From the first days of Christianity, we read that our churches were never supposed to revolve around one person. That’s because even the people we idolize as our models of faithfulness knew their own weaknesses all too well.
Paul gave us the metaphor of the body because he knew his own weaknesses and failings. He’d attacked the church. He’d underestimated the value of John Mark and failed to show grace—he even split with Barnabas because of it.
Paul, the super duper church planter, church leader extraordinaire, emphasized how badly we need each other because he couldn’t imagine things working any other way. He planted churches and moved on, appointing elders on the fly.
Those churches weren’t about Paul. In fact, he criticized anyone who elevated an apostle or leader above any other. He mocked the “super-apostles” and the ways Christians formed camps under their favorite teachers.
It’s not that we can’t have large churches or subscribe to particular denominations or theologies. Far be it from me to tell anyone how to run a ministry or what to believe. Our central issue isn’t necessarily size or what we believe—although those could become issues. Rather, our central issue is the way one leader rises above the rest as the main attraction for Sunday services in a growing number of American churches. A single leader becomes the draw, and once that leader messes up, everything falls to pieces. I’ve seen it happen up close and from far away.
Some churches can weather that storm, while others can’t. Whether or not the “organization” survives, we’re missing the point if our analysis only averages out church survival rates after a celebrity leader fails. The main problem is that people begin to rely on the celebrity leader, and it can be devastating to watch a high and mighty Christian leader fall if you’ve relied on that single person to guide your spiritual growth and to model what it means to follow Jesus.
Following Jesus becomes a brand of sorts that revolves around what that leader models and tells us to do. When that leader reveals himself (and it’s most often a guy by the way) as a fraud or failure, the people in the churches may go into a tailspin.
So here’s a little test to discern whether your church has a celebrity pastor problem:
When you tell someone about your church, do you talk about one person or do you talk about a lot of different people and ministries?
In other words, are people being drawn to community with a variety of callings and gifts or are people drawn to a particular person?
Growth is not always a sign of health. Growth centered on a personality rather than a body is fragile, puts too much pressure on one person, and could fall apart with one bad decision or a series of bad decisions over the years.
There will always be prominent leaders in our churches who guide, teach and, most importantly, serve. We should expect them to be more noticeable than other members of our congregations. That’s how a “body” works. However, once a single leader becomes the main draw or “brand” of our church meetings, we’ve set ourselves up for a potential disaster and placed all of our stability on one person’s shoulders. Perhaps we should be surprised there aren’t more fallen leaders than we already have!
We are a body of believers that is intended to work together, to bear burdens and to do the work of ministry. Bound together by our mutual service and love for one another, we’ll form stronger congregations than any single celebrity pastor, but we’ll only get there if we agree that this burden of service, and sometimes leadership, is also ours to bear.
