“Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” (1 Corinthians 10:12)
Recently, another prominent Christian leader has fallen into moral failure. The pattern has become so predictable that the only surprising thing is how surprised people continue to act when it happens. Social media fills with shocked responses, pastoral teams scramble for damage control, and the evangelical world goes through its familiar cycle of grief, blame, and superficial reform promises.
But here’s what we need to acknowledge: these failures aren’t mysterious anomalies that blindside the church out of nowhere. They’re the natural and predictable fruit of a church culture that has systematically abandoned biblical patterns of accountability, discipline, and shepherding in favor of celebrity culture and brand management.
The phenomenon we continue to witness is not primarily about moral exceptionalism or inexplicable spiritual collapse. It’s about ecclesiastical negligence and structural disobedience to biblical church government. Until we’re willing to be honest about the systemic issues that create these conditions, we’ll keep recycling through the same tired pattern of scandal, shock, and cosmetic changes that address symptoms while ignoring root causes.
Let me offer several theological and practical observations, rooted in the Reformed tradition, that explain why this keeps happening and why we shouldn’t be nearly as surprised as we act.
The Fundamental Problem: Celebrity Culture Is Anti-Biblical
The very concept of a “Christian celebrity” represents a theological departure from biblical ecclesiology, and it’s one with serious consequences.
The church was never designed to elevate individuals to superstar status where their personal charisma grants them authority beyond their biblical office. Christ alone is the Head of the Church (Colossians 1:18). When we exalt men beyond their proper ecclesiastical role—when we treat platform size and speaking ability as if they confer special spiritual authority—we’ve already departed from the biblical pattern and created conditions ripe for moral failure.
The Westminster Larger Catechism addresses this directly in Question 105, dealing with sins forbidden in the first commandment. Among the sins it identifies are “self-love, self-seeking, and all other inordinate and immoderate setting of our mind, will, or affections upon other things, and taking them off from him in whole or in part” as well as “making men the lords of our faith and conscience.” Celebrity culture does precisely this: it replaces God’s glory with human glory and makes fallible men the functional lords of our faith, creating an environment where leaders become intoxicated by adoration rather than humbled by their calling to serve Christ’s sheep.
This isn’t obscure theological nitpicking. It’s basic biblical ecclesiology that we’ve chosen to ignore because it interferes with our marketing strategies and fundraising goals.
Where Exactly Are the Elders?
A recurring pattern in these scandals raises an uncomfortable question: when these prominent leaders fall into serious sin, where were their elders?
The consistent reality is that many of these celebrities operate without meaningful ecclesiastical oversight. They’re either not under genuine elder authority in a local church, or they’re accountable only to boards more concerned with protecting organizational reputation than exercising biblical soul care. This isn’t an accident—it’s often by design, because real accountability would limit the autonomy that celebrity culture requires.
The Scots Confession identifies three essential marks of the true church: the preaching of the Word, the right administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of discipline. Notice that discipline isn’t presented as optional or culturally conditioned—it’s a mark of the true church.
But we’ve systematically decided that discipline is unloving, that correction is impolite, and that accountability stifles ministry effectiveness. So sin festers in private, unchallenged and unaddressed, until it erupts in public scandal that damages far more people than private correction ever would have.
All that said, we shouldn’t act shocked when leaders who operate outside biblical church government eventually demonstrate why biblical church government exists in the first place.
The Assumption That Platform Equals Spiritual Maturity
At the end of the day, much of our surprise at these failures stems from a fundamental assumption that has no biblical warrant: the idea that ministry success indicates spiritual maturity or immunity from serious temptation.
The Heidelberg Catechism reminds us with sobering clarity that even the holiest believers have only “a small beginning of obedience” in this life (Question 114). Translation: nobody gets to coast spiritually, and public ministry success doesn’t create a spiritual safety zone where normal Christian vigilance becomes unnecessary.
These moral failures aren’t sudden explosions that come out of nowhere. They’re slow leaks—sin indulged privately, compromise rationalized gradually, accountability avoided systematically. What begins in secret eventually gets “shouted from the rooftops” (Luke 12:3), not because God is cruel, but because he is merciful and won’t allow his people to persist indefinitely in destructive self-deception.
John Owen’s famous warning bears repeating: “Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.” When Christian leaders assume their public platform exempts them from the daily spiritual warfare that every believer must engage in, they’ve already begun the process that leads to public failure.
