There is a way of telling history that focuses on the impact of the few great figures that rise up in any generation. This “great man theory” says that history can best be understood when we focus on the dominant figures of the time. History, it says, turns on the actions, decisions, obsessions, and natural abilities of the few and the extraordinary—the Luthers, the Napoleons, the Lincolns, the Churchills. Understand them, and you understand the world as it was and the world as it has become.
I think Christians sometimes understand the church through a similar grid. We assume that the few figures who rise in prominence at any time are the key to understanding the church as a whole—that they in some way represent the Christian faith at that time. Hence if we tell the story of the church in the early twenty-first century, we may tell it through the lives and ministries of Sproul, Packer, MacArthur, Stott, and Piper. We assume that if we understand them, we have gained a representative understanding of Christians and ministries during their time. Understand them, we think, and you’re understanding all of us.
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