Nobody Else Is Worthy

What this page is asking

The author of this site set down a thesis to be tested: “The modern pulpit seems to attract more than its fair share of people with an elevated sense of self-importance, perhaps even pronounced narcissism.”

The evidence he brought was a set of remarks he had heard from modern pulpits over the years. They come from more than one preacher. They are not attributed to anyone, and no names are supplied or should be guessed. Most are paraphrased from memory; where he remembered the words exactly, they are marked as quoted.

He asked three questions, and the page answers each in turn. First, taken together, what do remarks like these reveal about how a preacher sees himself, his office and the people he serves? Second, how do they measure against the picture of the minister in Scripture and in the historic Church? Third, is there something about the modern pulpit (celebrity, personal platforms, founder-led churches with little outside accountability) that attracts or rewards self-importance?

He also set the scope. The page examines the pattern, not the person. It makes no clinical diagnosis from a list of remarks. The question is whether the remarks fit the scriptural pattern of ministry, and whether the modern setting makes such remarks more common.

Two pictures of the minister, labelled so they can be told apart

Two pictures of the preacher’s office are compared all the way through. They are given letters so that the page can refer to them briefly.

Nobody, so far as the author knows, teaches Picture P as a doctrine. It is a picture that remarks can imply without anyone setting out to teach it. That is why the page weighs remarks, not doctrinal statements.

What both pictures agree on

What the page concludes, stated up front

The prompt behind this page

Everything below was produced by giving the following brief to a frontier language model with web search, which assembled and checked the sources. It is published so you can run it yourself, change it, sharpen it, or reverse it and see what comes back. Three experiments are worth more than reading this page. First, reverse it: ask for the strongest case that a preacher’s confident talk about himself is a legitimate part of leadership, and see which texts it has to lean on. Second, narrow it: give it one remark you heard yourself, with as much context as you can remember, and ask only which of the scriptural tests on this page it passes or fails. Third, make it a test: paste in the transcript of a sermon you heard, and ask for every sentence in which the preacher is the subject, every sentence in which Christ is, and what each of the first kind contributes to the message.

Write a detailed, source-first, interactive article, in British
English, for a general reader who is willing to work. Quote Scripture
from the Authorised Version. Date and attribute every other
quotation: give the work, the edition or translation, and the
section. Verify every quotation against a reliable published source;
where a quotation cannot be verified, cut it, or say that it is
given at second hand. Do not invent quotes. Do not take verses out
of context.

  TITLE QUESTION. Does the modern pulpit attract the vain?

  THESIS TO TEST. The modern pulpit seems to attract more than its
  fair share of people with an elevated sense of self-importance,
  perhaps even pronounced narcissism.

  SOURCE OF THE MATERIAL. The remarks below were picked up from
  various modern pulpits over the years. They are not attributed to
  any one preacher, and no names should be supplied or guessed. Most
  are paraphrased from memory; direct quotes are marked as such.

  QUESTIONS. Taken together, what do comments like these reveal
  about how a preacher sees himself, his office, and the people he
  serves? How do they measure against the picture of the minister
  given in Scripture and the historic Church? Is there something
  about the modern pulpit (celebrity, personal platforms,
  founder-led churches with little outside accountability) that
  attracts or rewards self-importance?

  SCOPE. Examine the pattern, not the person. Do not attempt a
  clinical diagnosis of narcissism from a list of remarks. The
  question is whether these remarks fit the scriptural pattern of
  ministry, and whether the modern setting makes such remarks more
  common.

