Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman

Week 11: Chapter 10 — Follow Me Into the Mess (Love People, Starting with the Ones in Front of You)

Read Chapter 10 of Not a Fan. Key passages: Luke 10:25–37 (the Good Samaritan); John 13:34–35.

Following Jesus is not just a vertical relationship with God — it is a horizontal call to love people, inconveniently and without condition, especially the ones we would rather walk past.

Discussion Questions

7 questions

1.Idleman argues that fans love humanity in the abstract but struggle to love actual, specific, messy people. Can you relate to that? What kind of person do you find it easiest to love in theory but hardest to love in practice?

2.He uses the parable of the Good Samaritan as a picture of the kind of love Jesus demands — inconvenient, costly, and directed at people we would prefer to classify as "not our problem." Who is the person in your neighborhood, workplace, or family who is currently lying in the road in front of you?

3.Idleman points out that both the priest and the Levite in the parable were religious professionals — they had good reasons (by their religious law) to keep their distance. How does religious busyness or religious scrupulosity sometimes function as a cover for failing to love our neighbors?

a.Have you ever used spiritual activity — serving at church, attending a study, completing a reading plan — as a way to feel faithful while avoiding a specific costly act of love for a real person?

b.What does that reveal about how we can use religion as insulation rather than as fuel for love?

4.Idleman uses the phrase "follow me into the mess" to describe Jesus' pattern of ministry — he consistently moved toward the unclean, the outcast, and the socially inconvenient. Who are the "messy" people in your community that you tend to avoid? What would it look like to move toward them instead?

5.Jesus tells the expert in the law to "go and do likewise" — not "go and feel likewise." How does Idleman's emphasis on action rather than sentiment challenge our tendency to confuse compassion with pity?

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Closing Prayer

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Jesus, you crossed the greatest possible distance to get to us — you left glory and entered our mess, our brokenness, our sin, our death. And yet we cross the street to avoid the inconvenient people in our path. Forgive us for our selective love, our abstract compassion, and our religious busyness that gives us an excuse to walk past. Give us eyes to see the person in the road in front of us and the courage to stop, to stoop down, and to love them the way you have loved us — at whatever cost. Amen.

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