots of ideas for what I want to do with leadwithtweets. I could make them all fit together and make sense fairly easily. Or I could swallow a little pride and ask for some help, which is what I'm doing. It's astonishingly easy, too, since I'm normally the type to try to get everything perfect on my own.

leadwithtweets is about leading the followers you already have. One thing I've figured out over the past couple of months is that you can't figure out how to lead - really lead - without following Christ's example first. So I want to base the new 'format' for leadwithtweets on 1 Cor. 11:1. "Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ." I want this to become our motto; what we say to others both in words and actions.

But um...why? And how?
(Quick thanks to Sunny and Liberty for letting me bug them with these questions.)

Why should we as Christians follow Christ's example so closely that someone else can follow us? Why not just tell them to follow Christ Himself? What does it mean to follow Christ in the first place? How do we figure out how to follow Christ? How can it be done in an organized way that several types of teens can all understand and do? Say a group of teens wanted to make a difference starting with Twitter. How do they ultimately get others to join them? How do they make sure they're always following Christ's example well enough to set an example for others? How do they LEAD? How to they make people discontent with doing nothing? How do they call others to loving & following Jesus as much as they do? How do they convince people that following Christ is worth it? How do they convince people that leading 9 people is better than following everyone else in the world? How do they make it something worth getting involved in?

This would be a good place to end this post. Let you answer the questions now. But I don't want you to. Not yet.

Part of following Christ means studying and (the tricky part) applying His word. So I'm going to spend the week following Christ before I try to figure out how to lead others. I'm asking you to do the same.

Matthew 6:33
But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.

I've probably read Matthew 5, 6, and 7 about 4 times in the last week. It's Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. He covers pretty much everything that His followers need to do. It's good stuff. It's HARD stuff. Loving your enemies, not calling people names, not trying to get revenge, being persecuted in His name, etc. That's just chapter 5. Yep. It’s tough.

So that's the thing we're going to focus on: reading and applying it in normal everyday life. We'll start with Matthew 5 today - move on to 6 and 7, then maybe jump back to 5 or go ahead to 8. We'll see. I'll blog about the chapter we're on every day (if you have a blog, you can, too - or even just post something on Facebook or Twitter about it.) until Friday. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are open for you to answer the questions I asked above and send me your ideas. More on how to do that on Friday. For now, we’ll just follow Christ. At the end of the week, we’ll figure out how to tell others to follow us.