Celebrity Pastor: Indecent Exposure? (Panel VI)

this is a panel on the subject of celebrity pastors I think folks Nothe BT and you may not know Carl Truman the BT and Carl had a very significant online discussion about this a few months ago and so we asked Carl and the media to come on and talk about this but we also invited three celebrity pastors and let's be clear I mean I know I exist here for you to take me out that's I am here to die they are able to observe well CJ he's a good four seriously let me tell you what I want to do I want to begin I want to talk with first with Carl and then with subida about what we mean by celebrity pastors and and get to the nub of the issue of what the dangers and the opportunities are and then I want to talk pastor Lee about the dangers that brothers face you have an opportunity for wider influence and the dangers that we face in relation to our attitude towards brothers who have a wider influence it's good and and address this from a serious pastor but we can poke fun and joke with one another like we already have but I want this to serve you in that regard also and should understand some of the logic behind why we've done what we've done together for the gospel because our purpose is in fact have not been to foster a superficial celebrity that's culture but to deeply serve pastors and local churches as best as we can so let's have a word of Prayer and then we'll begin I said Heavenly Father thank you for each of these my friends who speak your word truthfully into my heart rebuking me encouraging me holding up Christ before me we pray that this conversation that we have there would not only be enjoyable but it would actually serve everyone who is hearing not only here today but those who will listen online and at later times we want to exalt Christ we want to foster faithful biblical ministry we want to beware of sins and pitfalls and we also want to know how to honor the brothers especially brothers that we delight in you placing in strategic positions of influence we ask all these things in Jesus name Amen Carl what is a celebrity pastor and talk just a little bit about some of the concerns that you raised in the discussion it popped up I mean one of my major concerns is that your celebrity pastors have to wear these Britney Spears I think we live in a world that the Western culture is is celebrity culture now you can argue about the the fine points of definition there the way there I would use the term is that we we tend to invest peculiar power and authority in specific individuals even outside of their own sphere of competence Hollywood is a great example that you you have these these Hollywood actors who are very competent actors but around about election time they're pontificating on everything from global warming to the economy they're more or less incompetent in these areas but we put this this huge Authority and power we invested in them I think that knowing that society or that our culture is is set up to to receive the big individual in that way places an onus on the church to be very careful in how it presents the influential figures within the church and now I'd bring it back to a sort of a specific issue for me I teach at Westminster I'm also a part-time pastor but my primary call is to is to teach men for the ministry and one of the things that's concern me over the last couple of years is when I ask students here who's been the most influential preacher in your life almost never do they actually say well it's the man who preaches at my home church they will mention name some of whom presented here today some of whom are not and that concerns me because here you have a detachment of the influence of the preaching of the word from the day-to-day pastoral ministry that's going on and and that's that's one concern a second concern would be if I ask students you know who do you want to be like the aspirational model of ministry is increasingly one which is nothing like that which they're actually going to experience most students leaving you're going to be pastoring in churches like what I'm connected to we're a hundred people on a Sunday morning maybe we'll grow to 200 God willing in the next 10 years who knows but most of my students are going to go out and pass the small unknown churches and if they have an aspirational model of ministry that the they've got to be a david platt or a CJ Mahaney or a Matt Chandler that's a problem for me as a as an educator that of course is not implying anything in in the motivation of those who passes a big churches praise God there are big churches praise God that there are men who had gifted and that he's blessed in that way but when it becomes an aspirational model for most students that's that's a real problem and it's a problem on the ground in seminaries I wonder if it has some impact on the burnout rate there's a very high burnout rate of students leaving seminary and going into pastoral ministry many of them leave within five years is that because they look to guys like you and they think that's what I'm going to experience and then they they end up in a church in the middle of nowhere with 50 people who are fighting each other all the time and it's nothing like the aspirational model that they've picked up so I would say my two primary concerns are the detachment of the preaching ministry from pastoral influence and the creation of an unrealistic aspirational model all of that is to say that is that is a result of the reception of mega church pastors in the culture it's not necessarily a fault of mega church pastors themselves though I would then count and say we need to take every those of you who are big names and very influential need to do