Even "Christian" Service?
Having pondered for some time the concept of "The World in the Church," and how the secular idolatry of personal ambition, the "pride of life," worms its way even into spiritual enterprises, I find this thought from D.A. Carson's book, A Call to Spiritual Reformation, concise, sobering and dead-on. His topic is glory, Who gets it and in what limited sense it is reflected derivatively in the believer as Christ is "glorified in you" II Thessalonians 1:2:

The Christian’s whole desire, at its best and highest, is that Jesus Christ be praised. It is always a wretched bastardization of our goals when we want to win glory for ourselves instead of for him.... Lying at the heart of all sin is the desire to be the center, to be like God. So if we take on Christian service, and think of such service as the vehicle that will make us central, we have paganized Christian service; we have domesticated Christian living and set it to servitude in a pagan cause. (57–58)

"Paganized Christian service," I suppose, could describe any ministry activity that in the name of the Gospel becomes a vehicle for personal advancement—that motivates participants by an appeal to a need for recognition or to the attractiveness of being "at the center" of a special elite within the ranks.

Sometimes the phenomenon is accompanied by glaring doctrinal, financial or moral deviation—but not every time. Sadly, since 1st century Galatia there have always been preachers, sects and fringe churches with questionable motives. They followed St. Paul all over Asia and beyond. In anything-goes 21st Century America all varieties abound, but I'm convinced it's not just prosperity groups and the patently weird who set Christian activity into "servitude in a pagan cause."

The system works. Personal ambition is an effective motivator. But it is not Christian, and it is a strange bedfellow with Christian doctrine. Yet precious Christian truth is sometimes called into the service of paganized Christianity. Unity. Discipline. Holiness. Even a passionate emphasis on the Cross of Christ and the extirpation of indwelling sin becomes a convenient tool in the hands of some for the advancement of self and the manipulation of others—lots of humility talk, in reality practicing anything but. Mercifully, there are always tell-tale outward signs of corruption on the inside of these gleaming white dishes. Look carefully and Pharisaical roots are showing.

Watch for subtle legalism; a written or unwritten code of extra-biblical conformity necessary to fit in. Watch for evidence of sectarianism; inwardness, group loyalty and pride that goes beyond mere fraternity. And then authoritarianism; an odd preoccupation with "apostles'" and elders' authority and your submission. Without exception, some kind of highly concentrated pyramid structure inevitably emerges to protect leadership and provide a pathway and footholds for the attention-needy novice on his way up. Elitism is another clue. Are there secretive rings within rings inside the church or organization through which a person must progress toward full acceptance?

I'm more convinced than ever that polity is a reliable objective clue to the health of a church. In any church where the ekklesia, the congregation gathered has no meaningful place, where an imperious leader or group of leaders rule absolutely, as in so many apostolic and shepherding groups even within evangelicalism, the culture-medium is perfect for the kind of bastardization Carson describes—and worse.

Incidentally, the blade cuts in many directions. Personality-driven seeker churches and emergent churches are in danger, some apostolic groups for sure, but surprisingly, there may be as much to worry about among the young Reformed reaction to Emergent. There is a troubling growth of not-very-reformed authoritarian chatter among some of them, and at least one up-and-coming new "Reformed" denomination with very ominous symptoms. Almost as if the right reaction against the emergent loss of scriptural authority is to assert your own authority. Yikes! But that's a topic for another day.

But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. Matthew 20:25, 26