I’ve been appreciative over the years of RTS’ effort to recruit and prepare more African American men for the pastorate. RTS is not the only institution to train African Americans, of course. But the institution does appear to be intentional about trying to reach out and craft opportunities for students who may find penetrating Reformed history and culture difficult. I’m grateful for that example.

The latest thing that came to my attention is the RTS Jackson African-American Leadership Initiative. Here’s the description from the seminary’s website:

With RUF at JSU, Redeemer PCA, Mission Mississippi, Voice of Calvary Ministries, and New Horizons, RTS Jackson provides a unique context for multi-ethnic, urban, and African American ministry. Partnering with these ministries and more, the African American Leadership Initiative (AALI) will provide mentoring, modeling, fellowship, and scholarship for our students.

For many people, given the historical issues of racial conflict, Jackson seems an unlikely place for aggressive reconciliation and healing across color lines; but that is exactly what is happening. The Gospel is indisputably at work bringing racial reconciliation. God is assembling a broad constellation of people, organizations, and resources in and around Jackson to do the hard and exhilarating work of laboring together for the Gospel in an urban, multi-ethnic context.

The work of the Gospel bringing about reconciliation is evidenced through a variety of ministries in Jackson. Nationally recognized organizations like Mission Mississippi, Voice of Calvary Ministries, and the John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation and Development, which are all headquartered in Jackson, strive to use the Gospel and true Christian fellowship to build relationships across the color divide. Now, Redeemer Church (PCA) is doing paradigm-shifting work in forming a multi-ethnic congregation with a contextualized, theologically driven ministry in which historically separated racial traditions are melded together to create something new and unique. Reformed University Fellowship at Jackson State University is the first RUF started at a Historically Black College or University, and it is thriving with 200+ in attendance at large group Bible Study.

In light of our history and the ministries that God has raised up, Jackson provides a unique context for students to learn about multi-ethnic, urban, and African American ministry.

Through conversations with seminary students, pastors, community members, and others, RTS Jackson created the African American Leadership Initiative (AALI) to capitalize on the unique ministry opportunities set before us. The goal of AALI is to train those interested in the Reformed tradition to spread the gospel faithfully and in such a way that it continues God’s work of bridging communities across racial and socio-economic lines. We believe that RTS Jackson is positioned to help train leaders who could replicate this Gospel ministry that results in racial reconciliation throughout the country and around the world. The Gospel is thriving in Jackson, Mississippi, and bringing racial reconciliation with it. We believe this kind of paradigm-shifting Gospel ministry can flourish anywhere.

Check the website and the list of great mentors participating. If you get a moment, share it with some aspiring pastor. It could make the difference for a young man’s ministry and a congregation’s faithfulness.

If “celebrity” requires a compelling narrative, then it also requires telling and hearing that narrative. A good story means very little if no one hears about it or cares about. If a tree falls in the woods….

So, while we may rightly decry any celebrity-seeking we see among evangelical pastors, simply pointing fingers at “rock star” and “celebrity pastors” without thinking through the multiple contributors to the phenomena seems rather simplistic. Pastors have responsibility for thinking about the narratives they create or accept, but we also need to identify the responsibilities various media outlets and media contributors have.

Who Is “the Media”?

The phrase is ubiquitous. Everyone from politicians to Wall Street protesters to average Joes at the office point fingers at “the media” for creating this or that misrepresentation or problem. Sometimes it reminds me of the nefarious but vague “they” and “them” routinely cited as having this or that complaint about the church and pastors. “They” don’t want to sing as many songs. “Some people” are unhappy with the sermons. If we pursue corrective love it will upset “them.” One can lose his mind and ministry attempting to identify and satisfy the phantoms and shadows hiding behind plural pronouns.

So it is with “the media” in discussions about celebrity culture among Evangelical Christians. Who are we talking about?

The answers are many. I’ll define it simply as those who control the creation and dissemination of narratives about people and events for public consumption. We may include in this definition traditional media roles like journalist, author, television anchor, editorial director, publishers and so on. And we think of the traditional outlets like television, print, and radio.

But we also have to include other creators of media for our purposes: conference organizers, church media departments, and almost anyone with an iphone and internet access. A significant part of the media influencing contemporary evangelical celebrity narratives includes youtube clips, twitter, blogs, and the like. It seems most viral videos have their start with the amateur, not the professional. We have seen “the media,” and it is us.

The democratization of media in our day far surpasses any other era of human history. This means those controlling and influencing media have a significant part to play and we have to broaden our understanding of who contributes to the media and therefore potentially contributes to “celebrity culture.”

While the world of secular celebrity separates the roles of celebrity and media, contemporary Evangelicalism blurs the distinction.  ”The media” very often belongs to the pastor or church.  Savvy marketing and media departments become ready agents for “getting the message out.”  In godly hands, “getting the message out” means getting the gospel out.  In more worldly or at least careless hands, it means getting the person’s name out.  What was a precious commodity in secular circles of celebrity (publicity) has become an ordinary church ministry among some Evangelicals.  Without question this fuels both the perception and the reality of celebrity culture inside Evangelicalism.  We may be victims of our own control and access to media.

Media Interests: It Makes Cents to Make Celebrities

We’ve witnessed over the last two decades (at least) increasing sensationalizing and entertainment orientation of most media forms, even on so-called news and journalism programs. Once upon a time, most journalism focused on getting the facts correct. The narrative depended heavily on truth-telling.

But nowadays, it seems the media emphasizes telling an entertaining or compelling story–increasingly without regard to propriety and facts. What matters is public attention, sales, hits, comments, downloads, growth, and audience entertainment.  Driving these metrics upward essentially involves having certain faces on the cover or placard, or mentioning certain names in the post or tweet. Such strategies do not automatically convey “celebrity,” but they frequently do.

In such an environment, we can expect strong temptations toward crafting stories that wittingly or unwittingly create celebrity. This temptation rests upon a symbiotic relationship between the celebrity and the media.  The two live together in a persistent mutualism, each enriching the other.  The celebrity provides the narrative that sells media production, while media production reinforces celebrity status.  ”Celebrity provides magazines, television, newspapers, books, and increasingly the Internet with stories and stars; these media in turn provide celebrity, having no screen of its own, with a veritable multiplex to reach the public” (Gabler, p. 11).  ”The media have devised a semiotics of celebrity in both word and image” (Gabler, p. 4), while the celebrity masters the crafts of drama and intrigue.  In other words, the media have developed signs and indications for revealing who the celebrities are, while the celebrity seekers bolster their narratives for consumption.  We even have a colloquial phrase for the media’s role in all of this–”the celebrity treatment.”

