This morning, I would like to share a frustrating experience. It started some years ago when I ran across a story which struck me as a great illustration for a sermon.

Author Nathaniel Hawthorne, was sitting on a bench in a museum one afternoon watching people as they walked past various exhibits. One of the displays in this museum was an ancient Greek statue of a muscular Olympic athlete -- much like the familiar statue of the Discus Thrower. Hawthorne observed that as the men in the museum would pass this statue, they would pause to look at it. And as they looked at the statue, they would, without conscious intent, throw their shoulders back, suck in their stomachs, and throw out their chests. They were being made aware of their own physique and their own stance by gazing at a statue of this superbly conditioned athlete. Like many of you, I’ve been watching the Olympics this last week. It made me realize that I could look like one of those athletes if I were in shape – and had a totally different genetic makeup.

The Hawthorne story suggested to me the possibility of growth in our Christian community if we could catch a vision of Jesus and what He has called the church to be. By looking at the ideal, we might be encouraged to throw back our spiritual shoulders, suck in our spiritual stomachs, and throw out our spiritual chests.

And so I sat down to work on such a sermon. And the verse which immediately came to my mind was Proverbs 11:14 which I remembered as: "Where there is no vision, the people perish!"

That's where the frustration began. For as I looked at this verse in the Hebrew language and as I read commentaries, I came to realize that this verse is often wrongly translated and wrongly used. Proverbs 11:14 does not mean that we need a vision in the usual sense...a picture of an ideal condition toward which we should be moving.

What Proverbs is saying is that we need God's instruction in order to keep us from going off the wrong way. The verse is better translated in the New American Standard Version, which reads: "Where there is no guidance, the people fall!"

And so, sad at the loss of a great illustration (which, you will notice, I still managed to sneak into this sermon) I put away my King James Version understanding of Proverbs 11:14. I still think that we need a vision if we're going to get anywhere. I'm just not sure that it's directly scriptural (though Colossians 3 does exhort us to keep our minds set on those things which are above rather than things which are on earth).

Just a few weeks later, however, later I again ran across Proverbs 11:14. It was on the Eleven o'clock news.

Max Lucado describes what I saw on television in And the Angels Were Silent. Lucado writes: “No one ever expected it would happen, especially with this church. It was the model congregation.

Senator “Walter Mondale wrote that the pastor was an ‘inspiration to us all.’ The Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare cited the pastor's outstanding contribution. We are told ‘he knew how to inspire hope. He was committed to people in need, he counseled prisoners and juvenile delinquents. He started a job placement center; he opened rest homes and homes for the mentally disabled; he had a health clinic; he organized a vocational training center; he provided free legal aid; he founded a community center; he preached about God. He even claimed to cast out demons, do miracles, and heal.’

“Lofty words. A lengthy resume for what appeared to be a mighty spiritual leader and his church.

“Where is that congregation today? What is she doing now?

“The church is dead...literally.

“Death occurred the day the pastor called the members to the pavilion. They heard his hypnotic voice over the speaker system and from all corners they came. He sat in his large chair and spoke into a hand-held microphone about the beauty of death and the certainty that they would meet again.

“The people were surrounded by armed guards. A vat of cyanide laced Kool-Aid was brought out. Most of the members drank the poison with no resistance. Those who did resist were forced to drink. All was calm for a few minutes, then the convulsions began screams filled the Guyana sky, mass confusion broke out. In a few minutes, it was over. The members of the People's Temple Christian Church were all dead. All 780 of them...and so was their leader, Jim Jones.”

That was where I again saw Proverbs 11:14 – on the 11 o’clock news. The verse was emblazoned below the masthead of the newsletter put out by Jim Jones' People's Temple. In the center of the first page...in living black and white...were the words: "Where there is no vision, the people perish!" The newspaper was shown on the news after it was picked up from the midst of over 700 dead in Jonestown.

My first reaction was, I'll admit, pretty shallow. I only thought that whoever had put those words under the masthead probably didn't look to see what the verse really means. I think we were all pretty well anesthetized to the horrors of Jonestown at that point.

But then it struck me that the different translations of Proverbs 11:14 gives the whole story of Jonestown in a nutshell. The people certainly had a vision. They had tons of vision. But what they didn't have was instruction from God. Their vision was a vision handed them by a sick man rather than a vision derived from the Word of God. And so the people perished...literally!

