When Leaders
Fall

This is the day I have been dreading

Because this is the part that broke me. The part that made me question everything. The part that still hurts.

I am talking about watching leaders we loved, leaders we trusted, leaders we followed, fall. Not quietly. Not gently. Publicly. Spectacularly. In ways that made us feel foolish for ever having believed in them.

If you have been through this, you know what I am talking about. If you have not, I pray you never will. But if you are in this series, you probably do know. And I want to sit with you in the pain of it.

What it cost us

When a leader falls, it costs us something. More than embarrassment. More than disappointment. It costs us our certainty. It costs us our faith. It costs us the ability to trust.

We gave those leaders our trust. We gave them our attention. We gave them our money. We gave them our loyalty. We built our faith on their teaching. We structured our lives around their direction. And then they fell. And we were left standing in the rubble, wondering if anything we believed was true.

I know people who left the faith entirely because of a leader falling. Not because they were not believers. Not because they were not serious. But because they could not separate the leader from the faith. And when the leader fell, the faith fell with them.

That is what it cost us. That is the price we paid.

What it made us question

And here is the worse part. It made us question everything. If that leader was wrong about that, what else were they wrong about? If that movement was built on sand, what else was built on sand? If that prophecy was false, were any of them real? If that miracle was exaggerated, were any of them true?

That is the attack on faith that happens when a leader falls. It is not just that we lost a teacher. It is that we lost our certainties. And that is a kind of grief that is hard to explain to someone who has not been through it.

We thought we were following God. And maybe we were. But we thought we were following God through this person, and when that person fell, we were not sure anymore if what we were following was real.

What we need to understand

Let me tell you something I had to learn the hard way. A leader falling does not mean the faith was wrong. It does not mean the gifts were fake. It does not mean the movement was a fraud.

It means that leaders are human. It means that fame corrupts. It means that power reveals what character was always there. It means that the person you followed was never the point. Jesus was always the point.

The Apostle Paul wrote about this. He wrote that after he left, wolves would come in among the sheep. He wrote that leaders would arise who would teach things that were not true. He wrote that in the last days, people would be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, without self-control.

Paul did not say this would not happen. He said it would. And when it happens, it is not evidence that God is not real. It is evidence that we put our trust in the wrong place.

Where to put our trust

So where do we put our trust now? Not in leaders. Not in movements. Not in personalities. In the Book. In the One who wrote it. In the Spirit who inspired it.

That is where trust belongs. Not because books are infallible, but because the One who inspired the book is faithful. Not because leaders are trustworthy, but because the Good Shepherd is. Not because the movement was perfect, but because the Holy Spirit is still here.

I know it is hard. I know it hurts. I know you trusted that person and they broke that trust. But the faith was never in them. The faith was always in Christ. And He has not fallen. He does not fall.