John Piper discusses the issue on Theology Refresh: ‘The Celebrity Factor and Pastoral Ministry.’

James MacDonald discusses how he tries to practically deal with the attention of others in “Celebrity Pastors and Multi-Site Limitations.”

J. Lee Grady encourages pastors to protect their pulpits from celebrity types in “Don’t Let Your Pulpit Be Defiled.”

Lord willing, we’ll finish our ramblings on this topic this week.  However, if we know our own hearts, we’ll be dealing with the realities of pride and worldliness until Christ frees us from this prodigal planet.

At the 9Marks @ Southeastern conference, Baptist 21 hosted a panel discussion regarding church polity. The discussion was a good one, at times tense, as we explored differences of opinion regarding pastoral ministry.

In the discussion, I casually used the term “rock star pastor.” I used it without thinking, and it triggered a very helpful interaction. As I’ve said in an earlier post, I hate the term. I wasn’t attempting to label anyone on the panel with the term but to simply set up a question. I want (without any prompting or pressure from anyone) to again offer a sincere apology for speaking and writing in a way that saddled anyone with that pejorative term and for the misrepresentation and injury it caused.

As you watch the video, keep in mind you’re watching a conversation between brothers. We treated one another with Christian affection and charity before, during, and after the panel. If you choose to comment, please respond the same way–with Christian charity and affection.

Now… without the labels, an engaging discussion between brothers about a matter of significant disagreement:

9Marks at Southeastern 2011 – B21 Panel from Southeastern Seminary on Vimeo.

We’ve worked our way through some basic definitions and we’ve attempted to estimate the scope of the problem. We’ve also worked through a basic framework for understanding how “celebrity” develops, and how even appropriate notoriety may morph into celebrity status. In all of that we’re attempting to establish some working first principles as we think about this issue using the work of others who have for some time written and thought about “celebrity” as a cultural phenomenon.

Here’s what I’ve contended in a nutshell:

• We need definitions that distinguish the pejorative “celebrity pastor” from a biblical and appropriate “honor.”
• We need to identify the scope of the problem: Is it pandemic or is it isolated? I’ve argued that the problem is not isolated, but nor is it pandemic. I’m making a purely anecdotal guess that 10-15 percent of conference goers exhibit “celebrity infatuation.”
• We’ve discussed the various pathways to celebrity status, including “the noble path to notoriety” and “the corrupt corridor to celebrity.” When people who should be known for their God-glorifying achievements are censored as “celebrities,” confusing honor with “celebrity,” we may see at least three unintended consequences: undermine godly ambition and hard work, undermine godly gratitude, and rob ourselves of godly examples to follow.
• We’ve seen the need to also identify the various “players” contributing to the problem. We’ve suggested three: the pastor(s), the media, and the audience.
• Finally, we’re in need of identifying the respective roles and responsibilities each sector plays. While most commenters have argued the pastor plays the most important role and bears the greatest responsibility, I’ve argued that each sector has its responsibility but the public has the greatest role since ultimately the public confers “celebrity status.”

But this issue of role and responsibility deserves a closer look. I hope in the next three posts take each sector in turn and offer some thoughts about how they contribute to celebrity culture and what concrete responsibilities they may take. We begin where we must: the pastor.

Moving from Notoriety to Celebrity

Neal Gabler in his work on the development of celebrity identified something he thought was missing in earlier critiques of celebrity culture: story or narrative. Gabler argues that compelling narrative is the defining element that moves a person from notoriety to celebrity by garnering publicity and audience attention.

Most evangelical Christians would readily admit that faithful pastors and preachers of God’s word deserve honor for their work (1 Tim. 5:17, for ex.). Such pastors, whether only in their congregations or in their cities or nationally or internationally, gain notoriety for their labors. We’ve represented the flow to notoriety and honor as follows:

How does a pastor go from simply being known to be a faithful teacher and shepherd to being a “celebrity pastor”? Here’s where I find Gabler’s thinking about narrative so intriguing. Gabler rightly points out that every celebrity must be famous, but not every famous  person is a celebrity. The difference is that the celebrity has a narrative or story that (a) gets publicity and (b) the public enjoys or finds compelling. A simply well-known man—perhaps deservedly so—now becomes larger than life with a public that over-identifies with him. If we expressed as a formula it might be something like this:

(Notoriety + Narrative) * Publicity * Audience = Celebrity

Or building on our earlier diagram, we might represent the move to celebrity as:

Evangelicals—A Narrative-Driven People

There’s a rich irony in all of this. Stories make celebrities. We love stories.   But, what we love to do (tell and hear good stories) often results in what we love to hate (“celebrity”).

If there are a people almost defined by story, it’s Evangelicals. Ours is a culture and view of life built inseparably on layers of story.

1. The gospel itself is a story. The familiar creation, fall, redemption, consummation framework attempts to put the message of salvation in a biblical theological (storied) framework. The events of the gospel—the Incarnation, perfect righteousness, crucifixion, resurrection, and Second Coming—relay a story about how God intervenes in time and space to purchase for himself rebellious sinners, making them new. There’s no way for Evangelicals (any Christian variety) to be “Christian” in any meaningful sense without story.

2. Moreover, our personal testimonies of conversion are stories. We were not Christians lost in sin. Then a friend began to share the gospel, or we visited a church where we heard the gospel story shared. Perhaps we wrestled with the implications. But at some point the overarching story of the Gospel—and the Person it features, Jesus Christ—intercepts our story and we’re radically changed. When someone asks, “Are you a Christian?” we hear an invitation to “tell our story.”

3. Then there are the stories of church growth. Some pastors retell this narrative in their bios. Others share “what’s going on at my church” in conversation. We look for best practices or to learn how others developed this or that practice. We listen to the experiences (i.e., stories or narratives) of others with the hope of benefitting in some way. Our churches have a history and a vision. We’re communities in the midst of drama (narrative).

4. Finally, Evangelicals love accounts of suffering, perseverance, and heroism. Think of the many missionary biographies, public confessions, and interviews we’ve enjoyed. Some of it becomes hagiography, to be sure. But we love a compelling story of overcoming some odds. How many of us marvel and give praise to God at the faithfulness of an Adoniram Judson in Burma, or a Joni Erickson Tada, and so on?