If the people in the People's Temple had received their instruction from the Word of God rather than secondhand from the mouth of an ego-centered, paranoid, but incredible charismatic leader, they would be alive today.

If Jones and his People's Temple were a unique situation, then there would be no more to be said. We could finish this sermon right now, sing a hymn, have the benediction, shake hands and go drink coffee. But Jonestown is sadly not an isolated case, it is but a very extreme example of a problem which faces the entire Christian Church.

This is the reason Paul writes in Colossians 2:8: "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ."

We looked at this verse two weeks ago. This is Part Two.

Actually, there are three problems that face the church today, but they're all interconnected. The three problems are "The Cult of the Christian Celebrity," the problem of inadequate forms of church government which are based on wishful thinking rather than on the actual nature of people, and the problem of theologically unsophisticated laypeople. I would like to deal with each of these problems in turn.

The first problem, "The Cult of the Christian Celebrity," is the problem of church leaders who command a greater loyalty among some church members than our Lord Himself and whose words are received with a stature superior to that of the revealed word of God.

Let me give you three examples of what I mean.

Example one: Jim Jones and the People's Temple.

Example two: The hordes of Christian and quasi-Christian writers and television celebrities with large followings who preach and write a gospel of material well-being, nationalism, or salvation by thinking pretty thoughts which has nothing to do with the redeeming Gospel of Jesus Christ...or who make millions writing that the end of the world is coming and you'd better get ready. And then they use their gospel-gained money to buy white Mercedes convertibles and fashionable homes instead of getting the word out to all corners of the world.

Example three: The pastor of one large Presbyterian Church in the Bay Area who used to brag that he could personally take his congregation out of the Presbyterian denomination in twenty minutes if he became upset with something that was happening. He said it with pride at his influence over his flock -- and pride it was -- but it's a real tragedy if his willingness to split the church could so easily override the desire for unity God expresses so often in His word. It would come down to the Pastor's word against the word of the Lord and the Pastor was pretty certain who would win in the minds of his people -- though I'm sure he would not have put the choice in those terms.

In the book, Why Conservative Churches are Growing, the final conclusion is that many conservative churches are growing not because of their emphasis (which may even be unbiblical) but because of the presence of a single attractive, charismatic and strong leader who controls most aspects of congregational life -- a Jim Jones of lesser degree if you will (though hopefully without the same tendencies). These churches attract people who are too lazy or who lack the confidence to think for themselves.

This personality cult threatens our understanding of what it means to have Christ as our Lord and is an insult to the work of the Holy Spirit.

The late cartoonist Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, hit the nail on the head when he declared in an interview: "Always Jesus! I think the minute we begin to get away from Jesus Himself, we begin to cloud our theology. I am firm believer in the theology of 'Lord, let us see Jesus and Jesus only.' This is why I refuse to go out and speak to groups as a so-called Christian celebrity, because I think that anyone who becomes religious because somebody else is religious, is already on the wrong track. A person should be converted because he has seen the figure of Jesus and has been inspired by Him. And this is the only thing that makes a person a Christian."

The Cult of the Christian Celebrity is not a new situation. The Apostle Paul himself was confronted by this situation in Corinth where he was being measured against a flashy young preacher named Apollos. We read Paul’s response as it appears in 1 Corinthians 1 -- "Some of you are saying, 'I am a follower of Paul'; and other say that they are for Apollos or for Peter; and some that they alone are the true followers of Christ. And so, in effect, you have broken Christ into many pieces…”

The second, related problem is the problem of inadequate forms of church government.

Shortly after the massacre of Jonestown, I was speaking with a friend of mine, a pastor of the Disciples of Christ Church of which the People's Temple was a part. The Disciples of Christ comes from a free tradition where each congregation goes its own direction without guidance from the denomination as a whole.

My friend, with an understandable heaviness of heart was reflecting on the tragedy, which had befallen one of his denomination's congregations. He had met Jim Jones at district meetings and had been impressed by his engaging friendliness and vitality. He shared that Jones' charismatic personality gave him the ability to win appointment to any committee of position he chose. His popularity caused others to look the other direction when there were rumors of irregularities in his congregation.

