If Your Leader Defects, Stop Sending Him Money
Over the years, I have seen Christian leaders and pastors defect from the faith. Sometimes they run off with the secretary. That’s probably the most common reason.
Sometimes they are major leaders. They get a lot of media attention. The secular media love to post stories about the fall of some conservative Christian leader who has turned out to be a massive hypocrite when it comes to sex. Basically, while the stories are not a dime a dozen, you can probably buy a dozen of them for about $10.
Others get caught in some other sort of scandal.
A few switch their theologies after detailed study. This may be the result of a search for meaning. They lose their faith. But these cases are rare.
Others seek greener pastures career-wise. This is more common than you may think.
Most of them are not famous, but they have followings. They are leaders on a small scale. They become known for a particular position, and then they lose faith in the position. They drift away.
Sometimes they attempt to take some of their followers with them. They write some kind of a manifesto about how they used to hold a particular position, but now they no longer do.
I think people should be allowed to change their minds. It’s best to change your mind because of intellectual reasons, not because of a dalliance with your secretary.
WHEN A LEADER SWITCHES SIDES
Every movement has stories like this. Hard-core people may become softcore, or they may flip entirely. In the early 1960's, Garry Wills was an up-and-coming young leader in Catholic lay opinion. He was a classical scholar. He wrote for the National Review. But the Vietnam War and Vatican II radicalized him. He flipped completely. At that point, he began to get famous. Liberal media began to run his articles and publish his books. He had been a minor media figure prior to his flip. After his flip, he became a familiar figure in the liberal media. He still is.
Wills is an excellent scholar. He is also an excellent writer. I don’t blame the liberal media for picking him up. But his transition was almost overnight.
What interests me more are the stories of people who begin to make the transition in their lives early. These long-term transitions are almost invariably from a conservative position to a liberal position. There are lots of cases of liberals who “get religion,” but they usually get it overnight. They don’t get it over a 20-year period.
A MUSH-MOUTHED MANIFESTO
I’m now going to give an example of a minor figure who is representative of spiritual transition among leaders. I’ve been on his mailing list for about a year. He positions himself as an expert in Christian leadership, specifically pastoral leadership. When I went to his website, I found that his Alexa ranking is about 5.7 million. That is to say, he is invisible. If he has a following, it is a small following.
He used to be a megachurch pastor. He quit in 2014. Now he finds jobs for pastors who want more money and a larger church.
I’m not going to give you his name. He is using his email to promote his forthcoming book, and I have no interest in promoting his book.
He began with the words that often announce a defection: “I’ve been on a journey trying to figure out what I am.” A pastor in his fifties who has not figured out who he is should be content with staying in the back of the pack. He has been a pastor. If you find a pastor like this, either don’t join the church or transfer out of it.
He begins to sketch his background. He has been adrift for a long time. He adopts new theologies after they become fashionable. He drops them when they become unfashionable.
I’m definitely no longer a fundamentalist. I grew up on a steady diet of sermon recordings by Curtis Hutson, Jerry Falwell, and John R. Rice. They all claimed to hold to the fundamentals of the Bible and preached strongly against “heretics” who taught otherwise. Churches would use the “fundamentalist” label on their street signs, which was a secret signal to the faithful that “we are right” and others are not. Oh, if it were all so black and white.
That was just the beginning.
Then I became an evangelical, which was kind of like a grace-filled version of a conservative Christian. That worked for a while, until the “evangelical” took the place of the “fundamentalist” and became known more for what they stood against than what they stood for. In a poll sponsored by Gallup, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons found that most people view evangelical Christians as hypocritical, too focused on getting converts, homophobic, sheltered, too political, and judgmental. And why would I want to be branded as such?
Since most people have had an unfavorable view of Christianity since the days of Jesus, I am surprised that he was surprised that this has not changed. Clearly, he never understood his New Testament.
He was making his decision about what to believe based on public opinion polls. Never follow a leader who makes his decisions about his life’s commitment on the basis of public opinion polls.
In high school I worked as a volunteer for the Ronald Reagan campaign of 1984 and became a vocal member of the Moral Majority. In those days, it was popular to be conservative, Republican, evangelical, and Christian. In fact, in many ways, those terms were all used interchangeably. Today? I think those terms hurt more than they help.
Clearly, he was a movement joiner. He made his decisions about what to believe in terms of what was popular.