Evangelical culture is in many ways a culture of layered stories. That, in part, is what makes us particularly vulnerable to “celebrity culture” concerns. It’s part of what creates the blind spot for many people. For what some see as “celebrity” appears only as interesting narrative to others.

Elements Contributing to Celebrity, or Celebrity-Seeking

So how does a notable pastor become a “celebrity pastor”? Or, to put it in accusatory terms, what might “celebrity-seeking” look like in a notable pastor? Applying Gabler’s work and insight about narratives, I’d suggest five things. You can spot a “celebrity-seeking” pastor when:

1. He Plays Up a Success Story. Gaebler: “[S]tars by virtue of being stars come equipped with the first two prerequisites for celebrity: Publicity and what might be called a “foundation narrative.” They all have the story of their success, always a good tale and the subplot of everything else they are likely to do in their lives.” Gabler’s “foundation narrative” is the “self-made man” or “rags to riches” archetypal story. The hero who comes from nowhere. The one-time “Mr. Anonymous” who becomes an Evangelical “Adonis.” We might be on the scent of “celebrity-seeking” when we see a man tell and re-tell that narrative—especially when it’s told in such a way that lionizes the man rather than glorifies God.

2. He Seeks to Create Publicity Focused on Himself. Here, I simply mean a mean attempts to stay in the media in story after story. Perhaps he appends an interesting twist or a new update to an existing narrative that brought him celebrity status. Or, sensing the old narrative has waned, he goes about telling a new story that focuses on himself. He’s not busily keeping his nose to grind; he’s stalking the paparazzi rather than being stalked.

3. He Conflates ‘Roles’ and His Real Life. Gabler writes: “Conventional stars also have the advantage over other potential celebrities of being able to draw on the roles they play which their fans often conflate with the stars’ real lives, allowing the actors, in effect, to borrow the narratives from their movies or television shows.” Remember the John Wayne example. John Wayne, a legendary ‘tough guy’ in the movies, actually received awards for courage following WWII even though he never served in the war. The roles Wayne played on the big screen were confused with the life of the man. One can scarcely entertain such confusion when it’s made by a cheering audience; it’s inexcusable when a pastor sets out to do it for himself. How does a pastor do this? Chiefly by preaching himself. He’s the hero of all his personal anecdotes—of which there are many. He never confesses his own sins—of which there are many. He creates the impression that his life is near perfect, while, of course, offering the obligatory, “I’m not perfect.” Interestingly, like John Wayne, one of the most prevalent instances of conflation happen to be ‘tough guy’ images among some evangelical pastors. But their real lives bear no scars from brawls, nor should they.

4. He Exploits Congruence.  Again from the pen of Gabler: “Of course movies and television shows have tangible stars, too and, as noted, people do confuse the person with the part. But one of the things that generates the excitement of celebrity, one of the things that distinguishes celebrity narratives from the fictional or even fact-based narratives of conventional media, is the congruence between the person and the narrative he is living.” In other words, celebrity also results when the person we see depicted in media and advertisements really is like that in real life. Congruence or integrity sometimes generates a compelling narrative. Whether it’s Simon Cowell really is that sharp-tongued, or Denzel Washington really is that humble and laid back. The congruence or integrity of character may become attractive to media and the public. Celebrity-seekers may reveal themselves by attempting to exploit that congruence.

5. He Exploits His Position. Gabler: “[S]tars of conventional media benefit from the fact that they are more likely to generate a narrative because they are much more likely to be at the center of the action….” We might discern celebrity-seeking wherever a pastor looks to direct all attention and action around himself. We know this problem all too well from local congregations. Many churches feature pastors that micro-manage every detail, protect authority and power for themselves, and cultivate in the congregation a dependence upon their presence. The pastor becomes the “star of the show.” It can happen in “celebrity cultures” as small as the local congregation of 50 or conference events of 5,000. Looking to be at the center of everything is celebrity behavior.

Here’s the thing: It’s not just notoriety or even some media attention that makes a well-known person a celebrity. Nor is it merely the creative or edgy use of media and social technology. Lights don’t make a celebrity.  Aesthetics don’t make celebrity, even if they reflect it on some level.  Narrative, story, drama moves a man from notoriety or carnal fame to celebrity status. There must be some compelling plot line to drive the adulation. When that plot line meets media exposure and audience approval, then, at least for a season, you have a celebrity. Therefore, the thing to watch out for is the use and misuse of certain narrative elements in speech, communication, and media. At the most fundamental level, that’s where we’ll see “celebrity-seeking.” Other things, imo, though important, tend to be symptoms or tend to be debatable matters of taste and preference.

Some Homework for Us Pastors

Well, what should pastors do to avoid as much as possible the tendency for others to confer celebrity status, and to crucify the tendency toward celebrity-seeking in themselves?

1. Attribute everything to God. That’s a no-brainer but it needs to be said. Our hearts are idol factories and we do act like glory thieves. Our flesh wants attention, affirmation, and applause. There’s no denying that. The antidote—Colossians 3:23-24.

But let me illustrate the difficulty of this. Sometimes John Piper finds himself in the cross-hairs of those who decry “celebrity pastors.” At first glance, we might not understand this reaction to John. After all, his entire life and ministry has been dedicated to the supremacy and glory of Christ in everything. He disdains public adulation. He ends his sermons with quick move to prayer in order to avoid applause. He’s difficult to compliment—intentionally so. I remember observing the sheer nervousness of Sam Storms and Justin Taylor as they unveiled the festschrift in honor of John. They seemed to fret, How would he respond to public honor? At one level, John Piper works against celebrity status more than any Evangelical pastor I know. So, why does he get the label? Some people mistake notoriety for celebrity and celebrity-seeking. But at a deeper level, perhaps John gets tagged this way because of congruence. He is rather consistent in seeking God’s glory both in and outside the pulpit. That’s compelling narrative because we see so little of it, honestly. So, try as he might to attribute all the glory to God, some confer celebrity status on him for that very reason. A pickle, no?

2. Don’t tell a bunch of intimate personal stories. Keep your private life private, pastor. Telling personal details creates “tangibility,” that sense that the audience “knows” you when they really don’t. This is more art than science, and a man isn’t necessarily in sin if he shares some personal detail. But learning the judicious use of personal anecdote can be the difference between staying away from celebrity tendencies and creating cult following.

