Central Assembly

HOW DID THEY BECOME FRIENDS INSTEAD OF RIVALS?

* Jonathan resisted the temptation to keep to himself [isolation]

* Jonathan resisted the temptation to make it all about himself [narcissism]

“Naively, I assumed most Christians were all about navigating [the] humble way. So when I met my first Christian “celebrity” while still in high school, I expected an incarnation of Jesus. On stage, he wooed and wowed, with arms waving and a smile so big you could see it from the back row of the auditorium. When I met him in person afterward, however, he was distant and cold--far from a Jesus incarnation--and way above a conversation with some teenage fan, too self-important for trivial encounters like this one.

“On that day I felt narcissism’s ugly bite…About ten years later, narcissism’s bite returned with a vengeance, this time from a charming and charismatic ministry peer whose affirmations of me would cause my soul to soar, but whole secretive, suspicious, and sometimes sinister machinations confused and even frightened me. After a season of feeling crazy I sat with a therapist who said in no uncertain terms; ‘You’re dealing with a narcissist.’"
- ”Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church