Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Leader Worship

As a new believer in the mid-to late 70's, I began to look to men and women in my church and watch how they followed Jesus. They were kind of like my training wheels, teaching me God's word, discipling me and modeling for me how to be husbands and wives, parents and employees. I needed to eventually take off the training wheels and fix my attention mainly on Jesus. Unfortunately, I took too long doing this and thus became at times disappointed and even disillusioned as I began seeing the flaws in these leaders -- and even some major moral failures in them.

Haven't you found that our human nature causes us to so easily attach ourselves to leaders, often to the point of unconsciously putting our trust in them rather than in God? I think that's why Paul was so strong in talking to the Corinthian church, which was suffering from the cancer of divisiveness and taking sides with various leaders. He reminds them of Who is to be the center of our trust:

Who is Apollos, and who is Paul, that we should be the cause of such quarrels? Why, we’re only servants. Through us God caused you to believe. My job was to plant the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God, not we, who made it grow.

God causes us to believe in Christ. And ultimately He is the one Who makes us grow in Christ.

I can see at least three problems with this tendency towards what I call "leader worship."

First, it sets up followers to eventually be disappointed. Sometimes in devastating ways. Several years ago I attended a weekend Christian writer's retreat. The conversation that stood out to me was with two women who had recently written a book about their pastor. And it was not a positive story. This dynamic preacher of a very large and growing congregation had a secret -- he was having multiple adulterous relationships with women in his church. When his sin was exposed, the congregation was deeply shaken. The book these women wrote described how this church slowly came back to life, which was a slow and painful process.

The second problem of putting leaders on a pedestal is that this places enormous pressure on the leader. I've heard far too many stories of pastors whom everyone looked up to and expected so much from them. Some churches with a heritage of a one pastor system have witnessed minister burnout or moral failures. They began to re-think leadership in light of the New Testament and discovered the wisdom of appointing elders so as to spread out the leadership of the congregation. I think this tendency towards leader worship makes it imperative for leaders to be vulnerable, confessional and to remind his or her followers to ultimately look to Jesus and not to them.

Third, and most importantly, our bent towards exalting human leaders takes our focus off of the living God. No matter how gifted our preacher or elder or women's leader may be, they all have feet of clay. Let's remind ourselves that any good thing coming out of a mutual follower of Christ is a result of the Holy Spirit at work in them. A good friend of mine is a tremendous teacher and leader. At times I've come up to him after he taught a class and thanked him for his great lesson. His response is always, "Well praise God." He never wants to take the credit but instead points me to the One who lives in him and enables him to teach so well.

We may be seed planters or water-ers, but there is only one Gardener. Oh, how I need this reminder so often. I want to be continually mindful of Jesus and worship Him for the good I see in others. And whenever I read a great Christian book, or hear a wonderful sermon or even witness the quiet work of one of His servants, I want my first response to not praise men. Rather, I want to give Jesus all the glory for how He works through frail, imperfect folks like you and me.

Jim


4 Comments:

At 4:46 PM, Blogger Susan Clark said...

Sobering thoughts. You give me much to ponder.

 
At 9:25 PM, Blogger Neva said...

What great thoughts--growing up in the church, I have often seen severe cases of "preacheritis" and also experienced all the damage it does.

Peace
Neva

 
At 3:37 PM, Blogger Serena Voss said...

Great post!

 
At 8:54 AM, Blogger Beverly said...

so true jim.

when i see people so excited about a film and study series by certain leaders and people think its this new thinking and everyone should go to her class and then defend her by saying now she isn't even with people she just holes up in her home and studies for hours and hours..well, really?

there's a line from a song that says "everyone needs a hero" and sometimes that gets all mixed up in religion too.

 

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