But this has its difficulties, too. As a public, we might be tempted to see celebrity-seeking through personal story where it’s not there. Might I use another example? How many of us watched and prayed as Matt Chandler shared the stunning news of his brain tumor and fight with it? How did we learn of this? It was through Matt’s brief video updates to his church. He used the opportunity to further teach his people about suffering, how to think about it like Christians, and to invite their prayer and concern. Many of us eavesdropped and prayed. National press took interest and Matt’s “celebrity” increased. He wasn’t celebrity-seeking, but a compelling narrative developed around his illness.

Now, should he have remained silent? Of course not; the Scripture calls us to bear one another’s burdens. Should he have used video to share with others (keeping in mind some skepticism about video and its celebrity-making tendency)? Well, given his depleted physical state, how else could his people hear from him without taxing him even more? Seems the video was an appropriate and efficient medium. But what happened? Tangibility. Increased exposure. In the eyes of some, celebrity. In Matt’s eyes, I’d guess he was simply pastoring his church and the rest of us either joined in and benefitted, or have now become critics who think of this as some celebrity-seeking tactic.  It’s an interesting example of how personal information may be appropriately used and simultaneously result in “celebrity” for some people.

3. Resist being type cast, especially if the “role” is sensational or controversial. High-profile pastors need to work against becoming “that guy.” You know. Like Josh Harris had to fight against becoming “the dating guy.” That meant turning down some writing and speaking opportunities that might have put him in a singular role and further wed him to a sometimes controversial issue. If he wanted to seek celebrity, all he needed to do was focus on being “that guy” for the rest of us.

Becoming “that guy” is as simple as milking that story or accomplishment. I’m often asked to share my story because people are curious about how a “Muslim convert” came to Christ. That’s part of “my story.” I can tell that story at length in ways that highlight this or that aspect of my life while leaving out specific and detailed mention of the providence and grace of God. I could become the “Muslim convert” speaker on a little chitlin’ circuit for folks interested in that kind of thing. It wouldn’t be good. It would be conflating a sensational story or role with my own life in a way that could be inaccurate. I could pretend to be the super-apologist against Islam and feed on Western fears about the spread of Islam. We’ve had university professors and presidents do exactly this, only to be exposed for exaggerations later. The media and public may clamor for the type or role, but the pastor needs to resist that narrative.

4. Leave the statistics at home. Numbers and statistics tap into the meta-narrative of all celebrity stories: rags to riches, man over environment, etc. Too many pastors use numbers as a proxy for success. They give out the numbers in their church as frequently as retirees give out their social security numbers—and their identities seem to be as connected to the numbers. But if we would avoid making ourselves celebrities or having others confer that status on us, we have responsibility for avoiding worldly measures of success and giving God all the glory (see 1 above).

5. Focus promotional materials more explicitly on the Lord, the gospel, or other biblical themes and truth—not on persons. Don’t be subtle about it. Make “the message of the gospel” the message in the advertisements. Many have commented in previous posts about the tendency of conference promotions to focus on the people. At a certain level, we’re not likely to get completely away from this, any more than we’re likely to have all authors write anonymously. In fact, the advertisement of names can be vitally important if we’re talking about topics requiring meaningful credentials and expertise. I don’t want to hear about my heart disease from my auto mechanic. Likewise, I probably won’t go through the expense of traveling internationally to hear a “regular Joe” discourse on a technical subject he hasn’t studied. At that level, we’re likely to continue hearing people with expertise promoted in materials. And pastors shouldn’t shy away from that where it’s helpful.

However, much could likely be done by pastors to make sure the message is unmistakable. For example, some have taken issue with this T4G promotional video:

T4G 2012 Teaser: The Game from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

They’ve found this 47-second video objectionable because it didn’t “say gospel” to them. Now, I would offer that the video does say “friendships” and “fellowship” and “team.” At least that was the intent. And that’s what T4G is built upon. But no matter how I might explain that (a) the video isn’t the main video for the event, (b) that a host of other video advertisements speak to “The Underestimated Gospel,” (see the 16 other videos)and (c) we were just playing pick-up for fun for crying out loud, as communication we missed the mark with some of our audience. Rule #1: Be sure to communicate what you’re trying to communicate. Rule #2: Usually subtle doesn’t work. Communicating well is our responsibility and impressions of “celebrity-seeking” might be minimized with more attention on this point.

Well, that’s five things I think pastors are responsible for when it comes to minimizing celebrity culture. I’m certain there are other things, but I’m focusing on those foundational things having to do with narrative and how it creates celebrity.

Some Non-Answers

In closing, there do also seem to be some things floating around that are non-answers, imo. I think they’re non-answers because they either don’t address the fundamental issue of story or narrative in making celebrities, or they might actually cause other more serious problems. Here are three:

1. Pastors should not seek to build the church beyond their own local church. Christians have always partnered for the spread and the health of the church. From the Macedonian church’s concern for famine relief in Jerusalem to the formation of denominations and pastor fraternals to the conference movements of the last 100-plus years, cooperating for mutual encouragement, the spread of the gospel, and the strengthening of the churches seems a necessary objective. This is the baby we don’t want to toss with the bathwater.

2. Avoid all media: Don’t write books or hold conferences or podcast sermons or use videos. Suffice it to say celebrities have existed before the advent of modern electronic media. Media may speed the spread of celebrity, but it doesn’t create celebrity alone. Eschewing various forms of media won’t fix the problem.

3. Ban things like clapping. Such a recommendation may be culturally determined or derived, but it’s hardly a solution to celebrity culture. It may be a matter of taste and preference, but a ban may also be yet another way we undermine godly expressions of appreciation and gratitude.

At any rate, the basic point is that pastors have some responsibility in all of this. But the best reactions will be attempts to handle the narratives more discerningly, not just withdraw or decry any notoriety.

A dear brother and colleague in ministry has been following along with the “celebrity pastor” discussion we’ve been having.  He sent me a gem of a quote from the ‘good Doctor’ that I thought apropos:

“But let me emphasize the point that this is something that is important for the pew as well as for the pulpit. It was not because of anything that Paul had done or said that certain people in Corinth said, ‘I am of Paul’. The trouble was entirely in the people. And such trouble is still with the people. Do not be too hard on the preacher.”

Lloyd-Jones, D. M.  Romans, An Exposition of Chapter I The Gospel of God (Carlisle: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1985), 211.