The Strategic Reality of Spiritual Warfare
While we’re analyzing human failures and systemic problems, we shouldn’t ignore the spiritual dimension that Scripture clearly teaches.
Ephesians 6:12 reminds us that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Satan has a strategy, and it’s not particularly complicated.
Why does he target prominent Christian leaders? Because their fall brings maximum damage to Christ’s reputation and maximum discouragement to the church. It’s basic spiritual warfare tactics—concentrate your attacks where they’ll do the most damage to the enemy’s cause.
The Canons of Dort acknowledge that true believers can fall into serious sins, while affirming that God’s preservation includes warning, discipline, and restoration—not immunity from temptation. When we ignore this reality and assume that prominent leaders are somehow exempt from the normal patterns of spiritual attack, we’re setting both the leaders and the churches that follow them up for devastating failure.
Satan loves celebrity culture in the church because it concentrates maximum temptation on individuals with minimum accountability. From a strategic standpoint, it’s brilliant.
The Problem with Cheap Grace
Much of contemporary evangelical culture has embraced what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”—a gospel that promises forgiveness without demanding transformation, that offers comfort without requiring repentance.
This theological error has created an environment where persistent, unrepentant sin gets met with brand damage control and public relations management instead of biblical church discipline. We’ve become more concerned with protecting organizational reputation than exercising the kind of loving correction that might actually restore fallen leaders and protect the sheep under their care.
The Belgic Confession rightly affirms in Article 24 that true faith “So then, it is impossible for this holy faith to be unfruitful in a human being, seeing that we do not speak of an empty faith but of what Scripture calls ‘faith working through love,'” If a leader’s life is characterized by ongoing, unrepentant sin, the proper biblical response isn’t reputation management and carefully crafted public statements—it’s discipline and, if necessary, excommunication.
Grace and holiness aren’t competing values—they’re partners in the gospel. Grace that doesn’t produce holiness isn’t biblical grace at all, but a therapeutic substitute that inoculates people against genuine godliness while maintaining the appearance of evangelical orthodoxy.
What Biblical Reform Actually Looks Like
These scandals should drive us toward genuine reformation, not just temporary damage control followed by a return to business as usual.
We need churches that prize character over charisma, where the quiet faithfulness of godly men is valued more than the spectacular gifts of dynamic personalities. We need elders who understand their calling to shepherd the flock rather than build personal empires or protect institutional brands. We need congregations that expect—and actively support—genuine accountability from their leaders, even when it’s inconvenient or costly.
Most fundamentally, we need to recover confidence in what Reformed theology calls the ordinary means of grace: Word, sacrament, and discipline, administered faithfully and consistently. These aren’t outdated traditions that we can improve upon with modern ministry techniques—they’re divine safeguards that God has provided for the health and purity of his people.
The solution isn’t to abandon human leadership entirely, but to return to biblical patterns of church life that recognize both the necessity and the limitations of human authority under Christ.
The Hope That Doesn’t Disappoint
Here’s what should actually comfort us in the midst of these recurring scandals: our hope was never supposed to rest in fallible human leaders in the first place.
When prominent pastors and teachers fall, we’re reminded of our desperate need for the one perfect Shepherd who never fails, never compromises, and never abandons his flock. Jesus Christ is the faithful and true Pastor who “is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy” (Jude 1:24).
The scandals that periodically rock the evangelical world aren’t proof that Christianity is false—they’re proof that it’s necessary. They point us away from the shifting sand of human achievement and celebrity, and back to the solid rock of Christ’s perfect righteousness and unfailing shepherding.
The Bottom Line
Let these failures serve as a wake-up call to biblical fidelity rather than cynical resignation. They should drive us toward genuine accountability, humble dependence on God’s grace, and a sober recognition that none of us are immune to serious sin apart from the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.
The pattern is clear, the contributing factors are identifiable, and the biblical solution is available. The question is whether we’re willing to implement changes that might be costly to our current ministry models but necessary for spiritual health.
Until we’re willing to abandon the celebrity culture that systematically creates these conditions, we’ll keep getting the same results. And frankly, we’ll deserve them.
Our current approach to Christian leadership has produced consistently inconsistent results. We’ve built a system that systematically creates the conditions for the very failures we claim to want to prevent. Perhaps it’s time to abandon what obviously isn’t working and try something that actually aligns with Scripture instead.
The scandals will continue until we address the systemic issues that create them. The choice is ours.