  THE REMARKS.
  Self-promotion and special status
   1. Uniquely qualified to sing sacred songs: he recounts, with
      approval, the music director telling him, "Nobody else is
      worthy of singing these lines. You should sing them yourself."
   2. Worldwide popularity: millions singing his songs, requests
      from France, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Japan.
   3. A spiritual pedigree: "My mother was very spiritual and raised
      spiritual children. Everyone used to say that we were
      spiritual."
   4. Credit for his own exemplary service: "My mother used to pray
      for many hours a day, and my exemplary service to the Lord is
      a reflection of this."
   5. Exempt from ordinary struggles: "I never had to deal with
      ordinary matters such as visa approvals. I did not have to
      struggle like others."
   6. Success where others failed: "I have been able to produce
      converts in an area that has been called a graveyard for
      missionaries."
   7. A unique church: "Everybody tells me that our church is
      unique. No one else does what we are doing."
   8. The only faithful one: "I was the only one who kept church
      open during Covid when others were scared for their lives.
      God told me to open the church."
  Contempt for others
   9. Other songwriters compared to a pig producing numerous
      offspring of little value.
  10. Ridiculing songs about God's comfort: "You've turned the Lord
      of Hosts into a nanny!"
  11. Publicly retelling how he corrected a woman who had welcomed
      him and proudly shown him her Christian music video; the story
      ends with her saying, "Sir, you've opened my eyes!"
  12. Other preachers dismissed: "I am not like this other preacher
      who should not be preaching at all."
  Claiming God's authority for his own judgements
  13. He instructs songwriters to kneel and ask whether they are
      worthy of writing Christian songs.
  14. "God clearly told me that the call this guy who used to work
      for me supposedly has is completely bogus."
  15. He notes that the prophet Samuel's words did not fall to the
      ground, hinting that his own words will be likewise.
  Image over facts
  16. "We have never lost a penny due to fraud," said while evidence
      suggested the church may have lost a substantial sum to a scam.
      (Describe the circumstances only in general terms.)

  POINTS TO TEST.
   1. The minister is a servant, not the subject of the sermon:
      Mark 10:42-45; 2 Corinthians 4:5; 1 Peter 5:2-3. Ask how much
      of each remark points to Christ and how much to the preacher.
   2. Paul's boasting runs the other way: 2 Corinthians 11:23-30;
      12:9-10; 1 Corinthians 1:31; 2 Corinthians 10:17-18;
      1 Corinthians 3:5-7. Compare remarks 2, 5 and 6.
   3. Pedigree is counted as loss: Philippians 3:4-8; but note
      2 Timothy 1:5 and who does the crediting. Compare remarks 3
      and 4.
   4. "I thank thee that I am not as other men": Luke 18:9-14.
      Test remarks 7, 8 and 12.
   5. Diotrephes, "who loveth to have the preeminence" (3 John
      9-10). Does the pattern match anything above?
   6. Pride disqualifies overseers: 1 Timothy 3:6; Titus 1:7;
      James 3:1.
   7. How to treat fellow believers: Romans 14:4; Philippians
      1:15-18; Mark 9:38-40; Galatians 6:1. Test remarks 9, 11, 12
      and 13.
   8. God's comfort is not sentimentality: Isaiah 66:13; 40:11;
      Psalm 23; Matthew 23:37; 2 Corinthians 1:3. Test remark 10.
   9. Attaching God's name to personal verdicts: Jeremiah 23:16,
      21; Deuteronomy 18:21-22; 1 Samuel 3:19 (whose statement is
      it?); 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21. Test remarks 14 and 15. Link
      our dossier on personal vendetta from the pulpit.
  10. Honesty when the image is at stake: Proverbs 28:13;
      2 Corinthians 8:20-21. Test remark 16.
  11. The historic Church saw this temptation: Gregory the Great,
      Pastoral Care, Part IV; John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood, on
      vainglory and applause. Historic checks: bishops or synods,
      the congregation's call, ordination vows, a liturgy centred on
      Word and Sacrament. Does the modern setting remove these
      checks, and so attract or reward self-importance?
  12. The strongest case for the other side: 2 Corinthians 11:5;
      Philippians 3:2; Matthew 23:27; Acts 14:27; 15:12; humour and
      hyperbole; lost context; the sampling problem; pride as a
      universal temptation. Is Paul's boasting the same kind?
  13. What the narrow point does and does not prove. It cannot
      diagnose anyone, and cannot by itself show the pulpit attracts
      the vain at a higher rate. It can make a pattern visible and
      give readers scriptural tests.

OBJECTIONS. State the other side at full strength in its own Part
before answering it. Where the evidence corrects or qualifies the
brief, say so in a marked box.

NAMING. No names supplied or guessed for the remarks. No living
individual named as an example. Deceased writers quoted from dated,
published works. Any remark not from the list above is composed and
labelled as composed.

