Cult of Personality

Back in 1988 the band Living Colour released their biggest hit “Cult of Personality.” It was a genius blend of hard rock and funk, which still stands up today. It was a self-aware and poignant critique of our celebrity and consumeristic driven society…and this was back in the late 80s! Or as my daughter recently said while referring to when I was born, “the 1900s.” Getting old over here. Anyway, Living Colour sang out:

I sell the things you need to be
I'm the smiling face on your TV
Oh, I'm the cult of personality

I exploit you, still you love me
I tell you, one and one makes three
Oh, I'm the cult of personality

You gave me fortune, you gave me fame
You gave me power in your god's name
I'm every person you need to be
Oh, I'm the cult of personality

That last stanza hits home. We’ve always been lovers of fortune and fame, what Martin Luther called the “theology of glory” in the 21st theses of his Heidelberg Disputation. For an excellent, life-changing, and concise book on this subject check out Gerhard Forde’s On Being a Theologian of the Cross. It is our sin nature that worships at the altar of success, that as Living Colour puts it, gives our celebrity idols “power in [our] god’s name.” And sadly, the church is not immune to this. In fact, it is one of the places where the cult of personality often runs rife.

There are so many stories of the charismatic leader that starts a church or takes over the preaching responsibilities and is a huge hit. Everyone loves their communication style, their stories are so relatable, their sense of humor connects, and they may even be really good at expositing the Scriptures and pointing to Jesus. All good things. But as their influence grows and their fame increases things begin to shift. Before you know it boundaries begin to get pushed and their followers find themselves having to make excuses for their questionable statements and/or behaviors. And sometimes, as has sadly been the case with multiple pastors in recent years, their congregations even cover up scandals and abuse for them. The focus may have begun with Jesus, but it ends up being all about the particular leader. A cult of personality.

But it isn’t always that dramatic. Sometimes it is more subtle. You don’t even realize you were in a cult of personality until the leader leaves for some reason or another. If the dynamic and charismatic leader leaves, the church often struggles to find someone new because very often they are just trying to find someone like the previous leader. The leader and his or her particular strengths became the basis for the church, and the church rises and falls on the leader.    They have made the personality the basis for the call. 

As we’ve seen this isn’t new in our day and age. It happened way back in “the 1900s” too, but it goes back even further. As Ecclesiastes says, “There is nothing new under the sun” (1:9). Paul dealt with this in his letters. In his first letter to the Corinthians he acknowledges the fact that many of the Corinthians were categorizing themselves according to which preacher they liked the best. Paul says this is very human behavior, aka broken and sinful. Paul writes:

For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?  For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth (1 Cor. 3:3-7).

In Ephesians 3, Paul gives us the corrective to this tendency to emphasize the personality of the leader and make it the basis for the call.  He does not point to his personality or particular skills or charisma.  Instead he says the basis of his call was the gospel…the message given to him by the grace of God, what he calls the mystery of Christ revealed by the Spirit.  He had become a prisoner for Christ not because he made the Jews jealous of his awesome personality and incredible wit, but because of his message…the scandalous message of God’s grace in Jesus Christ…that God’s salvation was not limited to Israel alone, but was for the whole world.   

Paul builds on that and points to his commission to spread that message.  He was not given the gospel just for himself, but he was given it to carry to others, to proclaim it.  He says, “Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power” (vs. 7).  Paul shows us that as leaders in the church our foundation is not what we bring to the table, but rather the message that God gives us and the commission from God to carry it into the world. 

This doesn’t mean our particular skill sets and personality strengths are pointless, by no means.  They are in fact also gifts to us from the Lord, but they are not the basis of our call, they are not the foundation.  That is only and always the Gospel.  They are to be used in service to gospel.  They must never be the central thing about our leadership or ministries.   

As John Stott wrote, Paul was able to “minimize himself, while he magnified his office.”  He did this by never allowing anything to overshadow the message he had been given.  The Gospel of God’s grace in Jesus Christ for the Gentile and Jew alike was his foundation.  He stood upon its authority and boldly walked in his commission as a minister of it.   

As Christians we too are called to be preachers of the Word.  And, like Paul, we magnify this office by keeping as the foundation the Gospel of God’s grace and forgiveness through our Lord Jesus Christ.  We point our people to Him always, not to ourselves, but to the one who called us and commissioned us. 

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