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*YBPDLN=Your Best Purpose Driven Life Now
Posted on 08/02/2014 9:03:42 PM PDT by hiho hiho
It’s not easy being a celebrity pastor these days with that pesky Internet around.
Consider the struggles of Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Faced with mounting accusations circulating online — plagiarism, misusing church funds to prop book sales, silencing anyone in his church with the temerity to question him — Driscoll has urged his followers to stay off the Web. “It’s all shenanigans anyway,” he explains.
Steven Furtick, a megachurch pastor in North Carolina, and Dave Ramsey, an evangelical finance guru, have been taking hits, too, as have the wheeler-dealers on the Preachers of L.A. reality show. This, against a backdrop of culture shifts creating strong headwinds against the leader-and-follower model typified by today’s Christian superstars.
What are a megapastor and his followers to do? Remembering the biblical admonitions against idolatry would be a good start.
Some media outlets have dubbed Driscoll a “rock star” among pastors. He is hip, brash, very interested in sex and, for a reverend, unusually irreverent. He doesn’t throw televisions out of hotel windows in the manner of bad-boy rock musicians. But he comes close in the rhetorical sense, tossing out insults about gay people, women and his theological rivals.
Also true to his rock-star status, Driscoll enjoys massive popularity. His Mars Hill Church (including its 15 franchised satellite locations) attracts nearly 15,000 weekly. Driscoll’s podcast has 250,000 regular listeners worldwide, and his 2012 book, Real Marriage, topped a New York Times best-seller list.
Ah, that chart-topping book. Driscoll has admitted to using more than $200,000 in church funds to hire a consultant to game the system, boost sales and add that magical reference — No. 1 best-selling author — to his glittering résumé. This questionable allocation of church money is indicative of a wider problem that rankles those in Driscoll’s growing flock of critics: the lack of transparency around Driscoll and church funds.
His salary? Unknown. Who controls church funds? Good luck finding that out. And because of the non-disclosure agreements that Mars Hill pastors and staff members must sign to receive severance pay when they depart, little is known about who holds Driscoll accountable on money or any other issue.
One of the problems with celebrity pastors is that it’s very difficult to draw a line between advancing the gospel and advancing the preacher. When a famous pastor grows his audience and fame, doesn’t this mean that more people are hearing his saving message about Christ? Well, yes. But as revealed by the long history of church authority and its periodic abuse, the dynamic also gives the preacher on the pedestal a too-easy justification for seemingly everything he wants to do. You don’t want to be against God’s will, do you?
Now, however, there’s a wild card that older-school religious celebrities did not have to contend with. Thanks to the Internet, any disgruntled current or former follower can write a scathing blog post, add nasty comments to reader forums or, as the creator of @FakeDriscoll does, voice a spoof Twitter account in the target’s name. This can take a toll — as demonstrated by Driscoll’s church, which has had to lay off staff due to declining attendance and giving.
Because of the Internet, “the audience is now at least as much of a celebrity as the pastor, if not more,” says Jim Henderson, a Christian author and producer in the Seattle area who is convinced that the era of the celebrity pastor as spiritual paragon is waning. Henderson produces a live show called Where’s God When … featuring a very different kind of “celebrity” Christian — William Paul Young, author of the megaselling faith-themed novel The Shack.
Young is, seemingly, everything the megapastors are not: small of stature and ego, quietly reflective, and open about his painful journey and struggles (including his being a sex-abuse victim).
Henderson might be right about this being the beginning of the end for celebrity megapastors. Until that process runs its course, however, fans of the Driscolls, Furticks and the rest have a big question to ask themselves. Who, ultimately, are they following? Jesus? Or their pastor?
Tom Krattenmaker is a Portland-based writer specializing in religion in public life and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors. His latest book is The Evangelicals You Don’t Know.
I feel the same way. I cannot be a Baptist in this town however. I can’t deal with the “King James only!” Crowd. As if God cannot preserve His word!
I just thank God we have so many churches here in the good ole USA, that we can choose and pick the church of our choice. I have been to big churches and little churches, some I liked and some I did not like. I pray we will always have a choice here in USA.
Funny how Mars Hill, with a very conservative viewpoint of scripture takes a big hit. And the author of The Shack is shown as a good example.
Excerpt from “The Shack”:
“Those who love me come from every system that exists. They are Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions. I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous. Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians. I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my Beloved. (p. 182)”
The YBPDLN Ping List is generally published infrequently but based on the exploits of the megachurch pastors posts can spike for a season. If you would like on or off of this list please FReepmail me.
*YBPDLN=Your Best Purpose Driven Life Now
Almost invariably means a watered down, 'non offensive' gospel.
I thinks he's part of the 'emergent' church movement. It may be just a new wrinkle on an old heresy.
100%
A non-offensive gospel is no gospel at all. Almost saved is fully lost.
Re: The Shack quote
I despise that kind of babble. All new age channeling shares the same puffed up, watered down claptrap. Read Scripture and such nonsense just dissolves!
That's the truth. We don't have to go out of our way to make it offensive either. Just the clear, plain preaching of the gospel will do it on its own.
” I am very close to a family who are millionaires and live on only 10% of their earnings and sow into the kingdom of God the other 90%.”
And apparently they can’t wait to let everyone know, much like Rick Warren.
“Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.
Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:
That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.”
—Matthew 6:1-4
Exactly
Amen! William P. Young denies penal substitutionary atonement. The man shouldn’t be consulted or quoted, he should be witnessed to.
You bet cha and Rick Warren is still saying that we all pray to the same God. Muzzies and Christians have the same God. Just call Him by different names. Brings in the muzzies to preach in his church yet he cannot go to the muske and preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified and raised from the dead to the muzzies.
I have no respect for Osteen, but he was a real estate millionaire before becoming a preachers, and makes millions from book sales. I think he takes no salary.
If you ever want to see real life examples of gossiping, be sure to read the FR “mega-church” threads....
These men need to walk in the light, not dwell in the darkness.
I have been following the suicide of Ergun Caner's 15 y/o son. Really heartbreaking.
Pastor Spends $200,000 of Church’s Money to Buy His Own Book to Make it a New York Times Best Seller
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb-gZ3bcBZs
“One of the problems here is the secrecy. If a member of the congregation cannot determine church finances, pastor’s salary, identify deacons, the organization is not healthy.”
So much of what we call “Church” simply cannot be found in the Scripture, not the least of which is a perverted, man-pleasing view of authority. The Star Chamber leadership is false. Blind allegiance to any authority is not Truth. (Lol, just remembered the man born blind who was healed by Jesus and unwittingly found himself confronting the unbelief of the religious authorities: “Do YOU want to become His disciples, too?” Ha!)
In Galatians, Paul details an interesting exchange between himself and Peter:
“But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”
Peter—God love him!—was confrontable. If Paul had tried to walk up and confront any number of modern pastors he would have been stopped by security or by a cabal of elders/sycophants. “Touch not God’s anointed!”
The pastor conveys the message, he is NOT “the message”.
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