Spiritual Pop Stars and Spiritual Parents

These are not the same.

I’ve simply resigned myself to the inevitable at this point. Every week or two, there will be some big-time Christian celebrity, often a megachurch pastor, who will be caught in some kind of behavior that the elders of his church will describe innocuously as “inappropriate.” It was “inappropriate” for Pastor X to have had this long-term affair with his secretary. Yes, agreed. Much more appropriate would have been marital fidelity and the fulfillment of his responsibilities to his congregation. That would have been entirely appropriate, in fact, but that didn’t happen. As a result, many will turn away from the faith.

“Mistakes were made.” Photo by Lucas Sankey on Unsplash

I’ve written about this before. We can’t shield our kids from this stuff. We can’t make the unbelieving world look away from it. What we can do, however, is teach our churches that the cult of celebrity is not of God, and that the celebrity of a given church leader tells you nothing about his or her relationship to Christ. Yes, there are very well known Christians who live Godly lives and are models of Christian fidelity. There are also well known church leaders who are mixed up in things that will someday come to light, and which will destroy their ministries and damage the cause of Christ. If current trends continue, we’ll probably learn about one next week.

To the extent that we Christians participate in the cult of celebrity, we set ourselves up for failure. Real disciples aren’t made by following the right influencers on social media or by conference-hopping. Real disciples are made in one-on-one relationships with mature, faithful Christians. Crucial to this practice is the work of spiritual mothers and fathers.

Growing up in the mainline, I never heard anyone talk about spiritual mothers and fathers. It was not until I became involved in the charismatic movement that I began to learn about the practice of spiritual parenting. It is a deeply countercultural concept today, and yet one that churches must reclaim for the evangelization of the next generations. As Christians, we must be willing both to walk in the authority that God gives us and to come under the spiritual authority of others. It is crucial, moreover, that we understand authority in the right way. For followers of Christ, spiritual authority is always a matter of emptying the self and submitting to God. We have spiritual authority only insofar as we have become vessels of the Holy Spirit.

When young people think about models of the faith, we don’t need them to think about the Pastor X who wears yellow-tinted glasses and $1000 sneakers and jeans that most of us would have to take out a second mortgage to afford. We need them to think about Linda, who prays and reads her Bible each day, who teaches Sunday school and makes coffee each week at the church. We need them to think of Bill, who fixed the air conditioning at the church last month and paid for the parts out of his own pocket. Bill cries out to God in the secret place. He has walked through fire in this life and come out forgiven and redeemed. Linda and Bill won’t show up on Instagram. They won’t have a best-selling book. They are, however, the people you want your kids to look to in times of spiritual questioning. Linda and Bill can be spiritual mothers and fathers. They can model the Christian life because they walk in it with humility.

In 1 Timothy, Paul refers to Timothy as his “child in the faith,” and he warns him against false teaching that has made its way into the church. He urgues Timothy, moreover, to take up his own role as a teacher of the faith to others. Along these lines, in 1 Corinthians 4, Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth,

For though you might have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers. Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. I appeal to you, then, be imitators of me. For this reason I sent you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ Jesus, as I teach them everywhere in every church (1 Cor 4:15-17).

He speaks to them as a father, as a person of both love and authority. And he sends one of his close spiritual sons, Timothy, to remind these brothers and sisters of the truth that he, Paul, has taught them as their father. Paul knows that learning to be a Christian isn’t simply a matter of getting the right facts in hand. Our claims about God and the salvation he offers us are important, but they’re not enough. Learning to be a Christian is like an apprenticeship. We learn by watching others. We look at their daily habits and spiritual practices, the way they react to problems, their manner of speech, and other aspects of their lives. Our faith is as much caught as taught.

As I’ve gotten older, my spiritual life has taken turns that I would never have anticipated. As a young scholar, I conceived of my vocation primarily as one of teaching, both in the classroom and through writing. I was obsessed with ideas. I still do those things, and I’m still interested in ideas. But what I was too dense to understand as a younger man is the importance of relationships. I was an egghead, immature in the faith, and it showed.

The church is not just a body of like-minded people. God has adopted us into his household, and now we are children of one Father. We are corporately responsible for one another’s salvation. That’s why Paul tells the church in Philippi, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). The word “your” here is plural. In Texas we’d say “y’all’s.” Salvation is something we work out together. So as I’ve matured in faith, I’ve also come to understand how important it is to invest in the lives of other Christians. I have spiritual sons and daughters, and I’m grateful for them. I learn from them, just as they do from me, and my engagement with them helps me to live into my calling in Christ.

We need pastors who stand before us and bring the word of God every week. We need visible leaders who will contend for the faith. We also need the people of quiet conviction who will invest in the lives of the upcoming generations to show them what it looks like to follow Jesus day in and day out. Learning to be a Christian is a long walk, and we need those people who have walked long on this road. Our role models in the faith need not be known to the masses, but simply known to God. God sees them. He empowers them, and he honors those who walk in humble service.