INTERACTIVES. A priors quiz. Each remark weighed by where it points.
A pronoun counter for a pasted sermon. A quiz on who does the
praising in Scripture. The remarks sorted against 3 John 9-10. A
finish-the-verse quiz on God's comfort. Claims sorted by whether
hearers can test them. A check of honest and dishonest statements
about money. An audit of the historic checks in a church the reader
knows. An objection drill the reader answers in his own words first.
A sort of claims by whether the argument proves them. A hearer's
test to take into church.

OUTPUT: a single self-contained interactive HTML page, professional
and readable, light theme by default with a dark switch, stating the
question at the top, publishing this prompt in full, repeating the
key points in prominent boxes for readers who skim, explaining every
technical term in a box where it is used, and giving the reader
something to do in every major section. Also produce a plain-English
quick version of about fifteen minutes with three short exercises,
and a Simple English version with no exercises.

The page you are reading is the output of that brief after the sources were checked. The brief quoted some verses from modern versions; the page gives them from the Authorised Version, as it does everywhere on this site. Seven things qualified the brief, and each is marked where it arises.

What do you currently think?

Ten questions. Each has a determinate answer, and you can check every one yourself in Part XIV. Answer them before reading and lock them in. They come back in Part XIII with the sources beside them.

What follows

Sixteen remarks

Here is the evidence, as the author recorded it. He grouped the remarks under four headings, and the page keeps his grouping. Read them slowly. Then weigh each one on its own, before the page says anything about it.

Weigh them one at a time

For each remark, ask one question: who is the subject? Does it point mainly to Christ, mainly to the speaker, or is it genuinely mixed? Choose, and the page gives its own reading and the scriptural test it applies later. There is no score. A tally builds at the bottom.

Servant, not subject

The disciples argued about rank more than once. James and John asked to sit at Jesus’ right and left hand in his glory (Mark 10:37). At the Last Supper “there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest” (Luke 22:24). Each time Jesus answered by contrasting two kinds of authority.

Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

Mark 10:42–45. In Luke’s account of the Supper: “he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve” (Luke 22:26).

The apostles took the lesson into how they described their own work. Paul’s summary of his preaching has three parts, and only one of them is about himself: “we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5). John the Baptist, the greatest of the prophets by Jesus’ own estimate (Matthew 11:11), said of Christ, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Peter, writing as “also an elder,” told the elders of the churches how to hold their office.

Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock.

1 Peter 5:2–3. Two verses later: “Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble” (5:5).

When people tried to make the apostles the subject, the apostles refused. Peter raised Cornelius from his knees: “Stand up; I myself also am a man” (Acts 10:26). At Lystra, when the crowd wanted to sacrifice to them, Paul and Barnabas tore their clothes and ran in among the people: “Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you” (Acts 14:14–15). Luke records the opposite case too. When the crowd shouted that Herod’s speech was “the voice of a god, and not of a man,” Herod accepted it, and Luke says he was struck down “because he gave not God the glory” (Acts 12:22–23).

This does not mean a preacher may never speak of himself. Paul tells his own story several times (Acts 22; 26; Galatians 1–2). But in every case the story is about what was done to him: he persecuted the Church, and Christ met him. The question Part I asked of each remark is the question these texts ask of every sermon: who is the subject?

Try it: count the pronouns

One rough way to see who a passage is about is to count. Paste in any passage from a sermon, a newsletter or a church website, or use one of the samples. The counter tallies words that refer to the speaker, words that name God or Christ, and words for the group. The count is a prompt, not a verdict. Try the third sample to see why.

Which way the boasting runs

Paul is the one apostle who boasts at length, and he tells us why. False teachers at Corinth had been commending themselves, and the church had been impressed. To win the Corinthians back, Paul agrees, very reluctantly, to play the fool and boast too. He says plainly what kind of speech it is: “That which I speak, I speak it not after the Lord, but as it were foolishly, in this confidence of boasting” (2 Corinthians 11:17). And then he boasts of the wrong things.

In labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers … in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst … If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities.

2 Corinthians 11:23–27, 30. The climax of the boast (11:32–33) is that he escaped from Damascus by being let down the city wall in a basket.

He finishes with a revelation he will not describe, and a thorn in the flesh that God would not remove. “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me … for when I am weak, then am I strong” (12:9–10).