Now, this is by no means all that needs to be said on the important issue of responsibility for combating anything resembling “celebrity culture” in evangelical circles.  Check here for another quote relevant to the matter.  As my last post attempts to state, there’s responsibility or blame for every sector.  Simply stating some other party is more responsible without facing our respective responsibility strikes me as a bit of blame-shifting, or as our Master so eloquently put it, blowing at specks in the eyes of others while attempting to blink with logs in our own.

We’ve tried to do a little work on definitions and the scope of the problem.  All of that simply lays foundation for us to work on theory.  That’s what we’re really concerned about because theory allows us to explain the dynamic on some level and, at least for the practitioner, begin to propose solutions to the problem.  Here’s where rubber meets the road.

No one denies that a problem exists.  We simply disagree about (a) the appropriate terminology for accurately describing the phenomena and (b) the scope of the problem.  Some see the “culture of celebrity” under every conference brochure.  Others see “celebrity seeking” in the lives of a few particular pastors.

But there’s one more fundamental question to ask in order to develop a working theory: How does it happen?  How person go from pastor to “celebrity pastor” or “rock star pastor”?

A Brief Framework

If you’re really interested in the cultural analysis of “celebrity,” you really need to read Daniel J. Boorstin‘s groundbreaking work, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), and Neal Gabler‘s Life: the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality.  Boorstin, as far as I can tell, introduces the term “celebrity” to the American landscape, defining it tautologically as “a person who is known for his well-knownness.”  Gabler, more sanguine about the concept than Boorstin, thinks of “celebrity” as “an art form wrought in the medium of life.”  Indeed, Gabler contends that “celebrity” is now the culture’s “dominant art form, not only in the attention it demands or in the way it subjugates other media but in the way it seems to refract so many of the basic concerns of the culture, precisely as art does.”  The “celebrity” Boorstin feared was the unmaking of the “great man,” Gabler hails as art refracting life.  You couldn’t get two more opposing views. (To read Gabler’s engaging interaction with Boorstin, see here)

I’d like to propose a framework that posits something of a hybrid of Boorstin and Gabler.  I’m not so much attempting to reconcile their views as much as use both men’s work as a way of illustrating two processes often conflated with bad results.  I want to suggest a noble path to notoriety, and mirror it with the corrupt corridor to celebrity.  Then I hope to say a word about how notoriety becomes “celebrity.”

The Noble Path to Notoriety. The Bible not only allows a godly category for notoriety, but commands Christians to honor the noteworthy.  We see this in places like 2 Cor. 8:18—”With him we are sending the brother who is famous among all the churches for his preaching of the gospel.”  Or Philippians 2:22, 29-30 with its commendation of Timothy and Epaphroditis—”But you know Timothy’s proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel. So receive him in the Lord with all joy, and honor such men, for he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me.”  Or, in the context of the local church, the command in 1 Tim. 5:17—”Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.”

One important feature about each of these commendations is the individual’s work and accomplishment.  These persons are well-known and honored because of their work and accomplishment in the Lord.  In other words, they have earned (if you will) the respect of the church because they are “proven,” risked their life in service, or “rule well”—especially in the ministry of the word.  We may safely conclude that the Bible is not describing shallow, superficial “celebrity.”  These accolades are honest and redound to the glory of God himself, who was at work in these men to will and do His good pleasure.

The noble path to notoriety might be illustrated as:

The person and their work attract the appropriate attention and respect of their peers and followers.  I’ve chosen the terms “notoriety” and “honor” to distinguish from the sometimes negative connotations of “fame” and “celebrity.”  Whatever prominence, notoriety, and honor these persons receive, they receive justly because of their labor in the Lord. Indeed, the Lord himself commands His people to respond with honor.

The Corrupt Corridor to Celebrity. I maintain “celebrity” is generally a pejorative and not a positive good because the corridor to celebrity essentially empties notoriety of its nobility.  “Celebrity” does this in one of two ways: either by eliminating accomplishment as the basis of fame and honor, and/or by embellishing a narrative that deifies the celebrity while creating a false attachment with the audience/crowd.  Gabler’s work details this process most clearly.

Now, according to Gabler, the difference between fame (simply being well-known) and celebrity is story or narrative and “tangibility”. The celebrity is someone who lives out a plotline that captures some public’s attention and makes the celebrity “tangible,” real, or “accessible” to that public.  In other words, the public likes their story and in some way identifies with the “celebrity.”  This explains and supports Trueman’s observation that celebrity includes “a strange familiarity whereby the celebrities are referred to in quite intimate terms by people who have never met them or have only the most passing of connections with them.“ That connection, according to Gabler, gets created by the tangible narrative surrounding the celebrity.

The narrative comes in two forms: star-driven stories based on the actual lives and achievements of the “star” (think great actors like Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington), and plot-driven narratives that can sometimes involve unaccomplished persons (think Joey Buttafuoco or Tanya Harding) in compelling dramas that interest us in the person.  Contrary to Boorstin’s view and that of many people today, some celebrities and famous persons are actually rather accomplished persons.  Star-driven celebrity has longer staying power because once the plot in plot-driven narratives is over the “celebrity” status fades as well (think Kato Kaelin).  But in either case, to go from simply being known to being a celebrity, one needs a compelling narrative and publicity (more on this in later post, D.V.).  The corrupted corridors might look something like this?

Star-Driven Corridor to Celebrity

Plot-Driven Corridor to Celebrity

The star-driven process looks a lot like the noble path to notoriety.  That’s why many folks who simply should be honored may easily be mistaken as “celebrities,” especially in a sub-culture or among individuals already nervous about conferring honor on others.  Although the star-driven “celebrification” process looks like the noble path to notoriety, here’s the difference: the narrative and publicity in the celebrity-making process renders the person a “pseudo-event” (Boorstin’s term) or a “human entertainment” (Gabler’s term).  Folks who simply should be honored for their achievement and even folks with no achievements can be “celebritized” when the real person gets eclipsed by a “role” or “image” conflated with the person’s real life.  Gabler uses a great example:

The only action John Wayne saw in World War II was on the screen in war films, yet his heroism in those movies became welded to his personal narrative to the point where he was given awards and honors for his bravery.  People believed, evidently wanted to believe, that it was his story and not just his performance.

Or consider the insights we gather from Gabler’s evaluation of the Charles Lindbergh:

Boorstin saw Lindbergh’s greatness and subsequent fame flowing from his accomplishing of having flown solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927.  Lindbergh transmogrified into a celebrity only when his publicity and popularity reached a critical mass where they became the story, usurping the accomplishment itself and making Lindbergh well known for being well known.

