When Celebrity Invades the Church
Celebrity culture is a problem for Christianity just as it is for the wider society. We have a tendency to esteem some men and women above others and fall into the faulty notion that somehow they are better than everyone else. Without doubt, God has granted to some singular and spectacular gifts, and those to whom He has entrusted such things should use them powerfully and wholly for His glory. But we must resist the temptation to think that some person is the source of power and therefore should receive the honor due to God alone.
I think that this is a particular temptation in American Christianity. We lift up pastors, musicians, missionaries, and others to high places and forget that all people are just people and prone to wander. Any preacher who is honest feels the temptation to be considered special for the nature of his preaching, or he longs to be esteemed highly because of his blog or book or podcast. I know that I face these temptations. Praise be to God for those men and women who are able to do mightily for the glory of God. But perhaps we might all do well to remember the words of Charles Spurgeon when we are tempted to think much of the preacher or even of ourselves.
No, my brethren; God has taken good care it shall never be said conversion is of man, for usually he blesses those who seem to be the most unlikely to be useful. I do not expect to see so many conversions in this place as I had a year ago, when I had far fewer hearers. Do you ask why? Why, a year ago I was abused by everybody; to mention my name was to mention the name of the most abominable buffoon that lived. The mere utterance of it brought forth oaths and cursing; with many men it was a name of contempt, kicked about the street as a foot-ball; but then God gave me souls by hundreds, who were added to my church, and in one year it was my happiness to see not less than a thousand personally who had then been converted. I do not expect that now. My name is somewhat esteemed now, and the great ones of the earth think it no dishonor to sit at my feet; but this makes me fear lest my God should forsake me now that the world esteems me. I would rather be despised and slandered than aught else. This assembly that you think so grand and fine, I would readily part with, if by such a loss I could gain a greater blessing. “God has chosen the base things of the world;” and, therefore I reckon that the more esteemed I may be, the worse is my position, so much the less expectation shall I have that God will bless me. He hath put his “treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of man.” A poor minister began to preach once, and all the world spoke ill of him; but God blessed him. By-and-by they turned round and petted him. He was the man—a wonder! God left him! It has often been the same. It is for us to recollect, in all times of popularity, that “Crucify him, crucify him” follows fast upon the heels of “Hosanna,” and that the crowd to-day, if dealt faithfully with, may turn into the handful of to-morrow; for men love not plain speaking. We should learn to be despised, learn to be contemned, learn to be slandered, and then we shall learn to be made useful by God. Down on my knees have I often fallen, with the hot sweat rising from my brow, under some fresh slander poured upon me; in an agony of grief my heart has been well-nigh broken; till at last I learned the art of bearing all and caring for none. And now my grief runneth in another line. It is just the opposite. I fear lest God should forsake me, to prove that he is the author of salvation—that it is not in the preacher, that it is not in the crowd, that it is not in the attention I can attract, but in God, and in God alone. And this thing I hope I can say from my heart: If to be made as the mire of the streets again, if to be the laughing stock of fools and the song of the drunkard once more will make me more serviceable to my Master, and more useful to his cause, I will prefer it to all this multitude, or to all the applause that man could give. Pray for me, dear friends, pray for me, that God would still make me the means of the salvation of souls; for I fear he may say, “I will not help that man, lest the world should say he has done it, for “salvation is of the Lord,” and so it must be, even to the world’s end.
C. H. Spurgeon, “Salvation of the Lord,” in The New Park Street Pulpit Sermons, vol. 3 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1857), 197–198.
For more on the dangers of celebrity culture within Christianity and the church, see this excellent post by Denny Burk: “Carl Trueman at T4G Warning about Celebrity Pastors”
Also check out the discussion in this video. I found David Platt and Matt Chandler’s comments especially poignant. Comments start at the 2:50 mark.
