Tag Archives: John the Baptist

Are you a cult leader?

John 1:35-42

“He brought Simon to Jesus…”

As John the Baptist was standing around with two of his disciples, Jesus walked by and John identified him as the one they should be following. The two disciples followed Jesus and spent time with him, after which Andrew (one of the two) left to find his brother. “Simon, we found him. We found the Messiah.” And he took his brother to meet this Jesus. Every time we read of Andrew, he is bringing someone to Jesus. He must have learned it from his first Teacher, John, but Andrew never deviated from his task of getting the saving presence of Jesus in front of those who needed it.

The great thing is that Andrew knew what he was talking about. Andrew had spent time with Jesus. He learned from Jesus. He knew Jesus. Andrew was not speaking from conjecture. He was not theorizing, he was testifying. As John did, Andrew brought people to Jesus because he, himself, had had an encounter with this Christ. His own life must have been changed by this man. His evangelism is true.

Just as his first Teacher did, Andrew made sure to always be clear what he was working for, who he was working for. I think it is a safe bet to assume that Andrew made it a priority to have all that he did point to Jesus. Knowing even the little we know about him, Andrew would have been mortified if people started to follow him rather than Jesus.

Often, we pastors are subject to a cult of adoration. Either people treat us as something to be admired, or we are fighting so hard for respect that we over-inflate our own worth. Whatever the reason, the situation prevents us from focusing on the call we have been created for: bringing people to Jesus.

And it has to be real. It has to be true. It has to be born of experience. When we say “Jesus,” people have to know that we mean it. How can we proclaim a Savior that has not saved us? This is not about butts in the pew or cash in the offering plate. This is about changed lives. If our lives have not been changed, I’m not sure we are qualified to do this work.

How has Jesus Christ has made you whole?

Get down off your pedestal

John 1:29-34

“And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”

One of the most powerful things I learned in my training for the ministry is to remember that, whether I like it or not, I was going to be viewed as a “representative of the sacred.” Regardless of my comfort level with being “God’s spokesman,” in many cases, that’s exactly how I would be viewed. As such, I developed a habit of reading myself in the character of Jesus in all of the Gospel stories. Whatever Jesus did, I thought I also had to do. If I was going to represent God to a particular community, then I had better bone up on what, exactly, I was supposed to be representing. And, truly, when one sends another in their place, don’t they expect to be well represented?

It is like when my parents used to say to me, “You are a Whitsitt.” I always had to remember that I was carrying that name into public. Whatever I did was going to reflect – well or poorly – upon my family.

But as pastors, I think this has gotten us in trouble. We have confused ourselves for Christ, when we should instead be playing the role of John the Baptist.

In this text, John is standing at the banks of the Jordan, calling people to repent and prepare for the Messiah, and then the Messiah shows up. John wants everyone to know it, and so he shouts to all who would hear everything that is important about this man, culminating with “This is the Son of God!”

Just prior to this scene, John has said point blank, “I am not the Christ.” John is clear with the people who are showing up that he is not the one that they are waiting for – the one who will take away the sins of the world. That job belongs to someone else.

As pastors, we are guilty of allowing our ministry to be about us and what we do. We are not strident enough in our protest that we are “not the Christ.” To be sure, there are people in our congregations who love to remind us that we are nowhere near being the Christ, but they are sure happy to ask us to perform miracles, aren’t they?

John offers pastors a great model for the posture of ministry: He continually knocks himself off the pedestal people try to put him on.

How have you been placed on a pedestal?