More on the cult of celebrity

Very interesting post from Carl Trueman at Reformation 21 on the dangers of the celebrity pastor culture in the church, especially among the reformed where everyone wants to be the next Ligon Duncan or John Piper. Carl notes that a ministry where you don’t know the people you are supposed to minister to is not one that anyone should strive for.

Frankly, who wants a ministry where you do not get to know people anyway? Is that not a major part of what ministry is meant to be?

When a man is the “senior pastor” of a church with thousands of “members” or regular attendees, how is he pastoring them in any real sense? Sure they listen to his sermons weekly but they (and I) can do the same thing from my computer at home without the hassle of getting dressed up, driving somewhere and sitting silently in a pew for 45 minutes. Yet many men hold these celebrity conference speakers up as the paragons of ministry. They write best selling books, they are invited to Larry King Live and for interviews with Time magazine, they have the best read blogs, their podcasts gets thousands of downloads, they are often quoted on Facebook or have snippets of their sermons embedded from YouTube and they are the speakers that are the most in demand.

But are they ministering to the people they are supposed to be ministering to? How well do they know the people in their local church, the people who are left behind while their pastor is off to another conference to speak? If that is left to the other staff members, are they a “pastor” in any sort of Biblical sense?

Ministry has everything to do with serving people and to serve them you must know them and be known by them and people don’t get to know you based on how many of your books they have read or how many conference talks of yours they have listened to.

(HT: Les Prouty)