Dr. James Emery White

A growing phenomenon within the ranks of churches, large and small (but mostly large), is the cult of personality.

What is a cult of personality?

It’s when a person becomes the center of attention rather than Christ; an individual looms larger than a mission; a figure is given more status than the organization itself.

Sometimes this “cult” is so egregious it’s hard to believe, such as reports from some churches that staff must rise when the pastor enters the room, aren’t allowed to look him in the eye, can never talk to him or engage him unless he takes the initiative, or must refer to him by title and never simply by his first name…

...all in the name of giving appropriate “honor.”

Puh-leeze.

Beyond such ridiculous antics, the greater dilemma is how many attenders of such churches would adamantly deny that a cult of personality is being intentionally fostered.  Too many allow being fans, and having enthusiasm about ministry, to cloud their judgment.

So consider the following ten signs, in no particular order, of a cult of personality at work in a local church:

1.       The demand for special treatment, special honor, special recognition.  In other words, there is an active cultivation of being treated differently than others.

2.       The website is focused on an individual.  A person’s quotes, their picture, their books, their activities, their blog, their…well, you get the picture.  It’s pretty clear who, not what, the “church” is about.  

3.       No one is allowed to question the leader without retribution.  There is a “thin skin” evident toward any and all critics, who are often written off as “haters” or simply those who are envious.  There is a bubble that prevents constructive criticism.

4.       If the leader were to leave, die, or fall into scandal, there is little doubt in anyone’s mind that the entire enterprise would collapse.  Those who flooded in via transfer growth to be part of the “next, next thing” would flood right back out, because the “next, next thing” was a personality, not a true mission or movement.

5.       The line between “look at what God is doing” and “look at what our leader is doing” is almost non-existent.  In other words, God isn’t getting the glory, an individual is.

6.       The name of the leader and the name of the church are inseparable.  The leader is as much of a brand – or even the brand - as the ministry.

7.       Image is paramount.  Clothes, camera angles, prepared one-liners, manipulation of media; the leader is presented, handled and then “performs” as a carefully handled celebrity.

8.       There is no sense of team leadership, team teaching or team mentality.  There is a single person or leader, and then there are implementers.  No one is to question the leader’s vision.  It is seen as God-given, sacrosanct, and thus anything the leader says or does in pursuit of that vision is never to be questioned.

9.       The person travels in an entourage, often with personal security, and is seldom accessible.

10.     Their speaking/teaching often revolves around themselves (there is even a name for it – “narcisgesis” instead of “exegesis”), and guest speakers feel compelled (and sometimes are compelled) to laud the leader as part of their presentation.

Some of you are scratching your head, saying “Really?  This exists?  People are actually engaged in ministry leadership like this?”

More than you might imagine, and yes, it’s repugnant.

Let’s state the obvious.  Christian pastors are servants, not rock stars.  They equip people for ministry as opposed to basking in the adulation of others watching them perform.

But even more pressing is that all glory and attention should be on making God famous, not a person.  Fame should not be cultivated in the name of “influence;” if anything, it should be feared in view of pride coming before a fall.

Finally, cults of personality can lead to heresy creep.  With a leader firmly entrenched in people’s minds as God’s superstar, there is little practice along the lines of the highly-commended Bereans.

Remember them?

Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. (Acts 17:11, NIV)

Here people were commended for checking out what an apostle, no less, had to say in view of the Old Testament scriptures.

Few cults of personality end well, and when they don’t, the wider church and Christianity itself suffers a black eye.  So let’s abandon any and all cults.  Not just the ones you’ve associated with Jim Jones, the Moonies or the Branch Davidians.

But the one you might be part of yourself, and unknowingly, even propagating.

James Emery White

 

Editor’s Note

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president. His newly released book is The Church in an Age of Crisis: 25 New Realities Facing Christianity (Baker Press). To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, log-on to www.churchandculture.org, where you can post your comments on this blog, view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world. Follow Dr. White on twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.

One city.

Three senior pastors of megachurches.

And in just a six month period, three moral failures.

Believe it or not, it just happened in Orlando, Florida.

Isaac Hunter, lead pastor of Summit church, resigned in December after admitting to an affair with a staff member.  Sam Hinn, pastor of The Gathering Place Worship Center, stepped down in January after admitting to a relationship with a member of the congregation.  Then, just a few weeks ago, David Loveless resigned from Discovery Church after admitting to having an affair.