This pastor was reflecting that perhaps his denomination would be wiser if it had a bishop...someone to watch over the churches to make sure they kept on the right track. But then he realized, and shared with us, that Jones, with his compelling personality, would probably have been the on elected bishop...thus spreading the poison through a whole area.

This points out to me the deeper wisdom of our Presbyterian form of government. It is not perfect as our recent General Assembly proved once again. But it is a system which is based on the recognition that people are too sinful to be trusted with more than a shared power. We have no bishop because that's too much power for one sinful person. That we are governed by a Session rather than an individual is a measure of our belief in the total depravity of people -- that given the opportunity people are capable of just about anything and that better government will result if people balance each other. This belief is also the basis of our national government of checks and balances. It is as theologian Reinhold Neibuhr declared: "Freedom makes democracy possible. Evil makes democracy necessary." It's true in nations and it's true in the church.

It is true, as the Disciple's pastor pointed out, that there is a need for a bishop to prevent abuses of power in individual churches. There needs to be a biblical accountability to a higher authority so individual churches will not be led to ruin by too powerful leaders.

And we do have a bishop in the Presbyterian Church...but rather than being one powerful individual our bishop is the Presbytery which is made up of all the pastors of all the local churches and the elected delegates of the laypeople of those churches. If evidence of irregularities reaches the Presbytery, the situation is investigated and resolved, no matter how popular the pastor.

Jonestown was partly the fault of an inadequate system of church government. It was partly the fault of the cult of the Christian celebrity. But the ultimate responsibility lay with the people who followed Jones...for without followers, there is no leader.

That brings us to our third problem, the problem of theologically unsophisticated laypeople.

One of the foundation truths of our Christian life is that there is but one mediator between God and people, the man Jesus Christ and that all Christians are priests of God. We've covered this ground before but we need to cover it again.

This means that all Christians share equal responsibility for the church. It also means that all Christians have direct access to God through Jesus Christ and an equal obligation to know and act upon His word. If we have access to God's word, we have no excuse for being led astray from that word.

As Psalm 119 declares: "Your word, O Lord, I have hid in my heart that I might not sin against You." But how many Christians today have God's word hidden in their hearts. I strongly suspect that most Christians would not recognize a heresy if it walked up and bit them on their tush. They become prey for each shining, persuasive false prophet that comes along. It is no coincidence that the number one recruiting ground for cults is among young Christians.

Our call to worship for this morning from 1 John 4 instructs us not to believe every spirit but to "test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false teachers have gone out into the world." But how can we possibly test the spirits unless know the standard of measurement?

The medieval Catholic Church knew the power of God's word and what would happen to their corrupt system and anti-Biblical practices if God's word got into the hands of the people. That's why William Tyndale was burned at the stake...because he dared to translate God's word into the language of the common people. That's why Martin Luther's first action at the beginning of the Reformation was to translate the Bible from Latin into the everyday language of the German people. If the people know the word of God, corruption and false teaching cannot survive.

That is one reason why we spend so much time and energy on Christian education and adult education. It is important that each Christian know the word of God because each and every Christian is a priest sharing equal responsibility for the strength and purity of the church.

That is just one of the reasons why it is so important for each person in the congregation to be involved in a regular program of Bible study...don't just take the pastor's word for it because he may be wrong or deliberately misleading. The pastor has the responsibility to teach but you have the responsibility to check and see that what is being taught checks out against what God has already said. "Do not believe every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they are from God."

The members of the People's Temple weren't all religious crazies from the fringe. The number two man in the People's Temple was a self-described born again Baptist and a graduate of Wheaton College. Jim Jones' bodyguard was a Nazarene. The temple photographer was the chairman of a National Council of Churches Commission. Jim Jones' adopted daughter was the daughter of Assembly of God missionaries in Brazil and a student at a Lutheran College. The director of Temple Counselors spent ten years in Catholic Parochial College. Some of the people who died in Guyana were our brother and sisters in Christ.

If the members of the People's Temple had recognized -- and taken seriously -- the fact that all Christians are priests of God...each responsible to know God's word and each responsible to seek God's will apart from the commands of a Jim Jones...they would be alive today and their People's Temple would be a beautiful fellowship. But they allowed themselves to be taken captive. They surrendered their priesthood, they surrendered their minds, and finally they surrendered their lives. For “where there is no instruction, the people perish.”