Set remarks 2, 5 and 6 beside this. Remark 5 boasts of exemption: “I did not have to struggle like others.” Paul boasts of struggle. Remark 6 boasts of converts where others failed. Paul had planted the church at Corinth, if anyone had, and he wrote this to it:

Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.

1 Corinthians 3:5–7. And Jesus, to disciples about to reap a Samaritan harvest: “other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours” (John 4:38).

That last verse bears directly on remark 6. If a region was called a graveyard for missionaries, it was because missionaries died there. On John 4:38, whoever reaps later reaps in part what they sowed. The graves are not a contrast to the harvest. They are part of it.

Remark 2 is different, and the page reads it as mixed. Songs sung in many countries are a real gift, and Paul and Barnabas did report to the churches “all that God had done with them” (Acts 14:27; 15:12). But notice the subject of Luke’s sentence: God had done it, and had “opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles.” The remark, as remembered, has a different subject: his songs, his reach, his requests. Paul’s rule is short: “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. For not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commendeth” (2 Corinthians 10:17–18; 1 Corinthians 1:31).

Remark 1 is the one that gives this page its title. Even if the music director’s line was meant as a joke, the preacher chose to repeat it, from the pulpit, approvingly. In the worship Scripture describes, the question “Who is worthy?” is asked once, in heaven, and only one is found worthy: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain” (Revelation 5:2, 12). On earth, the centurion whose faith Jesus praised above all Israel said, “I am not worthy” (Luke 7:6). And Paul asks every gifted person a question that leaves nothing to boast of: “what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).

Pedigree, and who does the crediting

Remarks 3 and 4 are about upbringing. Here the page wants to be careful, because Scripture honours a godly upbringing, and a man who credits his mother’s prayers is keeping the fifth commandment. Paul himself had the best pedigree a Jew could have, and listed it, in order to say what it was worth.

Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee … But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.

Philippians 3:5, 7–8.

Paul also praises a godly upbringing: “the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also” (2 Timothy 1:5). The difference the author pointed to is who is speaking. Paul says it about Timothy. Timothy does not say it about himself. Remark 3 says it about the speaker’s own family, adds that “everyone used to say that we were spiritual,” and so reports others’ praise of himself. Remark 4 draws the conclusion out loud: my exemplary service. Proverbs had already drawn the line: “Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips” (27:2). Jesus gave the servant’s own words for a life of faithful service: “We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do” (Luke 17:10).

Try it: who is doing the praising?

Eight texts. For each, is the person speaking of himself, or is someone else speaking of him?

“Not as other men are”

Jesus told a parable “unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others” (Luke 18:9). The two halves of that description belong together. The Pharisee’s prayer is not mainly a list of his virtues; it is a comparison. He establishes his standing by measuring himself against “extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.” Jesus’ verdict reversed the ranking: “this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased” (18:14).

Remarks 7, 8 and 12 have the Pharisee’s grammar. No one else does what we are doing. I was the only one who kept church open when others were scared. I am not like this other preacher. In each, the speaker’s place is fixed by someone else’s lower place. Remark 8 is worth separating into its parts. Whether to open a church during an epidemic was a hard decision, and Christians made it in good faith both ways; this page takes no view of it. What the remark adds to the decision is the comparison (“the only one”), the motive assigned to others (“scared for their lives”), and the claim of divine instruction for oneself. Paul had a word for this way of measuring: “they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise” (2 Corinthians 10:12).

How Scripture tells ministers to treat other believers

Remarks 9, 11, 12 and 13 are about other Christians: songwriters, a woman who made a music video, another preacher, a former employee. The New Testament has a good deal to say about how a minister speaks of fellow servants of Christ, and it is consistent.

Measured against these, remark 9 is hard to defend. Comparing other people’s songs to a pig’s litter elevates the speaker’s output by degrading theirs, and Philippians 2:3 asks the reverse. Remark 11 is subtler, and the page reads it with care. Correcting a believer about money spent on display, or about imitating a film star, may well have been right. The question is what the retelling does. The woman had welcomed him into her home; the correction, if it was needed, belonged “between thee and him alone.” Told from the pulpit, the story has one hero, and it ends with her line in his praise: “Sir, you’ve opened my eyes!” Remark 12 says of another preacher not that he teaches error, which could be tested, but that he “should not be preaching at all,” a verdict on another man’s servant.