Or so Boorstin has it.  [W]hat Boorstin failed to recognize is that popularity is the by-product of celebrity, not its source.  For Lindbergh, the source was the narrative of that flight–a narrative that was later elaborated by his marriage to socialite Anne Morrow and by the tragic kidnapping and murder of their baby in 1932.  He wasn’t well known for being well known.  He was well known–a celebrity–because he had a great story, and he remained a celebrity because he, or history, kept adding new chapters to it.

When performance supplants person you have celebrity.  Unaccomplished persons need “the story” to carry them to “celebrity.”  Accomplished persons may become celebrities with minimal story, but when they do become celebrities the public has welded a “larger-than-life” (or simply other-than-life) story to their persons.  What normally becomes larger-than-life for Evangelical pastors is either preaching ability, leadership, godliness, or all three.  What should have stopped at honor gets transmogrified into idol and fantasy independent of and larger than the personal reality.

The Parts We All Play

Now, I’ve been arguing that no person can make themselves a celebrity any more than a man can make a woman love him.  We all play a part in the making of celebrities.  In fact, there are three primary players: the celebrity, the media, and the audience or crowd.  The celebrity presents the achievements and narrative.  The media provides the publicity or “celebrity treatment.”  The public provides the “audience to appreciate the narrative and admire its star; for in the end, celebrity without someone to consume it is like a movie without someone to watch it” (Gabler).  In this way, the media and the public become the “friends” that make the pastor a celebrity.  These gears turn swiftly and smoothly in our pixelated and digital age.  We might call these interlocking relationships the “culture of celebrity.”

We’ll think more, Lord willing, about the role of media and technology in this process, but for now we simply need to know we’re hacking our way through celebrity culture as “a kind of cultural kudzu” (Gabler).  If you’ve been to my beloved North Carolina, you might know that kudzu grows over everything.  But you might also know that not everything is kudzu.  What you think might be a dense forest of vines, may only be a thin sprawling network disguising a brick building or overhanging tall trees.  Perhaps this is why people sometimes think they see “celebrities” everywhere.  The kudzu celebrity culture does surround and grow on us all.  But that doesn’t make everything we see kudzu.

What Happens When We Confuse Honor with Celebrity

I’m assuming no one will argue against the principle of giving honor where honor is due.  In fact, I’m assuming everyone wants to do that while guarding against celebrity-induced adulation.  But what happens when we confuse “celebrity” with “honor”?

I think there are three harmful results, which is why I’m trying to think through this issue and offer a minority report on the subject.

First, we undermine work and godly ambition.  Honor and notoriety rest on the shoulders of genuine accomplishment and hard work.  Notoriety and honor are biblical rewards for faithfulness.  When we erroneously attribute a person’s status to “celebrity” rather than “honor,” we rhetorically erase or disregard years of Christ-honoring labor.  Moreover, we dis-incentivize hard work and labor in others by punishing rather than rewarding faithfulness.

Second, we undermine godly gratitude.  The Lord calls us to show honor to those who serve well.  We’re to do that with our own leaders in our local congregations (1 Tim. 5:17), but we’re also to show honor to those from other churches that minister to us in some way (2 Cor. 8:18; Phil. 2:22, 29-30).  By pejoratively branding faithful leaders as “rock stars” and “celebrities” we effectively distance people from them.  We mischaracterize honor-worthy examples and teach people to sneer when they should cheer God’s work through others.  Rather than gratitude we stimulate inappropriate criticism.

Third, we rob ourselves of examples to follow.  The Scripture is replete with exhortations to follow the examples of others.  Most of these passages appeal to congregations to follow the examples of their leaders (Heb. 13:7, for example).  But sometimes, entire churches are challenged to follow the examples of other churches and leaders (2 Cor. 8, for example).  Let’s face it: We need examples.  We primarily and mostly need local examples to follow.  But we also need “heroes” as Kevin DeYoung recently pointed out.  When we tag faithful men with pejorative titles we rob ourselves of the potentially heroic examples we sometimes need.

There are dangers to celebrity.  But there are also significant dangers to hating our heroes and failing to honor the faithful.

Lord willing, in a future post, we’ll give some attention to how this theory of celebrity-making might point the way forward in correcting some things.  We need to ask ourselves some questions like:

• What narrative allows a local church pastor to move to notoriety and honor and then possibly to “celebrity”?
• In what ways are “larger-than-life” attributes developed in the stories we tell or participate in, and how do they contribute to celebritization?
• What media and marketing practices promote this move to “celebrity”?
• How might the audience distinguish between honor due and undue attachment?

But for now, I’d be interested in your thoughts on the framework or theory and the danger of labeling people we should honor “celebrities” or “rock stars.”

Yesterday we began our discussion of “celebrity” and “rock star” pastors with some consideration of definition.  We can’t begin to unravel this issue without first defining the main concepts.  What exactly do we mean when we refer to “celebrity pastors” and “rock star pastors”?

After some considerable throat-clearing, here’s where we (at least, I) landed:

Celebrity Status–a social standing conferred or withheld by some public or audience.

Celebrity–an individual on whom celebrity status has been conferred, without regard to their merit or their intention.  They have a high- or popular-profile in media or other outlets important to the public.

Celebrity-Seeking–that behavior that looks for the applause and adulation of others, that aims to maintain a positive portrayal of self in the public, often on superficial and dishonest grounds.  See also idolatry, pride, self-aggrandizement, self-exaltation, delusions of grandeur.

While I don’t like the terms for their negative connotation, I hope these definitions at least allow us to distinguish group and individual levels of analysis; focus on observable behavior without saddling pastors with uncharitable labels; and better assign responsibility for any celebrity-making or celebrity-seeking problems.  By attempting to define terms, I’m raising basic questions about the propriety of pointing at public and influential pastors as though they’ve anointed and proclaimed themselves to be “celebrities.”

But there’s another critical aspect to good definition work when developing a theory: scope.  How large or small is the phenomena?  How many people are affected, participate, or share in the problem?  Without an appropriate idea of scope, we’re left guessing about whether we’re facing a tsunami or a trickle.  We’re liable to either over- or under-respond to the problem, to either overlook a problem really there or imagine a problem that’s not.  Scope becomes critical to solution.

How Big a Problem Is Celebrity-Making and Celebrity-Seeking in Contemporary Evangelicalism?