Three megachurch pastors in a single city all resign within a six-month period for extramarital affairs.

Sorry, but “wow.”

The inevitable question?  “Why do so many senior leaders give in to sexual temptation?”  Because it’s not just these three but many more like them in cities around the country and around the world.

Here are three reasons that come to this fellow pastor’s mind:

1.       Emotional Depletion

Many pastors are running on empty emotional tanks.  You might have thought I would say “spiritual” tanks, but it’s the emotional fuel gauge that gets us.

A few years ago, my wife Susan and I were part of a mentoring retreat with about a dozen couples, all well-known leaders of large and thriving churches.  We started off with an open-ended question: “What are your key issues right now?”

As we went around the room, the recurring answer in each of their lives was “emotional survival.”  We shared our stories about the hits and hurts that come our way in ministry as occupational hazards, and how they tear away at our souls, sapping our enthusiasm, our creativity and our missional stamina.  We were open about how they leave us creating dreams of finding ourselves on a beach with a parasol in our drink - permanently.

The emotional hits and hurts that come from ministry are legion:  failed expectations, hard work, continual output in terms of teaching and leadership, always “on display” as a public figure, the stress of finances – both personally and in the church – the unexpected departure of staff, the pain of letters/emails that criticize your ministry, the pressure of people who want to redefine the vision, mission, or orientation of the church, the relentless torrent of expectations, and the agony of making mistakes.

But the heart of the drain is also our passion:  people.  We are shepherds, and to push the metaphor, sheep are messy.  Unruly.  Cantankerous.  Smelly.  They can be a chore to care for.  And they can hurt you more than you could imagine.  In particular, through the relational defections of those you trusted, and the crushing crises from those who throw you into crisis mode.

Why does this matter?

When you hurt, if you don't find something God-honoring to fill your tanks with, you'll find something that isn't God-honoring. Or at the very least, you’ll be vulnerable to something that isn’t.  I am convinced it’s why pastors struggle with not only pornography, but enter into affairs.

They are emotionally depleted, and therefore, vulnerable.

2.       The Lack of Sexual Fences

A second reason why so many give in to temptation is because few leaders build the sexual fences around their life that are necessary for protection.

For example, fences around their thought life in relation to such things as pornography through accountability software or computer placement.  Then there are the fences needed in terms of raw interaction with people, such as the need to:

Watch out how and when you are alone with someone of the opposite sex;

...watch how you touch people – being careful with your hugs and lingering touches;

...watch out how you interact with people – not visiting someone alone, at home, of the opposite sex;

...watch out for that long lunch alone together, or staying late and working together on the project.

This is just common sense, but very few build common-sense fences.

And here’s the last 5 percent:  even those with fences are tempted to rationalize taking them down when they find themselves attracted to someone.  Or their spouse does something (or doesn’t) that they can point to that they feel justifies them looking around at those that might act differently.  Suddenly we start looking at fences as for the weak, the immature, the unjustified; we tell ourselves we can handle it, or even deserve it.

It’s often the last moment before the fall.

3.       Spiritual Deception

The third reason so many pastors, particularly of large churches, fall prey to affairs is a deep infection of spiritual deception.

Why is our immune system so weak?

Let me tell you something that you may have never heard before:  Ministry is spiritually hazardous to your soul.  If you haven’t found that out by now, you will.

First, it is because you are constantly doing “spiritual” things, and it is easy to confuse those things with actually being spiritual.  For example, you are constantly in the Bible, studying it, in order to prepare a talk.  It’s easy to confuse this with reading and studying the Bible devotionally for your own soul.

You’re not.

You are praying – in services, during meetings, at pot lucks – and it is easy to think you are leading a life of personal, private prayer.

You’re not.

You are planning worship, leading worship, attending worship, and it is easy to believe you, yourself, are actually worshipping.

Chances are, you’re not.

When you are in ministry, it is easy to confuse doing things for God with spending time with God; to confuse activity with intimacy; to mistake the trappings of spirituality for being spiritual.

Another reason why ministry is hazardous to your soul is because you are constantly being put on a spiritual pedestal and treated as if you are the fourth member of the Trinity.  In truth, they have no idea whether you have spent any time alone with God in reflection and prayer over the last six weeks; they do not know what you are viewing online; they do not know whether you treat your wife with tenderness and dignity.

They just afford you a high level of spirituality. 

Here’s where it gets really toxic:  you can begin to bask in this spiritual adulation and start to believe your own press reports.  Soon the estimation of others about your spiritual life becomes your own.