Remark 13 is the one the page reads as mixed. Asking songwriters to kneel and ask whether they are worthy is not wrong in itself: “Examine yourselves” (2 Corinthians 13:5) is apostolic counsel, and a hymn-writer could do worse than ask it. What changes its sense is remark 1. The question of worthiness is put to everyone else, and answered in advance for the speaker.

A portrait already drawn

The New Testament contains one short, named portrait of a church leader with this pattern. It is three sentences long.

I wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not. Wherefore, if I come, I will remember his deeds which he doeth, prating against us with malicious words: and not content therewith, neither doth he himself receive the brethren, and forbiddeth them that would, and casteth them out of the church.

3 John 9–10. “Loveth to have the preeminence” is one Greek word, philoprōteuōn: loving to be first.

John names four things: Diotrephes loves the first place; he talks against others; he will not receive those he did not choose; and he puts out those who would. Dossier 06 examines Diotrephes in the setting of church discipline. Here the question is narrower: do any of the remarks resemble any of John’s four marks?

Try it: the Diotrephes test

Ten remarks or behaviours from Part I. For each, which of John’s marks does it most resemble, if any? The page’s readings are offered, not imposed. Several remarks fit more than one mark.

0 of 10 sorted

The God of all comfort

Remark 10 was aimed at songs about God’s comfort: “You’ve turned the Lord of Hosts into a nanny!” The concern behind it may be fair. Some worship songs are thin, and a faith that knows only a soothing God has lost his holiness. But the remark does not criticise thin songs. It sets two things against each other: the Lord of hosts, and comfort. Scripture does not.

Isaiah 40 begins “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.” Ten verses later the same chapter says, “Behold, the Lord GOD will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him,” and in the very next verse, “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young” (40:10–11). The arm that rules is the arm that carries the lambs. Isaiah 51 puts the two titles in one speech: “I, even I, am he that comforteth you … The LORD of hosts is his name” (51:12, 15). And Isaiah 66, the last chapter of a book about the holiness of God, reaches for the image of a mother: “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you” (66:13).

Jesus did the same. In Matthew 23, the chapter of “whited sepulchres” that the other side rightly cites in Part X, the denunciation ends in a lament: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem … how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” (23:37). The severest words in the Gospels and one of the tenderest images are spoken by the same mouth in the same breath. Paul opens his most painful letter by blessing “the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4).

Try it: finish the verse

Seven verses about God’s comfort, each with a word missing. Choose the word.

“God told me”

Remark 14 is the most serious of the sixteen. “God clearly told me that the call this guy who used to work for me supposedly has is completely bogus.” Three things meet in that sentence. It is a verdict on a named relationship (a former employee), so the congregation may well know who is meant. It concerns his calling, which is a matter between that man and God (Romans 14:4). And it is presented not as the preacher’s opinion, which could be weighed, but as God’s, which cannot be questioned without questioning God.

Jeremiah describes the prophets of his day in words worth reading slowly: “Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD … I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied” (23:16, 21). Deuteronomy gives the people a test: “When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him” (18:22). The New Testament keeps the duty of testing with the hearers: “Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:20–21); “believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1).

But not every one that speaks in the Spirit is a prophet; but only if he hold the ways of the Lord. Therefore from their ways shall the false prophet and the prophet be known.

The Didache (The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles), 11, late first or early second century; trans. in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7.

A verdict that another man’s calling is “bogus” fails every one of these tests, not because it is necessarily false, but because nobody can test it. There is no event that would show it wrong, no Scripture it can be checked against, no “ways” of the other man in view. It asks the hearers to accept it on the speaker’s authority alone. Dossier 37, The Pulpit Is Not a Weapon, examines this move at length: the conversion of a private judgement about a particular person into the voice of God. Dossier 03 examines modern prophecy more broadly.

Samuel’s words, and whose they were

Remark 15 notes that Samuel’s words did not fall to the ground, and hints that the speaker’s words will not either. Here is the verse.

And Samuel grew, and the LORD was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground.

