Celebrity Christianity is dead: Stop coddling abusive preachers

The downfall of famous preachers is happening one after another, making people wonder if the Church has always been this corrupt. 

If the Church is producing the same problems over and over, it’s most likely a systematic problem.  If we look for solutions to problems while being unwilling to change the systems that created them, nothing gets fixed. Historically, unhealthy church systems have preceded reformation; and I think it’s time to ask ourselves if a new system is needed.

Author Danny Silk wrote a book titled Culture of Honor: Sustaining a Supernatural Environment, which introduced the idea of relating to people according to how God sees them and not according to their flaws. While this was a very important message to the Church at the time, but I believe it’s being misapplied in a way that’s enabling leaders to be unaccountable for their actions. 

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Before I go on, I want to be clear: honor is a biblical concept. Scripture commands us to honor our leaders, parents, and all human beings. While some church cultures use the term “honor” to pressure people into sweeping injustices under the rug, going to the other extreme and creating a culture of dishonor won’t fix the situation. We need to fix our definition of honor without making room for dishonor.

If a leader is sexually preying on the people that God has entrusted into his care, that is dishonorable behavior. Shunning those who confront these situations by calling them disloyal is dishonorable behavior. Slandering their discernment by calling it a “spirit of suspicion,” is dishonorable behavior. Twisting Bible verses to discourage leaders from being held accountable is dishonorable behavior. Contorting passages like Psalm 105:15 which says, “Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm,” to elevate leaders above correction, is dishonorable behavior. 

We’ve exchanged a culture of honor for a culture of “shut up” and “mind your own business,” or the politically correct version of these, “stay in your lane”.

When brave ones with valiant and pure hearts arise to challenge broken systems, those who are under the devil’s control will twist the situation around and call them the “accuser of the brethren,” which actually is their way of inverting reality and accusing the brethren.

When preachers say that real discernment is only about looking for good things and ignoring everything bad, it feels manipulative and makes the situation worse. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say: “Discernment isn’t about seeing the dirt in people; it’s calling out the gold!” That definition sounds profound, but it’s profoundly lacking. If you look at what the word “discern” means, it isn’t about seeing only good things to the exclusion of everything else. 

Discernment essentially means being able to distinguish between good and bad, not just in a moral sense, but even in cases of practicality like whether your steak is cooked enough or if eating it could make you sick (for the record, medium rare is the only correct way to cook a steak). 

True discernment is the ability to accurately identify both good and bad. “Looking for gold” isn’t a good analogy because discernment isn’t looking for anything, it’s accurately differentiating the good and bad aspects of what’s already there.

Even if discernment was only looking for “gold” in people, you won’t find gold if you don’t touch dirt, because you have to dig through dirt to get to gold. If we ignore the “dirt” (sin) in others, how can it be moved out of the way to reveal the gold of God’s design in them?

To some degree, modern teachings on discernment are an overreaction to bitter people who created a toxic church culture, only focusing on what they thought was wrong with their leaders, without any proof. These people operate in a false kind of discernment that creates division. Typically, they act like any leader who’s ever sinned is automatically disqualified from their position but ignore the fact that they disqualify themselves with this standard as well. Scripture does say, “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48), but it also says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). I’m sure the devil would love our help to completely eliminate church leaders, and we do so by requiring sinless perfection from them. 

When leaders start destroying other people’s lives, they shouldn’t be allowed to continue in their position. 

If we value healthy discernment about sin, we could create effective systems to confront it in leaders’ lives. Honor should flow both ways, from the congregation towards leaders, and from leaders towards those they lead; a culture of honor shouldn’t only apply to how we treat authority figures, it’s also how they treat those under their care. 

A healthy body receives messages from all of its members, not just the ones at the top. When messages from a lower appendage are blocked, it goes numb and affects the entire body. The main symptom indicating the body of Christ isn’t healthy is that those without “status” don’t have a voice and can’t send “pain signals” higher up.

Suppressing the voices of those who are hurting is like taking a pill to stop pain from reaching your brain; you’re not healed just because the signal is blocked. Similar to taking pills, leaders have become addicted to this “quick fix” mindset that keeps things going at all costs. 

Quick fixes have stopped working, the pain that voiceless victims feel has created so much pressure on church systems that it can no longer be contained and an “exposure explosion” is happening where years of built up sin abruptly comes out all at once. 

The entire system needs an overhaul so that the church can become healthy again. Celebrity Christianity is dead. God is restoring the standard, and if we fear God, we better jump on board with the reformation that’s at hand. He’s not playing around anymore, so we shouldn’t either.