everything you can to make sure that you're not promoting yourself even surreptitiously but you're promoting Christ I quoted Luther yesterday he was perhaps was the first celebrity pastor 1521 the trade in Luther posters takes off in Europe he is the first celebrity but Luther has this money when he returns submitting Berg in 1522 he preaches this famous sermon he's explaining how the Reformation was successful he says you know I was asleep I was sitting in the pub I apologized the Baptist but I was sitting in the pub drinking beer and the word was out there doing it all now he's he's making a smart aleck quip in some ways but he's also emphasizing the fact that really it was nothing to do with me and my person it was ultimately the Word of God that did it and so my my hope and prayer is that the very influential pastors are very large churches do everything they can to minimize themselves church history is not great in showing how one big pastor is succeeded by another pastor I'm supposed to like not one what one last point is well the the the aspirational model I think connects to the intrusion of worldly categories of success as opposed to faithful categories when Paul in first Timothy is wrestling with the fact that he's about to pass away and the apostles are going away and he he writes to Timothy he doesn't say the Timothy the way to safeguard Christian teaching and Christian behavior for the next generation is to find another 12 really charismatic guys to carry the message forward what he says is find yourself some ordinary guys who are respected in the church respect in their communities if they're married they should have brought up their family as well and they should be able to teach there are more than a dozen guys in this country who can preach the gospel it's disturbing the same dozen names turn up at every conference preaching the gospel is not rocket science if it was Paul would have said so he says find ordinary guys who are reputable and respectable and faithful and can teach and that's how the church will we'll be safe for the next generation so it probably helped me talk to Elmer that's a-- BTW the BTU interacted with carl sun on this online just elaborate i'm writing against the kinds of concerns that he's expressing I think what I was reacting to in part is let's begin where call ins Paul says find faithful men who'll be able to teach others also but he also says show double honor to men who serve well especially those whose work is theirs the Ministry of the word what Paul isn't or what Carl is not ruling out is the appropriate expression of appreciation for faithfulness and and what concerns me is the the sort of wide indiscriminate use of celebrity pastor Wright catches up in the net a lot of things and a lot of people that on inspection we wouldn't want to label in that life so I think if I could just toss out two labels I think it's important to distinguish between celebrity in the sort of pejorative way in which we talk about it a kind of being famous for being famous without the substance of accomplishment and faithfulness with a story that's surrounding that person and cultivate it and and and in propagated in media and the fawning and adulation of folks over that mythology really I think we have to draw a pretty clear distinction between that phenomena and let's use the label notoriety because the other thing that that Carl is not saying is that celebrity equals being publicly known right it's very been very clear in that yeah and so there is a proper notoriety whether it's in the local church context or where it is in a wider context where in persons who have been faithful whether it's in their writing or their preaching or or just steadfastly loving there why and their children so and so forth there is a notoriety that grows up that isn't about myth-making isn't about story making and it isn't about sort of publicity seeking in order to sort of receive celebrity that I think we want to be careful to sort of actually recognize identify you know distinguish protect and and in appropriate ways and that's part of the discussion in appropriate ways honor and so that's what that was sort of my interaction on the point that's very helpful I think it's also important to remember that certain types of media and platforms can project a kind of authority and significance that is not necessarily related to the faithfulness of the individual that's using that meteor platform we're my local congregation the services are broadcast regionally on television I am mortified how often I meet people who simply because I am on television view me as someone of significance and and yet there's no distinction between me and anybody else who is on television it's the medium of television Matt was talking about this with regard to a major conference that he participated on in which the response to him was the same as to other folks that I might call celebrities though their messages could not have been more disjointed or or or contrasting and yet there was the same response to that so I I do think that's actually very important for us to remember yeah what you get I think in celebrity making is this connection between sort of a person and a narrative that develops around them but then you gotta need media right and and we live in a day where where media access is pretty easy from we're no longer talking about Time Warner Cable and and and the big media companies we're talking about the guy sitting with his laptop hitting sin hitting post and and and the ability for that to go viral but the other thing you're gonna need in in celebrity making there's not just the sort of person and the story around them and the media that distributes