1 Samuel 3:19. The next verse: “And all Israel from Dan even to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the LORD.”

Three things about it matter. First, it is the narrator speaking, looking back on Samuel’s life. Samuel never says it of himself. Second, the subject of the verb is God: “the LORD … did let none of his words fall.” It is a statement about what God did, not about Samuel’s gift. Third, it was known by its results: “all Israel … knew.” That is Deuteronomy 18:22 in reverse. A man who invites comparison with Samuel has invited the Deuteronomy test, and the test is public. It is applied by the hearers, to events, over time. Applied to remark 16, for example, it would ask simply whether what was said turned out to be so.

Try it: who can test this?

Eight claims of the kind made from pulpits. For each, who can test it, and how?

0 of 8 sorted

When the image is at stake

Remark 16 is of a different kind. “We have never lost a penny due to fraud.” As the author recorded it, the remark was made at a time when there was mounting evidence that the church might have been the victim of a scam. The page describes those circumstances only in general terms and makes no claim about what happened. Its interest is in the shape of the statement: a categorical public denial, about donated money, while the question was open.

Being defrauded is not a sin. Churches and charities are scammed every year, often by sophisticated people. The question is what the minister does with the fact, and Scripture is clear that concealment, not loss, is the problem. Proverbs 28:13 sets covering against confessing. Paul, collecting money from the Gentile churches for the poor in Jerusalem, arranged for the gift to be carried by men the churches chose, and explained why:

Avoiding this, that no man should blame us in this abundance which is administered by us: providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men.

2 Corinthians 8:20–21. Paul did not ask to be trusted. He arranged things so that he would not have to be.

A denial made to protect a ministry’s reputation protects the wrong thing. The money was given to God through the church, and the givers are owed an account (Dossier 08 develops the giver’s side; Dossier 43 the board’s). And Scripture warns that when God’s people cover wrong, it is God’s name that suffers: “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you” (Romans 2:24). The image the denial protects is the preacher’s. The name it endangers is Christ’s.

Try it: which answer fits 2 Corinthians 8?

Three situations, each with three composed answers. Which one fits the pattern Paul set?

What the old Church knew

The New Testament does not treat pride in a minister as a personality quirk. Among the qualifications for an overseer, Paul lists that he must not be a recent convert, “lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil” (1 Timothy 3:6). To Titus he writes that a bishop must be “blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled” (Titus 1:7). James warns, “be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation” (James 3:1).

The early and medieval Church took these warnings to heart, and its writers on the pastoral office returned again and again to the same danger: that the man who speaks for God will come to love the sound of his own voice and the approval of his hearers. They did not treat it as a rare vice of bad men. They treated it as the preacher’s besetting temptation.

For I know not whether any man ever succeeded in the effort not to be pleased when he is praised.

John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood, Book V, ch. 4, written in the 380s; trans. W. R. W. Stephens, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series, vol. 9. Chrysostom was one of the greatest preachers of the ancient Church, and he is speaking of himself as much as anyone.

Chrysostom’s remedy was not to avoid preaching well but to be indifferent to the result. The preacher, he says, must labour to make his sermons good, and then “it is especially necessary to be trained to be indifferent to all kinds of praise” (Book V, ch. 8). Two centuries later Gregory the Great wrote the book that taught the medieval Church how to be a pastor. Its last part is a single short chapter on what the preacher must do after he has preached well.

But since often, when preaching is abundantly poured forth in fitting ways, the mind of the speaker is elevated in itself by a hidden delight in self-display, great care is needed that he may gnaw himself with the laceration of fear, lest he who recalls the diseases of others to health by remedies should himself swell through neglect of his own health; lest in helping others he desert himself, lest in lifting up others he fall.

Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule (Regula Pastoralis, 590), Part IV, “How the preacher, when he has accomplished all aright, should return to himself, lest either his life or his preaching lift him up”; trans. James Barmby, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 12.

Augustine, preaching on an anniversary of his own ordination, found the remedy in remembering what he shared with his hearers. The Second Vatican Council quoted the passage in its constitution on the Church.

What I am for you terrifies me; what I am with you consoles me. For you I am a bishop; but with you I am a Christian. The former is a duty; the latter a grace. The former is a danger; the latter, salvation.

