jordanabina
Feathers of the Phoenix | Copyright @jordanabina 2021
I have wondered what it would’ve been like to have been an Israelite standing at the base of Mt. Sinai, seeing the horrific display of power being demonstrated as the presence of God descended upon the top of that mountain. Exodus 20 captures the feelings of the people of Israel perfectly, it says they were afraid and trembled. I’ve been afraid, but I’m not sure I’ve ever trembled out of fear. And for the record, I don’t want to either. The people then go on to say something to Moses that has jumped out to me this last season. When Moses comes down to report what God has said and what God has done, the people give a response that has echoed throughout history and manifests itself even today.
“Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”
Exodus 20
We live in a society of idols, don’t we? We have an entire culture based around people we deem to be famous or have some reason to be glorified. From athletes, to actors, to the wealthy and beautiful, we have an entire economy based upon following and keeping up with these people. Just take a minute and think about how crazy that is. We pay people millions of dollars because they are good at a sport so we can watch them play it. We give out yearly honors and awards to people who pretend to be other people in movies and then give them a platform to speak into the way we should live our lives.
Our world is obsessed with celebrities and I’ve had to look at myself and how I’ve allowed this to take root in my own life as well. Who do I follow and why? What type of help, service, or emotional fix am I hoping to receive from these people who have no idea who I am? Our culture has taught us that those who are beautiful, wealthy, and successful are to be trusted. Our culture has taught us that people who are on the upper tier of economics are people who should make decisions for the rest of the world. Our culture has taught us that those who are crafty at speaking must be intelligent and good as well.
And it should come as no surprise that this has crept its way into the Church. When the Church isn’t salt and light in the culture in which it lives, the culture will begin to teach the Church how to be successful. The world will tell the Church how she should look on Instagram, how she should sound from the pulpit, and what her role is in society. It’s a game of mimicking. When the Church tries to mimic what the world is doing to be relevant, we are headed down a path to disaster. Another way that the world has gripped many churches is by shaping the way the pastor and leader ought to look and ought to be followed. And this, as the Church rises again, is a feather we must not allow to grow back.
Before I go further, let me say something upfront. It would be obvious to write and call out celebrity pastors, explaining to you what we already know about the dangers of living and acting like a famous person, while also living out a calling to shepherd people. These two, historically, don’t go well together. I’m sure even as I say those words your brain can start thinking about pastors who have fallen because of bad choices and moral failures. Unfortunately, the names on that list are getting longer.
You might recall the public fall of Carl Lentz from Hillsong Church. Carl Lentz was, as Vanity Fair reported, the “golden child” of Hillsong Church. As you had perhaps seen, Lentz experienced a wide range of success. The church he led in New York was filled with thousands of college-age people each week and Lentz was considered to be the pastor to celebrities. He ministered to stars like Kevin Durant, Selena Gomez, and probably his most famous connection, Justin and Haley Bieber. Those things all didn’t matter when it came out that he had been having an affair.
We’ve seen this happen far too many times, haven’t we? Pastor gets too big or too famous, they start making choices that put themselves in compromising situations and then get caught. It’s terrible. But what I think is one of the most overlooked parts about these stories and famous pastors is not the individual themselves, but the audience. You see whenever these leaders become stars and then fall, they seem to be the only ones ever held accountable. In many ways, that makes sense, doesn’t it? They made the choices, they had the failure, and they were the ones who messed up.
But what about the rest of us? What about all of us who made these people idols in the first place? What responsibility do we take in all of this? Was it not us looking to these people as demigods? Wasn’t it us who put these people in shoes that they could never fully fill? Wasn’t it us who placed them on a pedestal? Was it not us who swore by their books, their seminars, and their conferences? Where do we come in? Where do we, the Church, take responsibility for being the other half of this false idol equation?
