Do You Follow a Celebrity Pastor?

Oh I could go “postal” on this one but will try to be restrained. This celebrity-hero-worship “thing” is everywhere! Type A’s have it, B’s have it, C’s have it. The Hyper fundy’s on the right have it and the Neo’s on the left have it.

I don’t have time and I really don’t have an interest to follow a “celebrity pastor.” Here is why:

While I appreciate a few (and the list is shrinking with every passing year) “well-known” pastors, most of the men who mean the most to me will never be nationally known. Usually the “well-known” guys really don’t have time to impact regular pastors and in too many cases even regular people - like in their own church - on a personal level. Which in my mind questions how in the world they have arrived at the “celebrity status.” I’m concerned that in many cases we have guys that are great behind a pulpit but horrible as a personal shepherd with “real” people. Early on in ministry I tried to reach out to men who were “something” at least in my mind or in their mind or in the minds of others. I found out most in that “regal-air-realm” can’t be bothered - so I’ve decided not to bother them - at all.

The whole hero-worship thing in the main makes me ill.

But that’s just me.

Straight Ahead!

jt

ps - having said that there are a few well-known guys I appreciate and listen too from time to time - but I hardly hold any of them as “near apostle-like.”

I’ll never forget the time an elder’s wife told my wife how much she enjoyed listening to (insert radio preacher’s name here), and how he was really pastor to us all. She didn’t come all the time, either—sometimes providentially hindered, other times not so much. No longer with us.

now, if you are a twitter person, you should follow Celebrity Pastor…whoever it is slices “celebrity pastors” with deft satire that will have you rolling.

I really appreciated that. I am so thankful for my pastor and it is for precisely the opposite appeal of the celebrity status pastor. I see day in and day out the tremendous personal cost and unwavering diligence that he puts in to preaching expositionally three times a week. He works many more hours than I do each week in order to teach people the Word and when it is all said and done maybe 100 people at most have heard him. Yet he keeps going day in and day out.

As far as celebrity status goes I know one person that has elevated one pastor in particular to the level that all others are judged by him. For the decade or more that I have known him he has been able to find a local church that is acceptable because they all inevitably depart from the celebrity pastor somewhere. Media pastors certainly can be helpful but how much more do our own pastors deserve our attention and especially our prayers.

does that count.

You see there are a few people in Canada, England, Jamaica, and a couple other places who, if there were subpoenaed, would admit that they actually know me, AND, I have preached a few times!

p.s. most of them are related to me.

…doesn’t measure up to the “celebrity pastor”:

Sit in the desk chair until your message is as good as or better than his.

If you don’t know where to begin, maybe you need to listen to (…) for a while to figure out what makes him so good. (I meet pastors who, to my amazement, never listen to other sermons!)

I’m speaking here, of course, only about the Biblical “celebrity pastors.”