Augustine, Sermon 340.1, quoted in Lumen Gentium (1964), §32, Vatican English translation.

The Reformation did not change the diagnosis. Richard Baxter, the Puritan pastor of Kidderminster, wrote a long confession of the sins of ministers in 1656, and pride came first: “One of our most heinous and palpable sins is pride.” He described preachers who prepare by asking how to be thought learned, and who “envy the talents and names of their brethren who are preferred before them” (The Reformed Pastor, 1656). The remarks in Part IV would not have surprised him.

The checks

The historic Church did not rely on warnings alone. It surrounded the preacher with structures that, whatever else they did, kept the office larger than the man. None of them prevented vain clergy, and Chrysostom, Gregory and Baxter would be the first to say so. What they did was restrain the vanity, keep it from defining the ministry, and give the people somewhere to go.

Notice what these checks have in common. Each one locates authority somewhere other than in the man himself: in those who sent him, in the faith he vowed to teach, in the order he serves within. That is Picture S built into an institution.

Does the modern pulpit attract it?

The thesis makes two claims that need to be kept apart. One is that the modern pulpit rewards self-importance. The other is that it attracts it: that the vain are drawn to it at a higher rate than to other callings. The first can be argued from how the setting works. The second is a claim about rates, and needs data that do not exist in reliable form.

What the setting rewards

The page offers the following as a structural argument, not a finding about any church. Many modern churches still have every check in Part VIII, and many founder-led churches are led by humble men. But consider what happens in a setting where the checks are absent.

None of these makes anyone vain. Each of them removes a brake on vanity that the historic Church installed, and some of them actively pay for it. That is a reasonable answer to half of the third question: the modern setting, where it lacks the old checks, rewards self-importance and removes the means of restraining it.

What the setting attracts

The other half is harder. It is plausible that a role in which a man speaks, unopposed, to an admiring crowd every week, and may build an institution around himself, appeals more to the self-important than a role in which he answers to a bishop and reads the appointed lessons. But plausible is not shown. Three cautions apply.

• The historic Church had vain preachers too. Chrysostom, Gregory and Baxter were not warning about an imaginary danger. The checks restrained vanity; they did not abolish it.
• The data are thin. Studies of narcissistic traits among clergy are few, small and hard to compare with other professions. A widely shared figure, that nearly a third of pastors in one sample met the criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, came from a book whose publisher later took it out of print after the authors of the measuring scale said it was designed to measure everyday traits, not a clinical disorder.
• Remarks are not a sample. The sixteen remarks were remembered because they were striking. Part X takes this up.

Try it: the checks audit

Think of a church you know well, perhaps your own. Tick each check it has. The page shows which kinds of remark each missing check would have restrained. Nothing you tick is stored or sent anywhere.

The case for the other side

The other side deserves to be heard in its own terms and at its strongest. Here is its case, as a fair-minded defender of these preachers, or of preachers generally, might make it, before any reply.

Much of this is right, and the page grants four points outright. Paul did boast. Jesus and Paul did use sharp words. Reporting what God has done is biblical. And the sampling problem is real: the page cannot measure how common the pattern is, and has said so from the start.

Is Paul’s boasting the same kind?

The author asked the reader to weigh one question in particular: is Paul’s boasting the same kind of boasting? It is worth taking slowly, because it is the strongest card the other side holds.

The other points can be answered more briefly. Sharp language: Jesus’ woes were aimed at those who “shut up the kingdom of heaven against men” and “bind heavy burdens” on others (Matthew 23:4, 13). Paul’s “dogs” were teachers imposing circumcision on Gentile believers. In both cases the targets were powerful men harming others by false teaching. The remarks aim at other songwriters, a woman with a music video, another preacher and a former employee, none of whom is said to have taught anything false. And the chapter of “whited sepulchres” ends with a hen gathering her chicks. Reporting God’s work: in Acts the subject of the sentence is God, “all that God had done.” That is the very test Part I applied. Humour: granted, and a joke can be forgiven. But a joke told repeatedly, always in the speaker’s favour, is still evidence of what he finds worth saying. Context and sampling: granted, and this is why the page tests a pattern, not a person, and claims no rate. Pride is universal: granted, and Scripture agrees. That is precisely why it sets a higher standard for those who teach (James 3:1), and why the historic Church built checks.

