Follow me as I follow Christ?

Sometimes in conversations, preachers often bring up the many references in Paul’s writings where he essentially tells Gentile Christians to imitate his examples. Here are some passages: 1 Corinthians 4:16, 11:1, Philippians 3:17 as well as 1 Thessalonians 1:6, and 2 Thessalonians 3:7, 9. Generally, those who want to defend the one-man-show churching practice read these passages to mean that Paul became a present, proximal example to those Gentile Christians like Jesus was an example to those who believed in him during his earthly ministry. The obvious deduction being that today’s preachers can be the Christ-figure example for the parishioners to imitate. This reading of Paul is quite problematic, and the deduction is quite dangerous. In all the passages above, Paul does encourage Gentile Christians to imitate his doctrines. Now, what can we say about the doctrines in question? They all emanate from the gospel of Jesus Christ that Paul claimed to have received by revelation and which he ran by the other Apostles in Jerusalem who believed earlier than he did to make sure that he had encountered the right Jesus.