that you're also gonna need a celebrity conferring public so so know that that there are lots of actresses or want to be actresses we've gone to Hollywood and want to be the next Hollywood you know bombshell actress well they're not going to be that if they're not on film and and they're not going to be that if the movie ticket buying public doesn't confer that status on them and so there's a chain of responsibilities from from the pastor or the personality to the folks who are writing in crafting media stories to a public who also needs to be discerning about how they show appreciation I want to go right to Matt and to David and I want to ask a specific question to you as we do so I want to say one thing about the aspirational point that Karl made it's very good when Mark and Al and CJ and I wanted to put John Piper in front of you eight years ago started dreaming about that leading up to 2006 it was not because he was a celebrity it was because he had spoken the truth of God deeply into our souls he was a faithful pastor and God had given him for which we praised the Lord a wide influence of a helpful and a biblical sort in evangelicalism and we we exalted in that we did not intend to say to a brother who's pastoring a 65-member Church you're nobody he's somebody we wanted to encourage that brother in his faithful ministry in that 65-member church to do it with zeal and with joy and we simply wanted to serve him in that and I know that that's John's heart John John wants to make nothing of himself unless he can use what God has put into his hands in order to serve a larger more important service and so I would want people to know that yes the aspirational thing still is an issue we have to deal with yes but that motivation is very important for me to to convey to you that's why I made the distinction between intention and reception yeah I think knowing the proclivities of your culture one has to be have more than just a good intention also yeah absolutely and yeah I'm saying we can have all the best intentions and still mess up yes but I mean yeah the conference the conference exists to dissuade people from aspiring to a celebrity pastor the conference exists to honor ordinary pastors yeah as doing the most important and difficult work yes David and Matt we I mean we we both look we all look with gratitude to God and appreciation for not only your gifts and for your local ministries but for the way the Lord has allowed you to speak to a lot of people that we could never speak to David when you know when I hear 55,000 people listening to you preach on the atonement it just gives my soul joy but I know that you have to do things to protect your own heart in that talk to us about what you do and I'm gonna ask Matt the same question what do you do to protect your heart in that kind of a situation to be perfectly honest this whole conversation is really frightening personally I feel like this conversation just brings to the fore a poison that has just put before my own soul on on us and in a scary way John John 3:30 he must become greater I must become less I really believe I think in my heart I want I want Christ to become greater yeah but I am tempted at every turn and this was before anybody was listening to me for that matter but even more so I'm tempted to turn that around and say he must become greater I I wouldn't mind becoming greater in the process too as opposed to he must become greater I must become less and the culture that Carl is talking about seems to war against that at every turn which means I've got a war all the more so pride has always been a problem for me since I was born so that battle it just becomes I guess all the more in ten more tempted to put confidence in yourself more tempted to seek glory for yourself and I just I want I want to fight it and be a very and I think they're a does involved an intentional fight an intentional battle because I want to be I want it to be shown on the on the day when it's done and it's over that all of this was for your that you might become greater I might become less I said I'm praying toward I want to fight toward that end but it's it's a fight yeah I would say the same thing and and then on top of that put because of the cultural piece it really feels like you're like command just feel like I'm fighting a beast that just simply won't die cuz there's steps I want to take even at the village that show hey I don't believe I'm a celebrity and so look here's the position I'm in if I if I start to say this is what I do to try to battle that what happens it's almost as if the the there's not a lot I can do to fight the wave of that and and then to be to be frank if anyone were to tell me there's not a part of their soul that enjoys that I would probably call him a liar to their face I mean you're a liar there's just no way you could convince me that there's not a part of you that you don't have to try to choke and push back down and go know that said that's not for you don't touch that yeah and and so I feel like what I'm worried about in my own life is is not that this week I'm all of sudden gonna go one Matt Chandler dadgum it I I what I feel like that over the next 15 years because what happens and I don't know if this happens to you David but but people get in my ear yeah like people get in my ear go why why are you doing that what you know what they they should be doing this for you what why what what do you get paid what do you and so people get in my ear and people who love the Lord and and come off like they love me are in my ear and I and so my fear is not that I'm gonna you know oh the books out you know I'm an author so you should I'm not afraid of that what I'm afraid of is over