In some ways, I’m a political conservative. But when I hear the vitriolic, hateful fighting on TV, I want to stay as far away from the “conservative” label as possible.In other ways, I’m a liberal. But if you believe what you hear in some circles, liberals are all going to hell because they hate families and America and Israel—so I don’t want that label either.
There is a famous New Testament passage on people like this man.
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth (Revelation 3:15–16).
He seeks to justify a career of switching sides. He invokes a stick man.
I used to be a Baptist. But do I want to put myself in the same category as the folks from Westboro Baptist Church, who picket in front of military funerals, holding signs saying “God hates fags”? I don’t think so.
There are about 50 million Baptists in America. But he has defined them all by the most crackpot Baptist congregation in America. Why? Because he is looking for excuses for his life of drifting.
For twenty years I was a pastor at a United Methodist church. The inner-circle joke was that you could say anything about a Methodist and you’d be right. Because some stand for nothing and some stand for everything. It’s no longer a label that means anything.
He defines everything by labels, not principles. A creed is a principled statement. Notice that he never refers to any creed. Christians who make decisions in terms of labels rather than creeds are spiritual drifters.
But you know what? I don’t want to be called a conservative or a liberal. I don’t want to be known as a Baptist or a Methodist. And I don’t want to spend any energy explaining to someone whether I’m a Calvinist or an Arminian.
But you also know what? Who cares what he thinks? I mean this literally. Who exactly cares? His wife. A few friends. His new boss. But what pastors are looking to him for spiritual guidance, as distinguished from career guidance? Not many, I hope. Fewer from now on, I hope.
In fact, let me be brutally honest. Most days I don’t even want to be called a Christian.
Let me also be brutally honest. I surely would not call him a Christian. That name has been with us Christians from the days of Paul.
Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul: And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch (Acts 11:25–26).
A man who self-consciously abandons this label has also abandoned the theology that undergirds it.
I’m dead serious. So much evil has been done through the centuries in the name of Christianity. Maybe we just need to leave the term behind and start over. It has too much baggage. Whether it was the Crusades or Medieval Inquisition of yesteryear, or the pedophile priest scandals of the current era, Christianity has gotten a bad name.
This is a man in rebellion. He is in rebellion against the worldview and history of the church that has employed him all his life.
I read in the news about a St. Louis pastor who ate a meal at Applebee’s, and instead of leaving a tip, he wrote on the receipt, “I give God 10%. Why should you get 18%?” Everywhere you turn, you hear of another “Christian” who is giving Jesus a bad name.
I have added his name to this list.
Susan K. Smith said it this way:I hate it when I hear someone say, “I am a Christian.” Immediately, I recoil, because most times when people say that phrase, it is said with a sense of arrogance and superiority. When I hear those four words, I think not of kindness and love, but of bullying, judgmentalism, exclusivity, unforgiveness, cruelty and hypocrisy. Read that again. If you grew up going to church and trying to do the right thing, that should make you very sad.
I had never heard of Ms. Smith. I did a search. She is senior pastor of a United Methodist Church. She is a graduate of Yale Divinity School. She posts essays on the Washington Post in the "On Faith" section. She wrote this:
Religion, as it has been taught, has made me wonder at times -- just who is this God anyway that he/she would allow, ordain, sanction that women, presumably created by him/her as well, be treated so badly in the name of religion?
My guess is that she does not have a lot of readers in the evangelical Protestant world.
Back to ex-Rev. X.
That’s why I don’t want to be called a Christian. Calling myself a Christian associates me with people with whom I don’t want to be associated. It forces on me a filter I can’t control. As soon as I say I’m a Christian, people put me in a category based on their understanding of what a Christian is—and that understanding is often colored by their personal experiences, good or bad. And many (maybe most?) people believe there is more bad than good. I don’t want to chance that.
Leaders should be proud of what they believe. This man has yet to say what he believes in, other than avoiding criticism from non-Christians. He has therefore joined the ranks of the non-Christians.
Next, he reverts to politics. He has yet to define his new theology.
The word Christian (or Christianos in Greek) was originally a Roman term of derision for those who followed Jesus Christ. They were mocking these early believers with that word. Similarly, in the lead-up to the 2008 election, people who were rabid followers of Hillary Clinton were sometimes called Clintonistas and those who held undying loyalty to Barack Obama were labeled Obamaniacs. These were not terms of endearment but labels meant to categorize and ridicule. In 2016, those who supported Trump received the label deplorables, a term meant to demean but that Trump’s followers wore like a badge of honor, sometimes on their T-shirts.
