The Corinthian church's 'I am of Paul' celebrity culture from two thousand years ago has resurfaced in today's church under a different name. This opening article in the 'Modern Corinth' series examines the trap of 'spiritual manipulation' through two parallel lenses — 'leader worship' and 'the pedestal-and-crash dynamic' — and prescribes a two-sided remedy drawn from the examples of Paul, Peter, Jesus, and the Bereans: leaders returning to their role as servants and stewards, and believers reclaiming their dignity as saints.
Speaker: Pastor Bond · Scripture: 林前1:12-13
Pastor Bond · May 2026 · Compiled with Claude's assistance · Part One of the "Modern Corinth" series
You have surely seen this before.
A company founder gets crowned "godfather" by the media; employees hang his quotes on the wall and investors treat his every judgment as gospel — until a scandal breaks, and those same outlets shred him with equal enthusiasm. A pop star is adored by fans who spend millions on birthday tributes, yet the moment he says one wrong thing or dates the wrong person, the same people who cried "I'll love you forever" are burning his posters in the street.
This pattern has a fitting Chinese name: pěng shā — "pedestal and crash": lifting someone to a height they were never meant to occupy, then waiting to watch them fall.
We might assume this is purely a "worldly" problem with nothing to do with the church. But honest self-examination reveals that this deeply human impulse can quietly work its way into the church's wheat field as well. Not because the church is corrupt, but because every person in the church — you and I included — walks through the door with the same idol-prone heart.
Nearly two thousand years ago, the apostle Paul received a piece of news that broke his heart.
The church at Corinth had a problem. Not a heresy invasion, not an approaching persecution — but something that seemed less serious on the surface, yet was slowly eating away at the church's foundation: the brothers and sisters had started playing favorites.
"Now I mean this, that each one of you says, 'I follow Paul,' 'I follow Apollos,' 'I follow Cephas,' and 'I follow Christ.'" (1 Corinthians 1:12)
Paul, Apollos, and Cephas were all gifted leaders in the early church: Paul excelled at planting churches, Apollos was a brilliant speaker, and Cephas was an apostle chosen personally by Jesus. The Corinthian believers hadn't done anything obviously wrong — they had simply, quite naturally, been drawn to different leaders of different styles, and had begun to define their spiritual identity by those leaders' names.
But Paul cut straight to the heart of the matter: "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized into the name of Paul?" (1 Corinthians 1:13)
Each of these three rhetorical questions pulls the believers' gaze away from human figures and back to Christ. Paul wasn't being falsely modest — he was doing something far more fundamental: dismantling an altar in the human heart that should never have been built.
This impulse to place a person on an altar is not unique to the Corinthian church. It runs deep in a post-fall human anxiety: we are afraid to face the invisible God directly, so we constantly look for a visible, tangible human being to serve as our go-between.
If leader worship stayed at the level of mere fandom, it might be written off as human nature. But Scripture repeatedly warns us: when people concentrate their hope in a single person, that position very easily becomes a throne it was never meant to be.
Extreme historical cases leave heavy warnings: the rise of Nazi Germany, Japan's emperor worship — both were driven by the same underlying danger. Once a leader is invested with a divine aura, questioning becomes blasphemy and obedience is repackaged as faith. But the most fundamental warning for the church does not come from modern political history; it was written in Scripture three thousand years ago.
In 1 Samuel 8, the people of Israel came to the aged Samuel with a request: "Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations."
The request sounded reasonable: Samuel was old, his sons were dishonest, and Israel needed strong leadership. But God spoke a sobering word to Samuel: "They have not rejected you, but they have rejected me as the king over them." (1 Samuel 8:7)
The people's problem was not that they wanted good governance. It was that they wanted a visible king to replace an invisible God — they could not bear a life of walking by faith, and they wanted someone who would make decisions for them and give them a sense of security.
Then Samuel issued that famous warning about what a king would do to them: "He will take your sons… He will take the best of your fields… He will take a tenth of your grain and your vineyards… You will be his servants." (1 Samuel 8:11–17) The relentless repetition of "he will take" paints a panoramic portrait of control — and all of it traces back to one choice the people made themselves: we want a human being to lead us.
The prophecy was fulfilled in exact detail. When Saul was first made king, he was humble enough to hide among the baggage (1 Samuel 10:22); once he was secure on the throne, he grew jealous and paranoid, hunting David down and slaughtering the priests of Nob, until he collapsed entirely. From a celebrated young leader to a paranoid tyrant — the road was far shorter than anyone imagined.
The church, of course, will never become this extreme. But the underlying logic is the same. When a community grows accustomed to "whatever the pastor says is what God says," when questioning is equated with "insubordination," when leaving is labelled "being taken captive by the enemy" — we may not realize that a small "king's throne" has quietly been erected inside the church.