This is why most train-wrecks in ministry are not as sudden and “out of the blue” as they seem.  Most leaders who end up in a moral ditch were veering off of the road for some time.  Their empty spiritual life simply became manifest, or caught up with them, or took its toll.

You can only run on empty for so long.

I had a defining moment on this in my life when I was around thirty-years old.  A well-known leader fell; one who had been a role model for my life.  I was devastated.  But more than that, I was scared.  If it could happen to him, then I was a pushover.

It didn’t help my anxieties that I was in a spiritual state exactly as I have described:  confusing doing things for God and time with God; accepting other’s estimation of my spiritual life in a way that made it easy to bypass a true assessment of where I stood; I was like a cut-flower that looked good on the outside, but would, in time, wilt dreadfully.

I remember so clearly the awareness that I could fall; that no one would ever own my spiritual life but me; and that I needed to realize that the public side of my life was meaningless - only the private side mattered.  This was not flowing from a position of strength; it was flowing from a deep awareness of weakness.

So the gun went off.

I began to rise early in the morning for prayer and to read the Bible.  I began to take monthly retreats to a bed-and-breakfast in the mountains for a more lengthy immersion in order to read devotional works, pray, experience silence and solitude, and to journal.  I entered into a two-year, intense mentoring relationship with a man who had many more years on me in terms of age, marriage and ministry.  There was more, but you get the idea:  I was going to be a public and private worshiper; I was going to be a student of the Bible for my talks and for my soul; I was going to pray for others to hear, and for an audience of one.

I hope you hear my heart on this.  It’s not to boast, it’s to confess.  I have to do these to survive.

Maybe you do, too.

Or maybe…you need to start.

James Emery White

 

Sources

“Discovery Church pastor resigns after admitting to affair,” Jeff Kunerth, Orlando Sentinel, May 6, 2013, read online. 

James Emery White, What They Didn’t Teach You In Seminary (Baker).

Editor’s Note

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president. His newly released book is The Church in an Age of Crisis: 25 New Realities Facing Christianity (Baker Press). To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, log-on to www.churchandculture.org, where you can post your comments on this blog, view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world. Follow Dr. White on twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.

Got your attention with the title, didn’t I?  At least, the attention of a number of you who consider it a hot topic.

The other day a man asked one of our bookstore staff whether I was “reformed.”  She assumed he meant whether I stood in the stream of the Protestant Reformation, but had heard rumblings of the word being tacitly associated with a specific tributary of the Reformation known as Calvinism.

So being a bit confused, she said, “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

Then pointing to a book by R.C. Sproul titled “Knowing Scripture” that we had displayed as a recommended text for our current series on the Bible, he said, “Well, if he likes Sproul, he must be.”

And then he walked away.

That was obviously simplistic, and also wrong.  You can like Sproul’s book on scripture, which is fairly agenda-free, and not appreciate his later works that are more agenda-laden in regard to Calvinism.

Further, it reveals how we want sound bite answers to significant issues.  There is little room for nuance, even when a simple “yes” or “no” can never suffice.  There’s a reason why theology is the queen of the sciences, and why certain issues have puzzled Christians for millennia.  But we still clamor for tweets instead of treatises, and blogs instead of books.

But the man in the bookstore seemed, to the young woman working there, interested in more than a “yes” or a “no.”  He seemed interested in placing me.  There are certain questions that we use to pigeonhole someone, usually theologically, in the Christian sub-culture.  We want to know where someone stands on these questions because we want to know not simply if we are like them, but:

1) If we are going to like them;

2) If we are going to trust them;

3) If we are going to keep reading/listening to them.

It brings to mind George Marsden’s old definition of an Evangelical as someone who likes Billy Graham, and a Fundamentalist as someone who likes Billy Graham but wants to fight about it.  Marsden was right; there was an entire era where the question, “What do you think of Billy Graham” was a defining question in the minds of millions.

But it’s what we do with people, once we’ve placed them, that disturbs me most.

Be honest – if you find out someone disagrees with you on something you deem critical, do you find it harder to embrace them relationally?  Do you tend to caricature their views and even demonize them personally?

When I was inaugurated as president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, I invited a friend of mine who was also head of a seminary to speak as part of the ceremonies.  A third president called him on the phone and asked why he was going to support the “enemy.”

Apparently I was the “enemy” because I had led the wrong kind of church, and was – in his estimation – on the wrong side of the “reformed” issue.