Now, that’s an important question.  Does anyone have an answer?  Re-phrase (since everybody has an answer): Does anyone have measurable and reliable answer?

Probably not.  We’re at the cruel  mercy of anecdote and perception.  People are sometimes fond of saying “perception is reality.”  I don’t know where that saying got it’s start, but it’s not true.  Perception is perception. Only reality is reality.  And if we’re interested in actually addressing the problem, we need to attend to what’s really real.  We need to ask the scope question on two levels.

The Celebrity-Making Level.  Nearly everyone commenting on this issue acknowledges that the evangelical crowds and conference goers have some responsibility in celebrity-making.  I’ve argued in the previous post that only the audience can confer celebrity status on a person.  Thus, the crowds bear the bulk of the responsibility for celebrity-making.

Much is made of conference attendees who line up to greet speakers, ask questions, shake hands, and seek autographs.  ”There!  See!  That’s the big problem!” some exclaim.  The anecdotal evidence suggests there’s a problem among mostly 20-somethings clamoring to take pictures with their favorite “celebrity pastor.”  How large a problem is this?  It’s difficult to estimate, but let’s just take the “mega-conference” (another horrible phrase) attendees as an example.

Young 20- to 30-somethings make up–what?–forty to fifty percent of the larger conferences available today.  So a conference boasting 5,000 attendees might hold some 2,000-3,000 persons in this demographic.  That’s considerable–and encouraging!  One observer speculates that a lot of these attenders are “conference Christians” who make the rounds on the conference circuit.  So, maybe there’s some over-representation caused by their multiple appearances?

I don’t know.  But here’s what I can say as someone who speaks at his share of conferences and enjoys meeting people there: Most of my conversations display little resemblance to the perceptions of some who disapprovingly watch the line of attendees approach the velvet rope.  Let me give you some examples from recent conferences:

* There’s the young Asian pair, student workers at a major university, asking how they should contribute to the well-being of their church as it goes through a particular difficult struggle.

* There’s the young man who asked me to summarize one of my books.  Then, without a hint of embarrassment said, “Thanks for that summary.  Sounds good.  I might consider buying it.”  My wife and I laughed for two nights on that one.

And, if I’m correct in assuming that the adulation tends to accrue among younger conference attendees, then I’m all the more hopeful rather than worried.  Why?  They’re going to mature.  They’re going to grow out of it, and there are a lot of good men and tough experiences that are going to help them grow out of it.  It may be that a more benign immaturity may be the taproot of much of what we think is a “celebrity-making” impulse “sweeping” through the church.

Celebrity-Seeking Level.  But we have to also address the phenomena at the level of the individual pastor.  We all maintain that pastors up-front have some responsibility for redirecting unhealthy and, at times, ungodly attention.  But the more pressing question to me is: To what extent is celebrity seeking behavior an identifiable problem among evangelical pastors?  What is the scope of the problem at the individual pastor level?

Writers and bloggers sometimes us the “rock star” and “celebrity” labels to imply that the pastor himself is out to create fans and celebrity.  I think that claims is dramatically overblown.  Here’s what I wrote on April 20, 2011, and I still maintain this position:

How many brothers do we know who are trying to be ‘celebrities’?  Quite frankly, if we knew that or observed that in a man’s character, wouldn’t we be repulsed?  I can’t name a man at the conferences I attend that I can say is self-seeking in that way, who wants the celebrity spotlight.  … For that reason, isn’t “celebrity pastor” a bit of an unnecessary slur?  Doesn’t it suggest a motive we’d have to interrogate?  A motive we ought to have some evidence of before we assign the tag?

Were a man seeking celebrity he would not be fit for the pastorate.  Point blank.  He would be disqualified, in my opinion.  He would be greedy for gain, lacking temperance and self-control, a spiritual novice really.  He could not be an elder in the church I serve.  And if that label “sticks” where I am personally concerned, then I need someone to help me see it so that I can resign immediately.  Unless we wish to call into question the fitness of every well-known pastor and preacher simply because he is well-known, I suggest we be much more restrained in our use of these labels, perhaps tossing them from our lexicon altogether.

Let me be as direct as I can be.  Of all the pastors I have met, know, and have had the privilege of serving with in my few years of ministry (pastors “in my camp”), I can think of only one that might be liable to the charge of self-seeking and currying “celebrity” or “rock star” status.  Might because while I find some aspects of his ministry highly questionable, to call him a “celebrity-seeker” is a step too far with my limited knowledge of the man personally.  While I will not name that person, I want to be clear about my feelings toward others I know who are unfairly named, implicated, or even thought to be criticized by me.  It’s not James MacDonald.  Though fellow TGC members, I don’t know James much at all, and I certainly don’t have a viewing stand on his heart to conclude that he’s a “celebrity-seeker” or “rock star pastor.”  Some people thought the timing of the multi-site and Elephant Room posts meant I was “gunning for” James.  That’s simply not true.  Representations to the contrary are false.  Moreover, it’s not John Piper.  Who fights against celebrity more than John?  It’s not Tim Keller.  Who is more unassuming and even shy than Tim?  It’s not John MacArthur.  Who beats the drum for ministry faithfulness and word-based integrity more than John?  It’s not Matt Chandler.  It’s not C.J. Mahaney.  It’s not a whole host of other guys who sometimes become poster children for these accusations simply because their ministries are large or they write books or people enjoy listening to their preaching.

Size doesn’t create celebrity.  Fruitful writing may make a person known, but that doesn’t equate to “celebrity-seeking.”  Nor does unusual gifting create celebrity.  The flesh creates, seeks, sustains, and revels in celebrity.  I have not and I do not put any of these men or any of the other men with whom I closely serve in this category.

I suppose that means I think the scope of the problem is smaller than some others perceive it.  Saying the scope is small is not the same as saying the problem is non-existent.  Saying that I might identify one man “in my camp” does not nullify other assessments people might make either about “my camp” or about others in broader evangelicalism.  Indeed, if I were to put on a wide-angle lens I could think of quite a few other worthies for the “celebrity-seeker” label.

Naming the Names in My Tribe

But right now I’m writing about my own tribe.  We’re criticizing ourselves, a good exercise lest we become blind to rather important issues.  As we look at ourselves, we need some data about the scope of the problem.  We can become Chicken Littles castigating every well-known pastor with unfounded suspicions and broad accusations about the falling sky of “celebrity culture.”  That’s not a good outcome.  We can do better.  We need to do better.

