SEVEN REASONS WHY MANY BELIEVERS FOLLOW “SUPERSTAR” PASTORS
By Joseph Mattera
The church has seen the rise of “celebrity cult status” pastors who act like spiritual superstars.
In this article I define superstars as those who act as little gods who believe they are above everybody else. They walk around with an entourage, body guards, and are inaccessible to family, friends, high level staff and peers, and are an unaccountable island to themselves.
Furthermore, no matter how much these leaders violate biblical ethics, they still maintain their leadership position because most of their followers are blinded by their devotion. Many of these superstars have started in the ministry for the right reason but because of un-dealt with emotional dysfunction related to their youth. They carry these dysfunctions over into their ministry and church family.
There are some social and psychological reasons for this aberrant behavior / both from the vantage point of the leader and their followers.
The following are some of these symptoms and reasons:
7 Reasons Why followers follow superstar pastors
1. Many Christians need a male figure to emulate.
Many believers come from dysfunctional family backgrounds and need a male figure hero to emulate as a father figure. Some folks view their spiritual leader as a surrogate father, hence they will be protective of said leader to the point in which their emotional connection and loyalty clouds biblical truth
2. Many Christians have no identity of their own and live vicariously through their leader.
Those without a healthy self-identity gravitate towards a strong, confident leader with a compelling vision to the point in which their own individuality is subsumed or fragmented. Thus, this creates a vacuum of being and essence which makes them vulnerable to a charismatic leader; e.g., this is how false prophet Jim Jones was able to lead 900 well-educated followers into committing corporate suicide in Guyana in the 1970′s.
3. Many believers have a strong sense of failure and live through the success of their Leader.
Many people live a boring life without purpose and feel that they have more meaning when vicariously live their life through a person they deem successful.
4. Many followers lack their own intimate knowledge of Christ and are ignorant of Scripture.
Unfortunately, most Christians are Bible-illiterate and will believe anything their leader teaches them, even if it is heretical. Hence, their leader can live a life or lead their church in a way not congruent with Scripture and they wouldn’t even know it!
5. Many stay connected to the leader primarily because of their social community.
After being in a church for several years, folks usually assimilate into that particular faith community (which is a great thing in most cases) and build their social network around their church life and ministry. If they leave their church, they have to cut off many of these social ties, thus, they will continue in a church even if the leader is living an ungodly life full of pride, abuse, and manipulation
6. Many are connected to a superstar leader because it gives them religious status.
There are many people I have met who attend a certain church only because they have a lot of members, even if they are not being discipled or ministered to in a personal way. They get fed from other sources but remain in their church because the celebrity status of their leader gives them status with other Christians in their city.
7. Many have low self esteem and don’t recognize when they are being abused or manipulated.
Those with self-esteem will allow others to abuse, disrespect, and even manipulate them because they don’t have enough self-dignity to disapprove or even recognize it. Many of these folks were abused or neglected at home and live with a sense of guilt and feel an unconscious need to have authority figures who act the same way as their parents did (to satiate their feelings of guilt in some cases).
In closing, in rare instances where I perceive believers start attending our local congregation who come from these dysfunctional churches, I am not as quick (as usual) to discourage their attendance, but am willing to open up our congregation to them as a place for them to receive personal ministry and (hopefully) flourish in their faith.
Read the previous article: 10 Reasons Some Church Leaders Become Divas
Source: http://josephmattera.org/seven-reasons-many-believers-follow-superstar-pastors/
[Editor’s note: Previously, we have republished some of this author’s articles because we obviously agree with his observations and commentary in those particular articles and believe they speak to issues currently confronting the Church in this hour, thereby serving an important purpose. However, we, nevertheless, strongly disagree with some of the author’s other doctrinal beliefs; e.g., his eschatology, i.e. preterism, amillennialism, his frequent condescending comments against strongly-held, Biblically-sound teachings concerning what is commonly referred to as “the rapture” as being “escapism,” and the millions who wholeheartedly believe in a coming rapture as “escapists,” et al.; his ecumenical views and what appears to us to be soul-tie-generated sentimentality for the Catholic church, which we regard as the one-world end-times church identified in the Bible as the Babylon church system led by “the false prophet” (who we believe to be the final Roman Catholic Pope) into which all the false religions of the world, Biblical Christianity excluded, will be coalesced; and his advocacy for syncretism or reintegration of Roman Catholic false and idolatrous doctrines into the Pentecostal/Charismatic stream. Some of his viewpoints, in our view, essentially establish him as an apologist for Roman Catholicism, an opponent of the Protestant Reformation, and an advocate for the dismantling and reversion of Protestant reforms. Indeed, that this author can write so correctly, poignantly, and prolifically regarding so many problematic issues extant in the ecclesiastical realm in this hour, and yet maintain the heterodoxical viewpoints he does, is to us an inexplicable enigma, except to point out that all these matters are rooted in Roman Catholicism, that he self-identifies as a former Catholic (see, his paid-content article: Seven Reasons Why I am Not a Roman Catholic), along with many of his family-members and friends, and as mentioned before, appears to us to have a psychological soul-tie to the Roman Catholic church, and some of its traditional religious trappings, which, again, is highly enigmatic in consideration of an article such as this one as well as many of the others we’ve republished. Update (10-13-18): In a recent phone and email exchange in which I confronted him regarding his self-publicized alliance with, endorsement and promotion of postmodernism (i.e., spiritual formation, pre-reformation mysticism, contemplative spirituality, etc.) proponents, as well as apparent acceptance and espousal of their teachings, his unequivocal response was, in essence, that he does not regard any of same to be in any way problematic or heretical, and sophomorically attempted to censure me for confronting him on these matters, despite providing him a “best of short list” of hundreds of the millions of available articles available on the Internet describing the irrefutable heterodoxy of these anti-Biblical teachings and how they lead ultimately to total apostasy. More to come on these matters in future articles. Again, despite agreeing with the concepts Joseph Mattera expressed in this article and others we have published on this site, sadly, I am also compelled to state categorically that I do not in any way endorse him or his ministry, and, in light of my recent exchanges with him regarding specific doctrinal issues, including some not mentioned here, must issue a strong warning to anyone and everyone to steer clear of his ministry, teachings, and all organizations he leads, due to his current intransigence and apparent refusal to properly consider the substantial areas of doctrinal error he espouses and promulgates. Consequently, we will not be republishing any additional articles by Joseph Mattera.]
Dr. Joseph Mattera is currently the Presiding Bishop of Christ Covenant Coalition, Overseeing Bishop of Resurrection Church in New York, and the president of U.S. Coalition of Apostolic Leaders (USCAL). His website is at: http://www.josephmattera.org.
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