the course of the next 10 to 12 years just drifting and so I've tried to build some some defenses against that and it's really helpful that I'm in ministry with guys who knew me before there was a Matt Chandler and I think my wife is impressed with me as a husband and as a man of God I she does not oh I'm so lucky to be married to Matt I mean I just don't I don't know that that's a nation would say Matt but there's no let me say this there's no celebrity culture at home yeah yeah CJ this presents a challenge for brothers that are in those ministries that don't have people coming in with television cameras wanting to do interviews you have counsel for our souls when when the words called us to Ettrick not to Edinburgh or London or New York or you know we're wearing that we're we're our small congregation what our attitude towards our brothers who are faithful who have been given a large platform yes but what talk to us well I think what's helpful is just to recognize there there are temptations in the heart of someone who's known and there are temptations in the heart of someone who is not known and there are also temptations and tendencies among every congregation so you've done you've got congregational temptations and tendencies to I think a sign exaggerated significance to someone in pastoral ministry so I think the Corinthian problem exists that temptation and tendency in in every church so I think a pastor has to be aware of that has to teach in to that and yes then a pastor has to study his own soul so if you have come to this conference and you are struggling in relation to the numerical size of your church I don't have any unique counsel for you it it is simply pride being revealed in your heart and a process of identifying that and weakening that but also cultivating a an appreciation for men who are pastoring larger churches or do have more influence I don't think it's wise simply just to become preoccupied with the prideful tendencies of my heart one of the ways our weakened pride in my life is to celebrate the grace of God in other people so I would say to someone who is struggling with a miracle size of their church to to be aggressive in privately and publicly expressing appreciation for others who are apparently more influential that's very helpful Carl I was going to make a comment about something that a conference like this could do I having been an administrator at a seminary I understand how money works I understand the need to raise money I look at this stadium and I think you know if you know you're gonna go couple of us OPC guys in here to headline you're not gonna feel I am pleased to see that the OPC is into pest control it might be your pest control since 1972 I think it would it be impossible to have out of nine speakers have two guys that nobody's ever heard of okay I'm one to come off but to come and speak guys from churches of one hundred hundred and fifty two hundred there are good preachers out there in churches that size good preachers is it possible to have a couple of slots in the plenary sessions devoted to guys like that so that the message is sent out that yeah we don't just feel like patronize ordinary pastors by talking about them we give them platform space as well that's good and there are different aspirational models of ministry out there by the way we as we welcome all your recommendations we were you reluctant to come to the conference this is a truly pathetic story mark Dever I think was mark wrote and asked me if I would do a breakout session I said no I mean gone on record about celebrity pastor stuff like I can't go to a celebrity pastors conference and speak so they they put the guy who cries I didn't just cry a challenge kind of you to come so what's your experience been below the radar sorry to keep in the background but what have you seen from the background what I what I really enjoyed was it's great to be with brothers and sisters that I wouldn't normally rub shoulders with from all different denominations and anybody who came to my session yesterday well I'm a big believer in denominations because they indicate that somebody somewhere believe something but I've I've appreciated the fellowship it's been great to be with so many brothers and sisters I you know I don't get this opportunity ever really so I very much very much enjoyed that yeah I've had a my wife said to me on Sunday you're looking forward to going and I said no but it will give me something to write about I have actually I have to consider quite enjoyed myself laughs friends thank you for being with us we do want to serve you you do want to encourage you John Piper at lunch today was was saying what an encouragement David and Matt and Kevin are to us to see the trust that God has already given you we also see the humility and the willingness to fight against a misuse of what the Lord is entrusted to you but it's very encouraging to us but the Ministry of the local church yes is-is-is it's the great concern of our hearts that's right all of us yes and you hear that every time mark quotes that John Brown quote yes my my heart is moved and that that's where every single one of us are and so I want you to know it's not just something we're saying it's not just something that CJ says because he does emphasize it every time he gets the opportunity we really do care about faithful local church pastors we're here to encourage you thank you for being here enjoy your break yeah we'll see you back tonight you

Channel: Together for the Gospel (T4G)

Views: 12,912

Rating: 4.6460176 out of 5

Keywords: culture, faithful, idolatry

Id: CEu8QOgvKMk

Length: 27min 15sec (1635 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 16 2016