What the narrow point proves

The author asked that the page be exact about what the argument does and does not prove. It is easy to claim too much for a list of remarks, and easy to dismiss it too quickly.

Try it: does the argument prove this?

Eight claims. Does the argument of this page establish each one, or not?

0 of 8 sorted

A test to take into church

The author asked that readers be given scriptural tests to apply to what they hear. Here are seven. Think of a remark you heard from a pulpit recently, about the preacher, his church or other people, and answer each question about it. There is no score to share; the page records nothing.

Your verdict

The author asked that readers decide for themselves whether the pattern is common in their own experience, and what the Church should do about it. Two questions. Nothing is recorded.

Your answers, revisited

Here are the ten questions you answered before reading, with what the sources say. If you skipped them, go back to the quiz, lock in your answers, and return.

Check it yourself

Sixteen items. Nearly everything here is free and online. If you read only three, read the first three. If you do only one thing, do the last.

1. 1. 2 Corinthians 10–13. Read this first. Thirty minutes. Mark every place Paul says he is speaking as a fool, and list what he actually boasts of.
2. 2. Mark 10:35–45; Luke 22:24–27; John 13:1–17. Read this first. Fifteen minutes. Three answers Jesus gave to the question of who is greatest.
3. 3. Luke 18:9–14 and 3 John. Read this first. Ten minutes. Write down the four things John says about Diotrephes, and the one thing Jesus says about the Pharisee.
4. 4. The pastoral letters on the overseer: 1 Timothy 3:1–7; Titus 1:5–9; 1 Peter 5:1–5; James 3:1–2. How many qualifications concern gifts, and how many concern character?
5. 5. On treating other believers: Romans 14:1–13; Philippians 1:12–18; 2:1–11; Mark 9:38–41; Galatians 6:1–5; Matthew 18:15–17.
6. 6. On God’s comfort: Isaiah 40:1–11; 49:13–16; 51:12–16; 66:10–13; Hosea 11:1–4; Psalm 23; Matthew 23:37; 2 Corinthians 1:3–7.
7. 7. On testing what is spoken in God’s name: Deuteronomy 18:15–22; Jeremiah 23:16–32; 1 Samuel 3:19–21; 1 Thessalonians 5:19–22; 1 John 4:1–6.
8. 8. On money and honesty: Proverbs 28:13; 2 Corinthians 8:16–24; Romans 2:21–24; Acts 5:1–11.
9. 9. John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood, Books III and V; trans. W. R. W. Stephens, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series, vol. 9. Free at New Advent and CCEL. Book V is short and is about preaching and praise.
10. 10. Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule (590), especially Part I chs. 1–9 and Part IV; trans. James Barmby, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 12. Free online.
11. 11. Augustine, Sermon 340, on the anniversary of his ordination, and its use in Lumen Gentium §32 (1964), free at vatican.va.
12. 12. Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor (1656), the confession of ministers’ sins, beginning with pride. Free online in several editions.
13. 13. The Didache, chs. 11–13, on testing travelling prophets and teachers. Free at New Advent.
14. 14. The 1662 Ordinal, “The Form and Manner of Ordering of Priests,” bound with the Book of Common Prayer. Read the questions put to the candidate.
15. 15. Earlier dossiers: 35 (humility announced), 37 (personal verdicts from the pulpit), 03 (prophecy), 06 (Diotrephes and coercion), 08 (the giver’s responsibility), 43 (boards), 40 (succession), 50 (the self as subject).
16. 16. One sermon. Do this one. Take the next sermon you hear, or a recording of one. Write down every sentence in which the preacher is the subject. For each, ask the seven questions in Part XII. Then do the same for one of your own conversations about church.

The sixteen remarks on this page were noted by the author from various pulpits over many years and are attributed to no person or congregation. No living individual is named on this page as an example of anything. Every individual quoted is deceased, or biblical, and is quoted from a dated, published source, except where a council document quotes one. Every other remark attributed to a teacher or a listener is composed by this page for illustration and does not describe any real person. This page makes no clinical claim about anyone and gives no pastoral advice.