It is June 2021.
A microscopic, catastrophic virus. People forced into homes, onto devices. Frustrated. Conspiratorial. Never so isolated, never so online, never so exposed to unauthorised thoughts and theories. A podcast is released, one of many, but this one – this one hits a nerve for Christians. It’s called The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, and it’s about a church and its leader. The production is glossy; the musical bedding invokes primetime seriousness; the witnesses tell their stories in a compelling way; authentic audio recordings are used. It involves a scandal in a church, which is a topic people will always be interested in. But most important of all, it has a villain: Mark Driscoll. In fifteen episodes, Rise and Fall maps out a scenario many people have suspected, but few can prove: that Driscoll was a manipulative, abusive pastor. Regardless of the veracity of the claims, the podcast’s sense of theatre and flair for the dramatic is utterly riveting. Years later, many have moved on, even Driscoll himself. But those fifteen episodes do something, punching far above their weight category. They don’t just change the perception of their subject; they change the game itself.
In retrospect, it’s clear that the people who made the series weren’t evil. Their motives seemed genuine – they were trying to hold people to account for wrongdoing, and they had a fair case to make. But in the bigger picture, it marked a moment when a new path was forged, a new strategy unlocked. In so many cases, people had dealt with wayward churches or leaders by ridiculing them, by sniggering at them. But this was something different, a mood change, a moment when soft satire made room for hard exposé. People loved it. And soon they realised that they could do it too.
Today, we might not realise just how recently the mainstream exposé of churches and leaders became popular. The sheer number of skeletons being unearthed from closets makes it tempting to think that there are more corrupt church leaders than ever, but that’s surely untrue: in its infancy the church dealt with high numbers of heretical teachers and derelict shepherds, and to simply take one time period – the first three hundred years until the Council of Nicaea in 325 – is to uncover record after record of predators behind the pulpit. No, the rot in the church is as old as the church itself. What is different in our generation, though, is that we’ve never had so many ways to broadcast accusations against church leaders, and for everyone – anyone – to look informed and legitimate while doing it. Social media is the soapbox, the entire online world is the town square, and authorisation is neither requested nor required. There’s a new law in town, and justice is dispensed by anyone with a phone, a room to record in, and something they’re not happy with. The self-appointed watchdogs are out in force in our generation, and they’re ready to take on the wolves, as Paul referred to abusive leaders in Acts 20:29.
In the universe that lights up behind our screens, every voice sounds authoritative, every exposé looks compelling, every argument seems watertight, and every self-appointed watchdog looks like they’re doing a service to God’s people.
The problem, though, is that if a watchdog isn’t careful, it starts to look and sound an awful lot like a wolf itself. And the people of God, squinting through the blurry landscape, are failing to see the difference.
Paul warned the Ephesian elders about wolves because they are, of course, real. Exposés are being conducted because things legitimately need to be exposed; many church leaders are being called out with good reason and with an urgency that is entirely appropriate. But amidst a genuine pursuit of justice and accountability, something else is going on. We’re in the middle of a free-for-all, a street fight where the only rule is that there are none. We used to call the online world a Wild West, but it now lacks even the basic restraining mechanisms of the historic Wild West, which at least had a sheriff or two. We’re in uncharted territory. Everyone has a platform, everyone has a voice, words have no consequence, blue ticks mean nothing, blue ticks mean everything, everybody’s right, everybody’s wrong, up is down, videos are fake, your eyes are not seeing what they’re seeing, people are bots, AI feels human, algorithms create art, nothing is what it seems. In all of this, constant streams of content fill the jaded minds of God’s people, and it’s getting harder to tell the watchdogs from the wolves. Who, exactly, do we trust?
“Avoid this person,” someone will urge.
But what if I should avoid the person who is warning me?
“Have nothing to do with this person,” someone else will instruct.
But what if I should have nothing to do with the person giving the instruction?
In the universe that lights up behind our screens, every voice sounds authoritative, every exposé looks compelling, every argument seems watertight, and every self-appointed watchdog looks like they’re doing a service to God’s people.
We need protection from many of the so-called protectors, and we’re going to be kept safe in two ways: one has to do with guarding our own hearts, and the other has to do with guarding our own contexts.
