Thursday, October 12, 2006
Leaders, Disciplers And Media Stars
Celebrity is something I have never understood. Maybe it's because I have met too many, but I have just never gotten it. Let me explain a bit - my dad was never a celebrity, or a big time power broker, but what he did always meant he had to work with such types. I've met presidents and potentates since a tender age. They were all just people to me - still are. I have also had to work with such people in my professional life. Not only are they "just people" - they are all falliable as are all people, and some are downright jerks.
Can I be honest? - this is the one thing that has always bothered me about the concept of discipleship. The people into whose hands I am supposed to place my trust and to whom I am supposed to submit, are often no more mature than I am, at least in some areas of their lives. In my youth, I discovered several to whom I attached myself that were really only interested in using me to advance their own agendas - they were not interested in actually bringing about my maturity, they just needed me to massage their egos and supply a bit of free labor. It was a long jouney to figure out that such was not what Christ intended.
Genuine one-to-one discipleship is becoming increasingly rare these days. It's being overridden by a sort of celebrity discipleship. As Christian leaders fire up the media frenzy to sell the latest book and populate the latest conferences, people "attach" themselves to these people, collecting their books, attending all the conferences, adsorbing everything such a person says like a sponge. But there is a problem with this. The media savvy learn how to play this game without ever revealing their true humanity, even their ugliness. You end up discipling yourself to someone you have never met and someone that creates a false image of what a Christian really is.
I come back again and again to the fact that genuine faith and maturity comes not from being good, but from realizing and confessing that we are not so. If the person to whom you submit yourself is willing to hear you say where they have a problem, and confess to you, as you to them, that they were wrong, now we can together find real maturity, and real community. The most valuable lesson learned from the fallable discipler is exactly that - how to confess, how to be humble.
Now, I do want to draw a distinction between the media star and the leader. Organizations demand people in front - those are leaders, but good ones do it in a way they they avoid the media star syndrome. They let you know it's a job, not a honor. They urge you to attach yourself not to them, but to someone near and dear and real. Most importantly they are willing to be falliable from the front, instead of working so hard to "preserve the image."
Being a Christian is a messy business, and it is a business done with others. We cannot be perfect in that and we cannot hide behind an image if we want to do it well. I think we need to spend time being deliberate about that. I like to read the books of John Piper, but I am not and cannot be his disciple - he's in Minnesota and I am in California - and for all I know he could be a jerk.
When I read so much about the latest and greatest from Leader X, I always end up thinking how much we sound like the Corinthians.
Related Tags: celebrity, leadership, discipleship
Can I be honest? - this is the one thing that has always bothered me about the concept of discipleship. The people into whose hands I am supposed to place my trust and to whom I am supposed to submit, are often no more mature than I am, at least in some areas of their lives. In my youth, I discovered several to whom I attached myself that were really only interested in using me to advance their own agendas - they were not interested in actually bringing about my maturity, they just needed me to massage their egos and supply a bit of free labor. It was a long jouney to figure out that such was not what Christ intended.
Genuine one-to-one discipleship is becoming increasingly rare these days. It's being overridden by a sort of celebrity discipleship. As Christian leaders fire up the media frenzy to sell the latest book and populate the latest conferences, people "attach" themselves to these people, collecting their books, attending all the conferences, adsorbing everything such a person says like a sponge. But there is a problem with this. The media savvy learn how to play this game without ever revealing their true humanity, even their ugliness. You end up discipling yourself to someone you have never met and someone that creates a false image of what a Christian really is.
I come back again and again to the fact that genuine faith and maturity comes not from being good, but from realizing and confessing that we are not so. If the person to whom you submit yourself is willing to hear you say where they have a problem, and confess to you, as you to them, that they were wrong, now we can together find real maturity, and real community. The most valuable lesson learned from the fallable discipler is exactly that - how to confess, how to be humble.
Now, I do want to draw a distinction between the media star and the leader. Organizations demand people in front - those are leaders, but good ones do it in a way they they avoid the media star syndrome. They let you know it's a job, not a honor. They urge you to attach yourself not to them, but to someone near and dear and real. Most importantly they are willing to be falliable from the front, instead of working so hard to "preserve the image."
Being a Christian is a messy business, and it is a business done with others. We cannot be perfect in that and we cannot hide behind an image if we want to do it well. I think we need to spend time being deliberate about that. I like to read the books of John Piper, but I am not and cannot be his disciple - he's in Minnesota and I am in California - and for all I know he could be a jerk.
When I read so much about the latest and greatest from Leader X, I always end up thinking how much we sound like the Corinthians.
1 Cor 1:12 - Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, "I am of Paul," and "I of Apollos," and "I of Cephas," and "I of Christ."We are all of each other. Discipleship is something we submit to not with the stars, but with the ordinary, because in the end the stars are the ordinary.
Related Tags: celebrity, leadership, discipleship