Paul described this kind of "super-apostle" in 2 Corinthians: they "bring you into bondage, devour you, take captive, exalt themselves, and strike you on the face" (2 Corinthians 11:20). In today's church, corresponding patterns are more common than we might think. The list below is not meant to accuse anyone. It is an invitation — for pastors and believers alike — to examine whether any of these patterns can be glimpsed in our own church communities:
① Treating obedience as absolute. Scripture does teach believers to respect their leaders, for pastors watch over our souls and will give an account to God (Hebrews 13:17). We should also be honest with ourselves: much of the time when we resist pastoral guidance, the pastor hasn't said anything wrong — we simply don't want to be touched by the truth. But respect is not the same as unconditional compliance. When "submission to authority" is reduced to agreeing with every personal opinion the pastor holds, and questioning is labelled "touching the Lord's anointed" or "pride" — even requiring public confession — a line has been crossed. Healthy submission is submission to truth, not blind deference to a person.
② Wrapping personal decisions in 'God's will.' Some leaders habitually use phrases like "After praying for you, I sense that God is saying…" to insert themselves into believers' private lives: their careers, relationships, even which school their children attend. When personal opinions are wrapped in "spiritual impressions," refusing the pastor's "suggestion" feels like refusing God himself, and believers find it very hard to say no. To be fair, most pastors act out of genuine love — but it is often a parental kind of love: I know what's best for you, I'll decide for you, I'm afraid you'll take a wrong turn. This is not the heart of the father in Luke 15. When the younger son insisted on leaving, the father didn't lock the door or issue threats — he let him go, then stood watching the road every day waiting for him to come home. Shepherding that truly reflects the heavenly Father means giving people the freedom to choose after teaching them — even when their choice is imperfect and costly — and walking through the consequences alongside them.
③ Creating dependency through 'spiritual covering.' Some churches teach that believers must remain under the pastor's "spiritual covering," implying that leaving will remove their protection and make them vulnerable to "enemy attack." This converts what should be a direct, unobstructed relationship between the believer and God into one that must be mediated through the pastor — artificially creating spiritual dependency, as if God's grace cannot reach you without the pastor's "covering."
④ Erecting excessive denominational walls and monopolizing the interpretation of truth. Some pastors build walls too high in theology, treating their own denomination or tradition as the sole orthodoxy while dismissing every other orthodox tradition in the Christian spectrum as heresy and dangerous error. Believers are permitted to hear only one voice on nearly every passage. The motivation behind this can be complex: some pastors are genuinely trying to protect their people from false teaching — a noble impulse — but at times the insistence on "sound doctrine" quietly slides into a defence of personal authority: my interpretation is the definitive answer and cannot be challenged. That is no longer guarding truth; it is imitating the late-medieval papacy, positioning oneself as the church's sole "spokesman for truth." A healthy church holds a clear confession of core beliefs while leaving room, in grace, for different understandings on non-essential matters. Only Scripture is without error; no denomination or pastor is.
⑤ Generating ongoing spiritual anxiety. Believers are perpetually nudged with the message "you are not enough": not consistent enough in devotional life, not generous enough in giving, not spiritually mature enough. This atmosphere of never-met standards keeps people living in chronic guilt and self-doubt, with no affirmation that "you have grown in grace." Recognizing sin is absolutely important — in fact, many churches today lack precisely this. But if the message relentlessly emphasizes how terrible sin is while rarely speaking of grace and the glory of the resurrection, shame will replace grace as the actual engine of spiritual growth. The gospel is good news that sets people free; in this imbalance it becomes a burden that grows heavier with every step.
⑥ Turning ministry into obligation rather than grace. Believers are under constant pressure to invest more and more time in church activities: meetings, rehearsals, visitation, committees. When someone wants to rest or spend time with their family, what awaits them might be: "Where does God rank on your priority list?" or "The Lord Jesus died on the cross for you — can't you give everything for him?" Ministry is no longer a response to grace; it becomes a spiritual debt that can never be fully repaid.
⑦ Excessive monitoring in the name of 'pastoral care.' Pastors caring about whether believers are attending, and warning the congregation to be alert to false teaching — these are legitimate pastoral responsibilities. But there is a subtle line between manipulative surveillance and healthy care. Healthy care comes from love and asks, "Are you doing all right?" Manipulative surveillance asks, "Why weren't you here?" — concerned not with your wellbeing but with whether you have slipped outside the leader's control. When normal friendships with people outside the church are called "keeping company with the world," when visiting another orthodox church is seen as "disloyalty," when a person's entire social circle is compressed to include only members of that one church — care has crossed the line into control.