This is the human tendency. John Calvin said, “man’s nature is a perpetual factory of idols…mind begets an idol, and the hand gives it birth.” From the beginning, we have struggled with turning from the creator and seeking to worship the created. Think about the statement made by the people of Israel back in Exodus 20. They see the glory of God being manifested but their initial response is to just have Moses commune with Him and relay the message. Moses from the beginning really didn’t want to be in this position, but here he found himself, and now the people would be speaking, listening, and taking direction specifically from him and not God.
This is no place for mankind to be. No human on earth will last as the mediator between us and God. No human on earth can be the voice that speaks for God in our lives. No human on earth was designed to do for us what God is made to do for us. We simply can’t handle it. Only Jesus himself could carry that weight.
But it goes two ways doesn’t it? Where are all the people from the Lentz saga coming out and saying, we glorified this man in a way that was sinful?
Are Lentz and everyone else responsible for the choices they make? Yes, one hundred percent. But with that, there has to be a gut check for all believers. Now has to be a time to take inventory and ask the question of ourselves, are we making idols out of pastors, leaders, and those in ministry? Because, while Lentz is responsible for his actions, he isn’t responsible for ours.
The truth is, we make idols out of our leaders. We look to them in the same way that the Israelite’s looked to Moses and when these people let us down or don’t do what we want, we leave them and move on to the next person. The Israelite’s literally went from oohs and ahhs at the bottom of a mountain to creating a golden calf to worship. We read this as craziness, but we are still doing the same thing today. When our focus is not on the Lord, but on the servant of the Lord, we are cultivating a faith that is based on the reliability of man and not God. As it turns out, man has proven to not be so reliable. The leadership that God has placed around us is given for a very specific purpose and it’s always meant to lead us closer to Jesus.
In the time of the New Testament church, there was a man named Apollos who was getting all kinds of attention. Listen to what Luke in Acts 18:24 records about him.
Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures.
Acts 18:24
Apollos was the type of guy who could capture people’s attention, he had an eloquence about him. In Acts 18:28 we learn that he was someone who could speak with boldness and charisma and challenged groups of people in public. He was trusted by Paul and watered the seeds that Paul had planted in Ephesus. He was a man who was gathering followers and people started to make Apollos their leader at the exclusion of Paul and Peter. Christians, people who say they loved Jesus, began to make Apollos more than what he was, and the result was division in the church. Listen to Paul address this in 1 Corinthians 3:1-4.
1 Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?
1 Corinthians 3:1-4
It’s not hard to pick up on the feelings Paul is sharing with these people, he’s frustrated. Who would’ve thought it would be so humbling to hear Paul address us as, mere human beings? To Paul, a real sign of immaturity and lack of readiness is seen in people who start fighting over who is the most popular spiritual teacher and leader. Paul says that if this is the type of lifestyle they lead then they are simply not ready to grow in Jesus, not ready to go deeper in their faith, and not ready to move forward at all. When we’re picking camps, choosing our favorite speakers, and focusing on the created and not the creator, we are practicing spiritual immaturity. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve fallen into this.
There was a pastor that I followed closely for years who was eventually driven out of his church for choices he made. I was heartbroken and confused. I had read all his books, attended his conferences, and had defended him to other people. I can relate with the Corinthians who attributed themselves to following Apollos and not some other minister. The Holy Spirit taught me something during that season that has caused me to shift in how I go about following anyone and has enabled me to keep tabs on my idolatrous heart. The Holy Spirit gave me this question to consider:
After reading or listening to this leader, is your desire to spend more time with me, or more time with them?
Boom. That is really what this is all about right? Do we want someone to give us the things of God so we don’t have to go to God ourselves or do we want ministers and leaders who will push us to a deeper love for Jesus? When it’s idolatry, it doesn’t bring us closer to Jesus, ever. Idolatry is always easier than being in connection with the living God, but it will never be as fruitful.
In a way, when we allow ourselves to be influenced by eloquent type leaders more than the Holy Spirit, we are reforming the golden calf all over again. We begin to worship the created instead of the creator. It’s one of the worst habits humans have and it’s time to be honest with ourselves about it.
