CHURCH MUST DISCERN BETWEEN POPULARITY AND GREATNESS
“If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour” (JOHN 12:26)
Human society generally has fallen into the error of assuming that greatness and fame are synonymous. Americans appear to take for granted that each generation provides a certain number of superior men and the democratic processes unerringly find those men and set them in a place of prominence. How wrong can people get!

We have but to become acquainted with, or even listen to, the big names of our times to discover how wretchedly inferior most of them are! Many appear to have arrived at their present eminence by pull, brass, nerve, gall and lucky accident.

If we would see life steadily and see it whole we must make a stern effort to break away from the power of that false philosophy that equates greatness with fame. The two may be and often are oceans and continents apart!

If the church were a body wholly unaffected by the world we could toss the above problem over to the secular philosophers; but the truth is that the church also suffers from this evil notion!

Christians have fallen into the habit of accepting the noisiest and most notorious among them as the best and the greatest. They too have learned to equate popularity with excellence. In open defiance of the Sermon on the Mount, they have given their approval not to the meek but to the self-assertive; not to the mourner but to the self-assured; not to the pure in heart who see God but to the publicity hunter who seeks headlines!

A. W. Tozer