A river of tears is flowing at Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, these days as another megachurch pastor goes down in flames from moral failure — big time.

Congregants, leaders, elders and affiliated churches are desperately trying to make sense of it.

Worse yet, many thousands of idealistic youngsters are witnessing the meltdown of their church home, and parents are at a loss for words to explain how such a thing could happen, seemingly right under everyone’s noses.

It Can Happen Anywhere, Anytime

I’m old enough to remember similar jarring implosions of prominent Christian ministries that operated on a worldwide scale decades ago.

Who could forget the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker-PTL Club saga, the Jimmy Swaggart circus and Ted Haggard’s fall from grace? I could go on; sadly there are more.

The trouble is, this could happen anywhere, anytime a church repeats the same mistakes, usually in pursuit of “the numbers.”

Forgetting that the New Testament model of a church is a family, leaders turn their churches into religious factories complete with professional rock concerts and entertainment venues.

This results in spiritually shallow congregants who are steeped in a consumer mentality.

Here are a few ways, modern churches tend to drift far away from their New Testament roots:

• Letting the surrounding culture shape the church’s values instead of the other way around.
• Building the church around a “cult of personality” — usually a big shot preacher.
• Letting numbers and growth define “success,” rather than the spiritual health/growth of the sheep.
• Allowing entertainment/bling to trump solid biblical spiritual ministry.
• Permitting “seeker friendly” church models to define the spiritual agenda for committed believers.
• Keeping people in the pews and not equipping them for active ministry in their communities.
• Neglecting intentional, spiritual instruction — whatever happened to Sunday school discipleship?
• Losing sight of Who is the true Head of every Church, Christ Himself.
• Failing to call out immorality and other sins, followed by appropriate church discipline.

Who’s Running This Show?

The Chinese adage that “a fish rots from the head down” applies here. When the shepherds lose their way, the sheep will follow in lockstep.

While people (especially the news media) focus on the man who fell into sin, this is a collective leadership breakdown that cries out for a complete change of priorities.

Leaders need to fire their church growth consultants, abandon their ornate conference rooms, and be on their knees before God.

In Colossians 1:17-19, the Apostle Paul wrote:

“He (Jesus) is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.”

We forget whose church this is. Every assembly that calls itself Christian personally belongs to God — He is the Head —not some rock star preacher.

Heaven Is Watching

Do we realize that our church is attended every Sunday by heavenly hosts? While some attendees come in from the parking lot, many more come in from Heaven, as noted in Hebrews 12:22-24: 

“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.”

If Christ were to physically walk into your church unannounced, how comfortable would He be?

Is Christ Divided?

We humans seem to always be looking for heroes in all the wrong places.

Paul wrestled with this in Corinth, as he shared in 1 Corinthians 1:12-14, “Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, ‘I am with Paul,’ or ‘I am with Apollos,’ or ‘I am with Cephas,’ or ‘I am with Christ.’ Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?”

Never place your faith in man, any man. We rely on Christ, not Christians. Likewise for church buildings, campuses, programs, events or agendas.

We grieve along with the saints at Gateway Church. The world is watching, and they’ve just been given another excuse to dismiss the Christian faith as fatally flawed.

Can you blame them?

How About You?

Our faith is in a Heavenly Person, not in men or programs. As written in Colossians 2:6-7, “Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.”