What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. (1 Corinthians 3:5)

Every year at the Desiring God pastor’s conference, John Piper delivers a talk on a famous Christian from history. These are, collectively, the best lectures I’ve ever heard - by turns informative, amusing, gripping and inspiring. I’m downloading the latest lecture as we speak (on CS Lewis), and I’m relishing the prospect of listening to it.

Piper gives these lectures, he says, because Christians need heroes. And that is where he gets it wrong.

I used to agree with him. A few years ago I too wanted heroes, heroes of the faith. Men to look up to, and to be inspired by. But a friend pulled me up sharply when I described myself as a “fan” of a certain preacher. A preacher should not have “fans”, he said. And a Christian needs no heroes other than Christ. The great danger, my friend said, was idolatry - the regular Christian idolising the high profile leader, and the leader idolising the adulation of his fans. 

I argued at first, but my protests grew weaker as the conversation went on. And as I’ve reflected on this since then, I’ve become more and more convinced that my friend is right. We don’t need heroes in the faith, and we don’t need legions of fans adoring their favourite preacher.

Sometimes I’ve heard these high profile leaders referred to as “great ones”. How dangerous for us - and how dangerous for them? What if some of these men start to really believe they are great? To believe they are something more than the brother and servant of the humblest Christian sitting in the pews?

We don’t need any more heroes - let us be fans of Christ alone.