Amy Grant fights for church her great-grandfather founded

Amy Grant was the first Christian artist I can remember hearing on the radio. Often called the “Queen of Christian Pop,” she has won six Grammy Awards and had the first Christian album to go platinum.

Now she’s in the news for a very different reason. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that she is “fighting to save the church founded by her great-grandfather, Nashville, Tenn., civic leader AM Burton.”

According to the article, the red-brick building served as the thriving Central Church of Christ for decades, with hundreds of members. It’s now boarded up, however, and is the focus of a yearslong conflict as Grant and her relatives are battling with a businessman who joined the church in 2017 and soon became an elder and gained control of the board.

The article tells the rest of the sad story, much of which is still in legal dispute.

World’s wealthiest evangelist sells Florida condo

In other news, the world’s wealthiest evangelist has listed his 6,121-square-foot beachfront condo in Florida for almost $14.6 million.

Edir Macedo of Brazil has a Forbes estimated net worth of $1.7 billion. According to Christian Post, he is a businessman, runs a TV network, owns a Brazilian bank, and is the bishop of the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God), with campuses in Brazil, Portugal, Mexico, the US, and other nations. His church constructed a modern replica of Solomon’s temple in Brazil and owns four jets plus a helicopter.

Allegations of money laundering in the billions have dogged him and his church for years. After Angola’s Criminal Investigation Service charged four church leaders with financial crimes, Angolan immigration authorities ordered twenty-two Brazilian church members to leave the country. A television channel owned by the church was suspended by the government as well.

To such stories, we can add the clergy abuse scandals of recent years. The denomination where I became a Christian has been rocked, as have prominent ministers over the years and in recent days.

If you were not a Christian, would these stories deter you from becoming one? They would me.

If I led your church choir

It’s only natural to judge a group by its leaders.

If you heard me sing, you’d never hire me to lead your church choir. If you did, the choir would soon find another church lest they be judged by my ineptitude. The same would be true if I were to coach a hockey team or do most anything outside my writing “lane” these days.

So it is with any organization that chooses its leader—we assume they wanted this person to represent them and that they are happy with the association. If we are already biased against joining their group, the failings of their leadership provide all the justification we think we need for our opinion.

So it is especially with the Christian church. To outsiders, we are asking for time and money they don’t wish to spare. We tell them that they need to repent of their sins, but they probably don’t want to do so and may not believe that “sins” exist, anyway. We ask them to put their trust in a Savior they cannot see and a book that is twenty centuries old.

Even in the best of terms, these are large “asks.” And when our leaders betray our message, they loom even larger.

Add our claim that our message transforms those who embrace it, producing characteristics such as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23), and outsiders feel even more justified in questioning our merits in light of our leaders’ failures.

Why Satan tried to “sift” Peter

Let’s begin our response by being sure such questioning doesn’t take root in our own minds and hearts.

While we have every right to expect our leaders to represent Jesus well, we know that they are as human as the rest of us. Even Paul, the greatest evangelist, missionary, and theologian in Christian history, was honest to admit: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15). Unfortunately, every Christian, including every Christian leader, can say the same.

This is because trusting in Christ does not remove our free will or brainwash our minds. We do not become automatons who must always and only do the bidding of our master.

In some ways, we are even more on the Enemy’s radar, because he knows that tempting Christian leaders to fall from their ladder of visibility will harm everyone they hurt on the way down. It is noteworthy that Satan sought to “sift” Peter “like wheat” and not a less visible apostle (Luke 22:31).

So, it is urgent that we pray daily for our leaders (1 Timothy 2:1–2), asking God to help them live in ways that honor our Lord. It is just as urgent that we hold them accountable to biblical standards of personal and public conduct (cf. 1 Timothy 5:19–21). But it is also vital that we not measure Christ by fallen humans, even our leaders.

None of us will be perfect in this broken world. To turn from Jesus because someone else does is akin to rejecting medical science because a particular doctor happens to fail us. The more people disappoint us, the more we need to set our “minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2).

The darker the room, the more powerful the light

This conversation leads to a second practical consequence: Representing Jesus as his “ambassador” is incumbent upon us all (2 Corinthians 5:20), not just the “paid Christians” who lead our churches. In this day of social media, you and I have a platform for influencing others that did not exist even a few years ago. We can tell the world what Jesus has done for us in ways the secularized culture cannot stop or easily dismiss.

The more public we are about our faith with those who know us, the more we minimize the damage done to the Church’s witness by public leaders who are not known personally by our friends. They are more likely to view the failings of distant figures through the prism of their personal engagement with us.

As a result, every time we see a story about a Christian leader’s failure, let’s intercede for the person and their family while redoubling our commitment to represent Jesus well ourselves. As we submit to his Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), we manifest his character (Romans 8:29) and others will know we have been with Jesus (cf. Acts 4:13).

We can expect bad news about Christian leaders to continue making the news. Not only because we are all just as fallen as ever, but because secularized writers and editors in our “post-Christian” culture have a bias for such reporting and know that it “sells” to secularized audiences.

So let’s be the change we wish to see, modeling the difference Christ makes as we live and serve as “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). The darker the room, the more powerful the light.

John Newton’s epitaph

John Newton was a slave trader who became a slave himself, converted to Christ in 1748, became pastor of a church in Olney, England, and wrote the beloved hymn “Amazing Grace.”

Some years ago, I had the privilege of visiting Newton’s church and graveside. Here is the epitaph I found, written by Newton himself:

John Newton, Clerk

once an infidel and libertine,

A servant of slaves in Africa,

was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour,

Jesus Christ,

Preserved, restored, pardoned,

And appointed to preach the faith

He had long labored to destroy.

What epitaph will you write today?