We boost up men and women to be more than what they’re meant to be and then when they fail, we crucify them. Isn’t it terrible? We follow these people, buy their books, share their stuff on social media, but then when they get caught in sin, we run for the hills. We pretend like we weren’t their disciple and didn’t follow them, that just sucks. I think the devil wins even more when we do that to each other and it’s heartbreaking.
The truth is, all leaders and ministers need to have extreme accountability around themselves so that they can fight back against the idolization that can happen around them. But in addition to that, we as people need to take responsibility for idolizing them in the first place. Listen to Paul continue in 1 Corinthians 3:5-9.
5 What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. 6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. 7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. 9 For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.
1 Corinthians 3:5-9
There it is again, our focus. Paul is saying, who is Apollos and who is Paul? Meaning, what makes these guys important in the first place? What is the miracle, the planting or the growing? The growing is the miracle and that only happens by the Spirit of the living God. When people are called into ministry, and we all are in one way or another, we partner with the power of the living God to see the work be done. It’s a real danger to mimic and follow a man or a woman so closely that we end up missing the One who causes the growth, gives the favor and brings real life change. That’s why you hear the stories of people walking away from the faith when their leader has a moral failure. It’s because their lives and worship were wrapped up in a created being instead of the Creator himself.
As we move forward into the next season of Church history, the question on the table is will we be able to overcome the idolatrous yearnings of our hearts? Will we be able to celebrate the gifts and amazing talents of our ministers and leaders while also choosing not to allow our worship to be stifled by it? Will we begin to see that a culture that elevates a pastor, worship leader, or anyone Christian for that matter is taking its cues from the world and not from Jesus?
We are one. Jesus died so that we might be unified in Him, celebrating the gifts He has given and growing together in them. As Paul writes to the church in Corinth in a later chapter, he says “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” Each and every single one of us is a part of it, joined together to make up the body of Christ, to serve and love the world around us.
So where do we go from here and how do we get there?
Let’s start with a word of encouragement to our pastors and leaders. Thank you for all you do. Thank you for the time you put into preparing a message, walking with people, and guiding the flock. It is clear you’ve been gifted by God with eloquence and we are grateful to Him for it. Knowing that people have a tendency to love the created over the Creator, take time to remind your congregation that your goal is for them to see Jesus. Teach and employ your people to see that you are a servant, you deal with sin, and you are not the answer to their problems. Remind them that you are a human who needs Jesus and needs leadership and mentor-ship as well. As you remind people of this, I pray your ministry grows abundantly, and I pray you remind yourself as well.
Now to the rest of us, those who belong to churches and listen to leaders and ministers. Be reminded that our hearts are idol factories, that we love hearing what we love to hear, and we love people who make us feel good, but we know that that isn’t always for the best. We need to be praying for our leaders, praying for our pastors, but we also need to be more in love with the One we pray to and not the pastors we pray for.
If you and I are more anxious to hear the next best sermon over the next alone time with Jesus, it’s time to stop, drop to our knees, and repent. If we aren’t careful, we will find ourselves at the foot of the mountain of God, satisfied to let Moses speak to God for us. Jesus has done too much work for us to keep pursuing that type of relationship with Him. Jesus wants one on one with you. One on one with Jesus is more valuable than one on one with your pastor. Your pastor wants this for you more than anything, this is what your pastor prays throughout the week. That you would be filled with the Spirit and have a flourishing relationship with Jesus. Do not continue to worship the created, worship the Creator.
Let me end by saying I forgive those leaders who have fallen, and I repent for making them out to be more than I should. I pray that they would again find themselves serving in the body of Christ. I pray that their repentance would lead others to be real about where they’ve been and allow grace to flood the Church again. Father, help us to stop crucifying each other when we fail, teach us again to forgive, and to allow your Spirit to heal.
It isn’t about Apollos or Paul, it’s about Jesus.
Celebrity pastors are made by celebrity pastor fans.
It isn’t about Apollos or Paul, it’s about Jesus.
Let’s take responsibility for our idol-making hearts.
It isn’t about Apollos or Paul, it’s about Jesus.
Men plant the seeds, but Jesus causes the growth.