My seminary president friend told him exactly what he could do with his spirit.

But the “enemy” mentality is only too alive and well.

And it’s wrong.

And what we say to each other as a result, and feel toward each other as a result, is wrong.

Consider the “reformed” issue:

When Calvinists say that Arminians believe in universalism, or Arminians say that Calvinists reject evangelism, we are not being fair.  When one side or another lays claim to the term “Reformed”, as if the other is either Roman Catholic or against the Reformation ideals, we are not being accurate, as both flow from the Reformation.  When we condescendingly say that our position is simply the “gospel,” as if it’s not really a debate worth having, then we are being arrogant.  When we make our view the litmus test of orthodoxy, or even community, we are being neither gracious nor loving.  When we say that our view alone upholds God’s sovereignty, or that our perspective is the only one that cares about lost people, we are not being truthful.  When there is a “haughty smirkiness,” or we so stake our position that we divide churches, student ministry groups, or denominations, then we are sinning.

Clear enough?

I hope so.

So am I Reformed?

Am I charismatic?

Am I Baptist?

Am I a registered Republican?

Am I…

Sorry, they’re all too much for a single blog.  Maybe one day I’ll do a series on one or more. 

But I’m not in a hurry.

Because no matter how I answer, why have you stop liking me, stop trusting me, and stop reading this blog?

James Emery White

 

Sources

For more on the polarizations within evangelical Christianity, see James Emery White’s Christ Among the Dragons (InterVarsity Press).

Editor’s Note

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president. His newly released book is The Church in an Age of Crisis: 25 New Realities Facing Christianity (Baker Press). To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, log-on to www.churchandculture.org, where you can post your comments on this blog, view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world. Follow Dr. White on twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.

Barbara Streisand was recently asked “the question.”  You know it.  It’s been around for ages:

“If you could invite anyone, past or present, what six people would you invite for dinner?”

This was her list:  George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Edward Hopper (American realist painter), Gustav Klimt (Australian symbolist painter) and Fanny Brice (early 20 century singer/actress who Streisand portrayed in “Funny Girl”).

Who would you pick?

Let’s take the easy one, the incarnate Jesus, off the list.  We would all want Him for dinner, to be sure.  But then again, knowing how some of His dinner conversations went, maybe not.  But we’ll bracket Him off like we might the Bible for a list of best books.  He’s on a dinner list all His own.

Who else would we pick?

Let’s make it a little bit easier by breaking it down into two dinner parties – one for those who lived in the past, and one for those now alive.

I’ll go first.

Just so you know, these are not necessarily the ones I admire the most (though many of them I do), but the ones I would most like to talk with and see interact with others in conversation.  If I understand the exercise, that’s the point of the dinner list.

Also, I think I’ll omit those that I have had the privilege of already spending time with personally.  For me, that takes some off that I would have surely considered, such as the novelist P.D. James, the British evangelical leader John Stott, or the great evangelist Billy Graham.

So, for me…

From the past:  Though my short list included Emily Bronte, G.K. Chesterton, the biblical Esther, Corrie ten Boom, Walt Disney, Mother Teresa, Harry Houdini, Steve Jobs, Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan, my final selection for six historical dinner guests would be:  C.S. Lewis, Winston Churchill, Leonardo da Vinci, Abraham Lincoln, the Apostle Paul and Adolf Hitler (a horrible person of evil, I know, but would be fascinating to question).

From the present:  Again, my short list was filled with names such as Bono, Sean Connery, Tom Hanks, Michael Jordan, Jim Collins, Malcolm Gladwell, Hillary Clinton and Oprah, my final selection for six contemporary dinner guests would be: Stephen Colbert, Bruce Springsteen, Meryl Streep, Steven Spielberg, Paul McCartney and Tony Blair.

How about you?

So head over to the ChurchandCulture.org blog and “list” away, present and/or historical.

This ought to be fun.

(*We’ll try to compile the uber-list from the comments, meaning the top six historical, and top six current guests that most would want to have over, and send out via the C&C blog subscription list.)

James Emery White

 

Sources

“The 6 People Streisand Wants At Her Dinner Party,” April 21, 2013, The New York Times, read online.

Editor’s Note

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president. His newly released book is The Church in an Age of Crisis: 25 New Realities Facing Christianity (Baker Press). To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, log-on to www.churchandculture.org, where you can post your comments on this blog, view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world. Follow Dr. White on twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.