Pride and ego can often fill a church. It’s interesting how Paul the Apostle says: “I thank God that I baptized none of you, except for Crispus and Gaius and maybe the household of Stephanas.”
Did you catch that?
Paul the famous Apostle, super church planter, evangelist, made a bigger impact on the church than Billy Graham and is thankful he did not baptize but only a handful of people.
Wrap your mind around this: Baptism is one of the most intimate, crucial parts in the Christian faith because its our proclamation, our public announcement to everyone that we are from this day forward following Jesus. It’s a big deal in the Christian world yet one of the founders of our faith refused to baptize many people.
Paul says this in the context of divisions sparking up in the church. Leaders are being elevated higher than they should. That old mindset that Jesus taught of “to be a leader you must become a servant” has went out the window because now the leaders are the most important people in these congregations.
It’s crazy because Paul has this line and it is not only shocking but it is also appalling at how much we secretly struggle with this today.
What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.”
1 Corinthians 1:12
Has it ever occurred to you that strangeness that we call our church bodies “the church of ‘so and so’.” We have a tendency to say “ I go to (insert your pastor’s name here) church all the time. We more often say that than say “I follow Jesus.”
Many of our churches are so full of one individual that it is very eveident who we follow.
When only one person in the congregation gets all the oppurtunities to serve and lead and grow and become an even better leader, then we have not acted as the church we have acted as a cult following a leader who is charismatic and in basketball terms a “ball-hog.”
I strongly believe if your church has 100 people and the only person who ever preaches or teaches is one guy, then you are in danger of allowing your faith to depend more on a man than Jesus, and the reality is I am right because we see so many churches fall, completely go away after the leader of the cult breaks down and vanishes.
How many times do we need to see a mega church over use, over work and over promote a lead pastor until we will realize a church is not designed to operate that way.
The church is the body of Christ, yet for many of us, the mouth has been doing all the work, and we wonder why our congregants lose their faith when that mere man goes away.
How arrogant of us to only ever use or mostly use one guy to do a body’s job?
How is it that Jesus sent out two by two his followers to go preach while he stayed back yet we allow ourselves as leaders to hog all the work as if the same Spirit that’s working in you is not and cannot work in someone else?
I love hearing people say “no one can reach these people like my pastor can, he’s just such a good preacher.” The moment a congregation begins saying those words, you need to demote your pastor. The church has become codependent on that one person. And out of love for both your pastor and your church, the pressure does not belong on one guy. Give the job to someone else. Create less work for your pastor and delegate to others.
You say “but Austin, there is no one else.”
I say “then train them.” I live in South Georgia, Bible Belt culture. Churches are everywhere. And again say your church has 100 people in it. Ask the question why out of 100 people you cannot find anyone who wants to serve the Lord in that way? Maybe your ball hog, maybe they haven’t been trained, maybe you need to rethink your job. Your job as a pastor is to lift others up, to train, shepherd and build others. If you cannot find anyone to do the work then maybe you have not been doing the work as well as you have believed.
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