First, Our Hearts:
Love “always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres,” wrote Paul to the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 13:7, NIV). He wasn’t, contrary to modern application, writing a sermon for a wedding – he was describing the operating of spiritual gifts among God’s people. Saying that love always trusts is not a call to ignore exploitation or abuse; after all, Paul fought hard against spiritual manipulators like the Judaizers (Galatians 5:12), persecutors like Alexander the metalworker (2 Timothy 4:14-15) and heretics like Hymenaeus and Alexander (1 Timothy 1:20). But surely Paul, appealing to trust, was setting a foundational stone, a factory setting that should be present in the lives of believers. We are ready to contend – to “fight the good fight of the faith,” in Paul’s words (1 Timothy 6:12, NIV) – but we do not look at the worldwide church as adversaries to be fought. Rather, we assume goodwill unless proven otherwise, and we ascribe sincerity to other believers unless they show something opposite. We do not side-eye one another suspiciously in anticipation of some kind of falsehood. We do not see prominent church leaders and expect (or even hope for) scandal to be lurking in their vicinity, celebrating when something comes to light. No, we trust. We think, we examine, we carefully dissect doctrine, but we also trust. Even when Paul knew about preachers with blatantly, obviously self-serving motives, he both declined to name them and also celebrated that the gospel was going forth (Philippians 1:15-18).
Even when we find ourselves battling against the wolves, we still carry in our hearts the wonder of salvation. In other words, our primary purpose in this life is not to be heresy hunters – it’s to love Jesus and celebrate this gospel of grace. Look at Jude, the half-brother of Jesus. In his short epistle, he spends the majority of the twenty-five verses describing the dangers of false brothers and the condemnation that awaits them. So far, he’s sounding like a modern-day podcaster. But here’s the important part: he doesn’t want to do it. He’s not eager to expose – his heart wants to celebrate the gospel. “Dear friends,” he writes, “although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people.” (Jude 3, NIV) There it is: Jude, at his core, wants to think about this wonderful gospel. He senses the grip of urgency to direct his thoughts to the imminent dangers posed by wolves, but that’s not what makes his heart beat. The unregulated online universe is teaching us to be cranky, irritable, to dislike people, to beautify suspicion, to feed our worst impulses. But Jude is not some watchdog wanting to test out his bark: he is first and foremost a man who loves Jesus and the gospel, and he will fight where he must, in proportion to the urgency. This is where we want to find ourselves. This is who we want to be, as we guard our hearts.
… our primary purpose in this life is not to be heresy hunters – it’s to love Jesus and celebrate this gospel of grace.
Secondly, We Guard Our Contexts:
The question is not whether alarms should sound on wolves in the church; the question is who should sound them and how they should do it. The world online is autonomous, isolated, atomised, individualistic. It functions as some kind of dogfight for authority – whoever shouts the loudest gets heard. Whoever wants to tear down the system gets applauded. It’s a revolutionary space. But the church God is building is not a revolutionary space: it’s a house of proper order, of proper relationships. We don’t need roaming watchdogs without leashes telling us what we should be doing; we need to align ourselves under the apostolic authority God has given us. We will flourish and be kept safe when we recognise the grace gifts God has placed among us for our protection, and when we seek out wisdom from the leaders God has given us, not the voices YouTube has lined up on our feeds.
The church functions under the authority of apostolic gifts, in God-given fields, and much trouble is avoided by staying within the field God has assigned to us (2 Corinthians 10:13). It doesn’t mean we don’t have things to say about those outside of our field – it just means we’re careful about our limits, where God has placed us and what we do in the sphere God has given to us. If something needs to be addressed in our field of churches, we actually have a way of doing it without slinging epithets at people from vast distances. And that means that when scandals erupt in fields of churches that are not our own, we are extremely careful about wading into discourse involving things we don’t understand or have proof about. That’s how, beyond guarding our hearts, we also guard our context in these confusing times.
The church functions under the authority of apostolic gifts, in God-given fields, and much trouble is avoided by staying within the field God has assigned to us.
Let’s go back to June of 2021. I could not say with confidence that The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill was a sinful podcast, or that it was even unwise. Decent, godly people seemed to have been behind its creation. But it was influential. It opened up a world of possibilities, and into that gap many, many armchair critics, spiritual sleuths, and grudge-bearing combatants have emerged. This new ability to slander anyone on the public stage is both refining and testing God’s church, and the new exposé culture we see around us should be a source of deep sadness: for the fact that much of it is true, and also because it has opened the door to false accusations and hypocritical judgment. Our feeds are filled with watchdogs and wolves, and it’s becoming harder and harder to tell them apart.
So, let’s give Paul the last word. In his second letter to Timothy, after outlining the coming abandonment of truth and embracing of myths in God’s household, he then says to Timothy: “But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.” (2 Timothy 4:5, NIV) This is our great encouragement today – to lift our heads out of the swirling mass of accusations and exposés that are all around us, to turn the volume down on the gnashing watchdogs, and to get on with the job of carrying this precious gospel forward.