What has this to do with his decision to publicly abandon the faith in the name of some undefined replacement faith? Nothing. It’s just rhetoric. It’s just self-justification.
The only known time one of the early disciples used the term Christian was when Peter encouraged believers not to be ashamed when they suffer (again lending credibility to the idea that, even within the church the term was mockery) (see 1 Peter 4:16). It actually meant something in the first century. It was used specifically to denote a follower of Jesus. They were one and the same.Not anymore. In today’s world, at least in America, the word is either filled with baggage because of the actions or inactions of professing Christians through the ages. Or, it means absolutely nothing. For some, calling yourself a Christian has little to do with Jesus and a great deal to do with culture. Wearing the term is as easy and acceptable as putting on your Calvin Kleins or grabbing your iPhone.
Again, he refuses to define his terms in terms of the Bible or historic creeds.
I recently typed “Christians are” into a Google search field and these were the first five search results:· Christians are annoying.· Christians are hate-filled.
· Christians are hypocritical.
· Christians are delusional.
· Christians are narrow-minded.
In Bing, you’ll see the words stupid and crazy in the top results.
He is making his public stand in terms of public opinion polls, Google, and Bing.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t have a problem with Jesus. My problem is with Christianity. I think too many people have made Christianity their religion and the Bible their idol. Rather than following the steps and words of Jesus, they have bowed to a cultural definition of Christianity. They think going to church and hanging with other Christians is the thing that separates them from culture and gets them a good standing with Jesus. They think studying the Bible will bring the eternal life they want, but they miss Jesus in the meantime.
Every theological liberal for centuries has made this statement of faith when he also sought to keep his high-paying job as a pastor.
That’s why I don’t want to be known as a conservative. Why I don’t want to be known as a Methodist. Why I don’t even want to be known as a Christian.
I think he deserves to get his wish.
In fact, if someone is going to label me, I want to be known as a follower of Jesus. The Bible term for that is disciple. We don’t use the word disciple much in today’s world. Just like the word follower, it requires further definition. No one is just a follower. They are a follower of someone or something. Likewise, no one is just a disciple. They are a disciple of someone.
To be a follower of this man is to refuse to heed Jesus warning: “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” (Matthew 15:14). This is another reason why I have not mentioned his name. I do not plan to send him a copy of this essay. I will leave him alone.
Every few years, a major cult leader makes it into the headlines and you hear about his or her followers. David Koresh led the disciples of the Branch Davidian sect to their deaths in Waco, Texas. Jim Jones led disciples who followed him to their deaths in 1978, taking three hundred children with them. Although these are terrible incidents, they are indicative of what a disciple is. A disciple believes so fully in whom they are following that they are willing to die for that person.
This man invokes the experience of cult leaders to justify his abandonment of the faith.
Although less commonly used in the context, I’ve heard the term disciple in the management world. I’ve read articles about a CEO who is described as a “disciple of Jim Collins” or a “disciple of Peter Drucker.” It indicates they follow and agree with just about everything that leader says. The focus isn’t on the follower. It is on who they are following. The early disciples were known as Christians because they were followers of Christ.
He clearly no longer is.
I think it’s too late to try to redefine the word Christian for our world. That ship has already sailed. It isn’t my passion or interest to turn the strong tide of our culture away from what they think of Christianity. Rather than change people’s language, I want them to see Jesus in me. I want to live in such a way that my neighbors will remark, “There is something different about you.” I want to respond to conflict the way Jesus would respond. I want to treat my wife and kids the way Jesus would treat them. I want to run my business affairs with the highest integrity—no cut corners, no white lies, no manipulation tactics. I want to be different. I want to be marked by love. If people follow me, I want to lead them to Jesus.
Now he wants to be an example for other pastors.
But what does that even mean? What is a “disciple” of Jesus? What would it take to show this world a different type of Christian? Is it really all about love? What about holiness? So many questions. This is going to mean adopting an entirely different way of thinking.
Thus endeth his self-justification.
Today, he works for a large nondenominational, non-creedal employment service for pastors looking for a better job. His declaration of creedless faith is consistent with his new career.
CONCLUSION
Leaders sometimes defect. Be ready to vote to fire anyone who does. If you do not get this opportunity, cease being a disciple. Stop sending him or his organization any money. Do not subsidize intellectual drifters.