1. The most celebrated and notoriously successful models of recent decades – Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, and John Maxwell, for example – became successful through bold innovation and creative synthesis, not through unthinking imitation. Thus we can imitate their product, but in so doing, violate the very process that made them successful. 2. The successful models became successful by trying new ideas that were too radical to be popular. Wait until a model is popular enough to imitate and you’re almost sure to be too late. Tomorrow’s successes are more likely to be considered radical and unpopular today.

3. The truly successful models earned their success the old-fashioned way – through pain, tears, endurance, mistakes, and prayer. (The leaders I have mentioned have done us a wonderful service by being refreshingly honest about their struggles.) In the process, they developed the very character that made them worthy from God’s perspective (I imagine) to be entrusted with something as dangerous, potentially destructive, and burdensome as success. Some of us imitators may be looking for a shortcut – which, as you can see, is not too good an indicator of future success.

4. These “successful models,” then, shouldn’t really be seen as models at all, not of the pretty-face-on-TV type or of the plastic-and-glue type. Instead, they should be seen as real people who have stuck to their dreams and integrity through sweat and tears, have grown up, and have surprised themselves as much as anyone else by their success. For them, remember, success was a risk, an untried dream, not somebody else’s formula for success. If you imitate them as successful models, whatever kind of success you get probably won’t be the kind they got. The writer to the Hebrews didn’t say, “Consider your leaders and imitate their hair styles, speech patterns, and gestures..” He said, “Imitate their faith.” (Hebrews 13:7)

Excerpted from The Church on the Other Side by Brian McLaren, 111-112