⑧ Using the pulpit to indirectly call out individuals. Some leaders use sermons to make thinly veiled allusions to specific people or situations. The person in question knows exactly what is being said but has no way to respond — the pulpit thus descends from a place for proclaiming God's Word to a tool for public shaming. That said, believers must also guard their own hearts while listening. James says, "Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger" (James 1:19) — don't become hyper-sensitive, constantly reading yourself into the pastor's message. It is a pastor's duty to point out sin and human weakness from the pulpit. When a word "stings," the first step is to sit quietly and examine: is this the Holy Spirit using God's Word to speak to me?
⑨ Using ministry positions as a system of reward and punishment. Those who comply and show no resistance are elevated to visible roles — the worship team, the pulpit, small group leadership. Those who have raised concerns or aren't "cooperative enough" are quietly reassigned or pushed to the margins. Ministry opportunities come to depend not on gifts and calling but on loyalty to the leader, and over time the inner team becomes a closed circle filtered entirely by that loyalty.
⑩ Non-transparent decision-making and asymmetric information. Major decisions on finances, personnel, and ministry direction are made by a small number of people in closed meetings, leaving ordinary members only to be notified. Ask for details and the usual answer is, "You need to trust leadership." But trust is built on transparency; non-transparency does not cultivate trust — it cultivates blind compliance. Certainly, in contexts of persecution, some information is genuinely sensitive — financial details, for example, could be used by outside forces to target the church — and pastoral caution is understandable, with many wise ways to balance security and transparency. But as a general posture, the church should err toward openness: concealment should not be the default, and security concerns should not become a shield against all accountability.
⑪ Using 'unity' and 'witness' to silence dissent. When someone raises a well-intentioned question about a decision, the response may be: "We need to maintain unity" or "Don't cause division." Unity is properly the work of the Holy Spirit; here it has been reduced to "no dissenting opinions allowed." True unity is a consensus forged in truth and love — not everyone going silent. The unity Paul pursued in 1 Corinthians was achieved precisely by confronting problems head-on and discussing them openly. A related pattern is silencing people in the name of "protecting the church's witness": when a scandal or act of harm occurs in the church, instead of open acknowledgment, sincere apology, and genuine reflection, those who know are pressured to keep quiet — as if the problem ceases to exist as long as no one speaks of it. This not only conceals the truth but inflicts a second wound on victims, whose pain is told it must be silent "for the sake of the greater good."
⑫ Stigmatizing those who leave with spiritual labels. When brothers or sisters can no longer endure the manipulation and choose to leave, those who remain may hear: "They have a spirit of Jezebel," "They've been taken captive by the enemy," "They've gone into the wilderness." These labels wound those who have left and plant fear in the congregation — making people feel that leaving this particular church is the same as leaving God.
These patterns are not necessarily born of malice. Many times, leaders themselves are completely unaware that these dynamics exist, because the environment in which they grew up — and learned leadership — operated exactly this way.
Yet leader worship has another side — one that is often overlooked, but equally destructive. When we place a person on a pedestal, we are simultaneously binding them with a set of impossible expectations.
In some churches, believers hold contradictory expectations of their pastor: they see him as a "spiritual giant" who must always have wisdom and never show weakness, and yet they also feel that a "spiritual giant" ought to embrace simplicity and poverty — only a meagre salary proves he's serving God rather than just earning a living. But this forgets what God himself teaches: in the Old Testament, God arranged for the Levites who served in the sanctuary to be well provided for (Numbers 18:21); in the New Testament, Paul asked, "What soldier ever serves at his own expense?" and said, "Even so the Lord ordained that those who proclaim the Good News should live from the Good News" (1 Corinthians 9:7, 14). People also forget that a pastor is simultaneously a husband, a father, a son — a person with real responsibilities. If his life looks too "ordinary," someone will murmur that he "loves the world"; if he lets his weariness show, others will suspect his "spiritual life must not be good."
The pastor's wife and children often bear their own silent and heavy pressure. In many churches, hiring a pastor implicitly means hiring a free full-time co-worker: the pastor's wife is expected to take charge of worship, Sunday school, the women's fellowship, visitation, and miscellaneous tasks — all packaged as "joyful service," and any reluctance earns the label "not loving the Lord enough." The pastor's children (often called "PKs," pastor's kids) are scrutinized from childhood as "model Christians" and not even permitted the ordinary mistakes every child makes, because "how could a pastor's child act like that?" Many PKs grow up with deep alienation from the faith as a result.
All of this is the pedestal-and-crash dynamic working itself out in different forms. Elevating a person to "spiritual giant" status is setting him up for a fall that is all but inevitable. It looks like honour on the surface; at its core it is another form of control: since you stand in that position, you must live by our script. And the moment he no longer meets expectations — whether he has made a genuine mistake or simply made an unpopular decision — the same hands that lifted him will quickly become the hands that push him down. A celebrity is adored by everyone online today and publicly destroyed for one misstep tomorrow. The church version is more hidden, but the nature is the same: we never treated the leader as a fellow human being like ourselves. We either look up to him or we put him on trial — the one thing we are unwilling to do is walk alongside him as equals.
