Host of the nationally syndicated The Line of Fireplace radio present.
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It is one of the strengths of our American culture that we know how to make everything bigger and better. It is one of the weaknesses of the American church that we apply this same mentality to our pastors and leaders. We know how to turn servants into superstars!
How foreign this is to the New Testament mindset, where being a top leader meant persecution more than popularity and rejection more than recognition. In the early church, as a senior leader, you were more likely to be executed than exalted. Today, ministry is the path to stardom and success. How did we fall so far?
It is one thing to have a platform that reaches millions. We can be thankful to God for that.
It is another thing to become a celebrity Christian.
It is one thing to pastor a massive mega-congregation. That is a sacred entrustment.
It is another thing to cultivate the adoration and adulation of your people as if you yourself were a superstar. Careful! God will not share His glory with another.
Superstar leaders thrive on admiration and find identity in their celebrity status.
They want to be seen and celebrated.
They consider themselves special, a cut above the rest.
Their image is carefully cultivated – first by themselves, then by their team – as the fawning crowds are reminded, “You are privileged to have such a man (or woman) of God in your midst!”
(The moment I finished the first draft of this article, I spotted this comment on YouTube, posted in response to a video on the identical topic of the tip of celeb Christianity: “Thanks for this, Dr. Brown! I visited a church that performed a five-minute video of church members talking glowingly of the pastor earlier than he got here out to provide his sermon. I used to be so shocked and disturbed. Might Lord Jesus get the glory!!”)
Famous person leaders usually journey with a big entourage, not as a result of all of the workers members are wanted for functions of safety or ministry service however as a result of the leaders are huge pictures, as untouchable as they’re unaccountable. Is that this not a blatant type of idolatry?
Who amongst us may stay Christlike and humble in a setting like that? And the way a lot simpler it’s to remain low if you end up thrown into jail after preaching relatively than hailed as God’s reward to the world and considered adoringly on huge video screens. Fame comes with a value.
As I write these phrases, although, I should not have a particular particular person in thoughts, apart from preaching initially to the person within the mirror. As an alternative, I’m talking a few mindset and tradition that produces celeb ministers. That is as unscriptural as it’s harmful. Within the phrases of Karla Dial, editor-in-chief of Stream.org, we had been made to provide worship, not obtain it.
As I wrote in 1991 in Whatever Happened to the Power of God, “Private ambition should be slaughtered on the altar. The famous person mentality of the ‘anointed elite’ should be violently nailed to the Cross. The one method up is down, and earlier than we will stand and converse in public we should lay prostrate on our faces in personal.”
Frank Bartleman, the pastor and journalist who helped unfold the phrase about Azusa Road, put it like this: “The very fact is when a person will get to the place the place he actually loves obscurity, the place he doesn’t care to evangelise, and the place he would relatively sit within the again [pew] than on the platform, then God can carry him up and use him, and never very a lot earlier than.”
In the present day, the thought of “loving obscurity” appears outdated and outmoded. As an alternative, self-promotion is the secret. “All eyes on me!” is the spirit of the age, and it has infested and contaminated the Physique.
The Scottish evangelist James Alexander Stewart as soon as stated, “I used to be as soon as advised that I might by no means be a extremely popular evangelist as a result of I didn’t sufficiently ‘promote my persona.’ Oh, the disgrace! Our enterprise is to enlarge the Christ of God and to not fling about our personalities. Dr. Herbert Lockyer, in mentioning the peril of man-worship in evangelism, says, ‘If a person is considerably enticing, blessed with a captivating persona and with energy to affect multitudes, that man is commonly wanted relatively than the Grasp.’”
What an insult that is to our Grasp, who is aware of how wretched we’re outdoors of His grace. And what a perversion of actuality. One of the best of us – probably the most anointed, probably the most gifted – are the servants of all, totally recognizing that He alone is every part and we in ourselves are nothing.
This doesn’t imply, in fact, that we must always disdain or denigrate godly leaders. On the contrary, we must always present honor to those that serve, because the Phrase encourages us to do (see, for instance, Romans 13:7; Hebrews 13:17). And by all means, we must always admire those that labor amongst us. I can inform you personally how a lot simpler it’s to minister in locations the place folks obtain you with open arms.
However by no means ought to believers exalt their non secular leaders. We’re flesh and blood like everybody else, fallen human beings who’ve been rescued and reworked by a tremendous Savior.
That is well-illustrated by the story advised concerning the donkey on whose again Jesus rode into Jerusalem. Because the animal got here again to the stalls, he was strolling with a little bit of a strut, inflicting the opposite donkeys to marvel what bought into him.
He stated, “Didn’t you hear all these folks shouting ‘Hosanna’ as I entered town?”
They replied to him, “They weren’t praising you. They had been praising the person in your again!”
Sufficient stated.
As for these of us who’re leaders or who affect giant numbers of individuals, allow us to guard our hearts rigorously, lest we crave the applause and recognition and lest we starvation after the prosperity and energy. As Jesus warned, “For all those that exalt themselves will likely be humbled, and those that humble themselves will likely be exalted” (Luke 14:11).
Maybe Paul may train us one thing right here too? He wrote, “Might I by no means boast besides within the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by means of which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).
In the present day, when the church of America is being shaken and the refiner’s fireplace is purging God’s folks, we should be taught to embrace the cross, placing to dying the yearning for celeb standing. And we should make each effort to level all eyes to the one One worthy of adoration and reward. Something lower than that’s non secular madness, if not non secular suicide.
If ever there was a time to get this proper it’s now, because the Lord Himself is saying, “Sufficient!”
God Almighty is purifying His bride, and which means the tip of celeb Christianity. Might it by no means rise once more!
