But Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a seed; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life will lose it, but whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.…”
In the past year, I have been introduced to some disciple makers whose accomplishments are quite breathtaking. Hundreds of thousands of churches, with millions of baptised believers across many, many countries – some Western, some not.
If I mentioned any of their names it is doubtful you would have heard of them, something I think they would prefer. Even from those inside these movements, there would be many, a majority, who would not know the catalyst. That is because simply there is only one name that is important, only one name that people have signed up for. King Jesus.
As I have prayed and reflected on this, I get the feeling that this is very, very significant. Jesus founded a movement, one centred around him, and we have shifted that to many smaller movements centred around ourselves. It is alarming that believers around me constantly cite names they are following in Christendom; Francis Chan, Phil Pringle, Joyce Meyer, Torben Sondergaard, Rick Warren, Joel Osteen and the list goes on. Much closer to home, there is the same issue on a smaller scale, with many striving for regional recognition.
It would be easy to backtrack on this wouldn’t it – to say that all these were well meaning and important for the leadership of the church. But surely to deny it is by far the easier option, given that most of Christendom pursues personality. Are they really important? Would Jesus church fail if we didn’t have these personalities, do we not think Jesus capable of running or growing his own church without us?
At the core of this is our need for both recognition and control and it seems we now have a choice before us. If we truly want movement, the type Jesus founded and desires, a church that is wild and free, a church governed and led by him alone – potentially though, with doctrinal error, inconsistent with fallen, failing people then we must die to ourselves and release control. We must point people to Jesus, have them filled with the Holy Spirit, teaching them to multiply and then back away working to build the church away from us towards God. We must accept and even rejoice, as Jesus did, that some will do ‘even greater things than us.’
If we don’t, if we insist that it be done our way, that our stamp must be on the work, that control must be centralised – in short that the local church be run along similar lines as the institutions of this world, then any movement will be limited by our reach. At times, it may be big in our eyes and even in the worlds, but incomparable to what Jesus envisaged when he looked out over the world and commanded believers to ‘baptise the nations’. It will be too small by his standards, and when we go the movement is likely to stop dead. More than that, it will lack the freedom, the interdependence, the ability to move between borders and geographies. In short, it will not be a movement free to run as the Spirit dictates. It will be an institution.
We are at a pivotal point in church history right now. As I look around globally, I see the Spirit moving forward at an even faster pace than the world seems to crumble. Contrary to what we read, hundreds of thousands of Muslims are discovering Christ, and in turn help his movement accelerate towards others. Christ is always the head, always the main event.
In other places though, predominantly the West, I see known names trying to build even bigger followings for themselves. Leaders – humans, gathering people around them in smaller kingdoms.
If we are to see movement, then we must get out of the way, we must die to one who is greater. We must rid ourselves of the cult of the personality. God will share his Glory with nobody, not even the most well-meaning of people.