There's More to Ministry Than Charisma!
I was just barely removed from a life drenched in substance abuse and all other kinds of depravities when scores of well-meaning Christians began to inform me that I was "destined for greatness." I was bombarded left and right with predictions about all the big and marvelous ways in which God was going to use me.
They said a guy with my kind of testimony and gifts was sure to follow in the footsteps of spiritual giants like C.S. Lewis. And it wasn't just me who was receiving these supposed words from the Lord. I was submerged in a Christian culture where anybody with a scandalous story and decent communication skills was labeled a future "world-changer."
Though it was masked by spiritual language, self-promotional ideology was abundantly present in the Christian circles I ran in. There was more talk about networking and platform-enlarging strategies than there was about Jesus and His Gospel.
Though no one would have admitted it, the mentality was that your success as a Christian is determined by the effectiveness of your ministry, and the effectiveness of your ministry is determined by the scope of your influence. And people did whatever they could to be successful and effective!