In the face of leader worship at Corinth, Paul's prescription works in two directions: he simultaneously corrects the congregation's misunderstanding of their leaders and their underestimation of themselves.
Paul offers a definition that sounds simple but runs very deep:
"Who then is Apollos, and who is Paul, but servants through whom you believed, and each as the Lord gave to him? I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase." (1 Corinthians 3:5–6)
Servants (Greek: diakonos — literally, a table-waiter, someone who brings dishes to guests at a feast). Paul immediately goes on to call leaders "stewards of God's mysteries" (1 Corinthians 4:1) — a steward (oikonomos) manages property that does not belong to him; his authority is delegated, and he must give account to the master. This positioning dismantles two distortions precisely: a steward should not be worshipped, because the estate is not his; nor should he be exploited, because he carries a role and dignity bestowed by the master.
Decades later, Peter said to the elders: "Shepherd the flock of God which is among you… neither as lording it over those entrusted to you, but making yourselves examples to the flock." (1 Peter 5:2–3) A leader's authority does not operate through control; it makes its impact through a life that is worth following.
Jesus' teaching goes even further. When his disciples argued about who was greatest, he said: "Whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant" (Matthew 20:26) — and "servant" here is the exact word Paul used to describe himself: diakonos. The world operates by a logic of top-down control; the church must operate by the opposite logic: the greatest serves everyone. Jesus even said, "Call no man on the earth your father… neither be called masters" (Matthew 23:9–10) — speaking directly against the religious leader worship of his day. This is not a rule about titles; it is a foundational principle: in the community of faith, no human being should occupy the place that belongs to God alone. No leader, however gifted, is the mediator between believers and God, or the final authority on faith.
But Paul's prescription is not simply "bring the leader down a peg." If that were all, believers would fall into another predicament: without an idol, who am I?
Paul answered this at the very opening of his letter, calling the Corinthians "those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints" (1 Corinthians 1:2). Saint (Greek: hagios, rooted in the meaning "set apart for God," related to "holy") — this word is not reserved for monastery ascetics or great martyrs. Paul used it for a congregation full of problems and ordinary people, because they had been set apart from this world by God and now belonged to him. He is saying: every single one of you has an identity and a dignity that comes directly from Christ; you do not need to obtain spiritual value through any human intermediary. You can — and should — come before God directly, receive his Word for yourselves, and make your own judgments before him.
There is an often-overlooked example in the book of Acts. When Paul came to Berea to preach, the believers there "received the word with all readiness of the mind, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so" (Acts 17:11). They were dealing with Paul himself — the most important founding apostle of the Gentile church — and yet they did not simply accept everything on the strength of his reputation. They listened, they received the message, and then they examined it for themselves. Luke did not criticize them for "showing insufficient respect"; on the contrary, he praised them as "more noble" (eugenēs — more honourable in character) than the Thessalonians.
This is the healthy posture of faith: remaining open and respectful toward a leader's teaching while maintaining independent verification against the truth. Neither blind compliance nor hostility — but holding truth as the final standard, in love.
At this point, some readers may ask: are there really that many problems in the church?
There are. But these problems are not unique to the church. The workplace has psychological manipulation, families have emotional coercion, political circles have power worship, academia has supervisors who control students. Manipulation and idolization are afflictions of fallen humanity; the reason the church has these weeds too is that every person in the church — every single one — walked in from this very same weed-infested world.
But the wheat field is still a wheat field. The presence of weeds does not negate the value of the wheat.
We write these words not to make anyone afraid of the church or to drive people away from it. Quite the opposite: it is precisely because we love the church deeply that we are willing to face these problems honestly. The church is God's most beautiful creation in this fallen world — a community purchased with his own Son's blood. The great project is still under construction, and the dust and scaffolding on the building site cannot negate the glory of the blueprint. Just as someone who cares about their body does not ignore warning signs on a medical report, those who truly love the church should not turn a blind eye to these patterns.
Paul's letter to the Corinthians is full of sharp correction on every page, yet he never gave up on this church. Before his most severe rebuke, he called them "saints"; after his most pointed criticism, what followed was: "My love be with all of you in Christ Jesus." (1 Corinthians 16:24)
This is also the posture in which we write this series: not attacking the church, but watching over the wheat field — identifying the weeds that have crept in, while trusting that the Master who sowed the seed will bring in the harvest in his time.
This article is part of the "Modern Corinth" series. The series takes 1 and 2 Corinthians as its framework to explore common challenges in the contemporary church, with the hope of growing together in grace and truth.
💬 After reading this article, if you have any reflections or questions, you are welcome to ask Pastor Bond:
- "What does 'I am of Paul' look like in today's church?"
- "What is 'spiritual manipulation'?"
- "How do I both respect my leaders and avoid turning them into an idol?"