The issue at hand is too important for undiscerning use of phrases, phrases themselves co-opted from the secular celebrity world.  The terms engage simultaneously in the worst kind of exaggeration and the worst kind of trivialization.  They exaggerate our familiarity with the people and dynamics at work while trivializing the lethal spiritual danger that such behavior could represent.  We use the terms believing we know more than we actually do while missing the significant opportunities for correction and restoration where the problems actually lurk.

If we’re going to use these terms, we need to define them.  And once we’ve defined them clearly, including the scope of the problem, we should name names.  In fact, the easiest way to define the scope would be to name names and cite the evidence.  I think the charge is that serious, and I think the people who come under a cloud of suspicion absent definition and naming names deserve better from us as brothers.  If we like these terms and use them pejoratively, we should take the prophet’s stance, point the finger at the kings, and say, “David, you’re the man.”

But naming names is a decision with gravity.  We don’t do that lightly.  That’s good.  But we shouldn’t avoid the accountability of naming names by slinging mud on everyone with generic charges.  Slinging mud from the safe distance of our laptops… well, it takes no courage to do that.  Again, our brothers and our Lord deserve better.

Lest I be accused of only drawing attention to myself, I thought it wise to point out that there were some other really thoughtful posts today on the issue of “celebrity pastors.”  I enjoyed them all and commend them to you.

Jonathan Leeman says he really likes the phrase “celebrity pastor.” Who else would we rather evangelical Christians make into celebrities?  His post is more nuanced than that, of course, and he raises a good point.

Also, Kevin DeYoung offered a helpful list of distinctions between heroes and celebrities.  I love Kevin’s ability to say important and sometimes complex things simply.

Finally, Carl Trueman pushes back on what he calls my “semantic qualifications.”  He writes:

Thus, the issue with the celebrity culture surrounding certain pastors and organisations is not ultimately one of linguistic definition or of those who use the term with a certain amount of elasticity or even incompetence.  The issue is that there is a real problem — in fact, many real problems — to which some are trying to draw attention.  There is a problem with the yob aesthetic, the arrogant stage swagger, the stand-up routines, the obsession with talking about sex in sermons which puts some of these conference headlining pastoral role models about as far from Paul’s vision of leadership as possible; there is a problem with pastors who tell their people they will only visit them in hospital once they have been placed in a body bag; there is a problem with pastors who make videos which ape the aesthetics of the mainstream media and focus on the pastor, not the pastor’s God; there is a problem with churches of thousands of people, few of whom ever get to meet an elder, let alone the pastor; there is a problem with church planting strategy that is so wedded to the cult of the one man that he has to be skyped in to the community; there is a problem when a man has to phone the librarian at Westminster Seminary with a pastoral issue because nobody at his home church of thousands has the time to speak to an ordinary church member about his crisis of faith.

Call it what you like.  I call it the culture which grows up around celebrities.  Maybe I am hopelessly wrong in my choice of terms.  You may certainly choose others which fit better.  But like  internet pornography, I would rather spend time exposing the problems for what they are than debating semantic qualifications.

All I can say is: I’ve not denied that there’s a problem.  Surely it’s worth stating the problem well so that we don’t stigmatize and condemn the righteous along with the wicked.  Will we not spare the Sodom and Gomorrah’s of evangelicalism for ten righteous pastors?  Better definition might help us both address the issue and give honor to whom honor is due.

“A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.”
–Fred Allen, Treadmill to Oblivion

“The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.”
–Daniel Boorstin, The Image

“Celebrity: the advantage of being known by those who don’t know you.”
Chamfort Maximes et pensées

I’m a social scientist by education and training.  Prior to the Lord saving me, my ambition was to teach community psychology at a research 1 university.  I love the sound of markers on white boards and the way the brains of young students screech at a worldview halting or pop and ooze with some fresh discovery or intellectual challenge.  For a long while, the academic life seemed like the ideal life to me.

One reason for that ambition and that view of the academy were the teachers I enjoyed during my university studies–especially graduate school.  The Lord granted me the privilege of studying with some outstanding men, leaders in their field who were generous with others.  I looked up to them–still do.

One thing they taught me as an aspiring research psychologist was the indispensable role of theory in guiding research and practice.  A good theory was, as the saying goes, worth its weight in gold.  But you couldn’t just posit a theory and walk off into the sunset having explained all life’s problems with little more than your own ruminations.  Good theory was hard work.  The toil began with definitions.  A good theory depended on strong constructs.  I couldn’t help but recall this as I watched The Green Lantern this weekend.  The young reluctant superhero wasn’t so “super” until he learned to imagine and use strong reality-shaping constructs, ideas, or definitions.  In the social sciences, strong constructs were the difference between a salient and workable explanation of some social problem and a thorough shredding of your theory and hypotheses in the face of data and reality.

It seems to me that much of the talk about “celebrity” and “rock star” pastors must begin with solid working definitions.  Otherwise, we have no coherent, reliable way of discussing the issue.  Most current usage reminds me of the quip: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”  People assume they know it when they see it, but they’ve spent precious little time thinking carefully about defining it.  But when the terms are sometimes pejoratives, accusations, insinuations, and slanders that affect the reputations of the ones so described, failing to define the terms or to think carefully about their use is at least negligent and at worst ungodly.  As I wrote in an earlier post on the subject, I find the terms deplorable.  The labels have all the power to stain and ruin a reputation without any of the inconvenience required by precise definition.  Think McCarthy’s Communist charges.

A Brief Survey of Usage

I spent a little time casting about the internet reading articles and blog posts to see if anyone had given much time to defining the terms.  As it turns out, at least on popular evangelical blogs, websites, and online journals, precious little definition is out there–even though from 2006 to the present one can see a noticeable uptick in the usage of the terms.

What exactly are we talking about when we use those terms?

In dictionary terms, “celebrity” refers either to “a famous person” or “fame, notoriety, renown.”  The term carries no necessary negative or positive connotation.  But most usage in both secular and evangelical circles nowadays departs from the textbook meanings and connotations.

For some, all you need is a blog or a Facebook page or a twitter account with a follower or two.  By that definition, Carl Trueman himself–perhaps the most outspoken critic of evangelical celebrity culture–is a “celebrity pastor.”  So is yours truly and probably your very own local church pastor.

For some, your writing needs to be a bit more elaborate than blog posts.  You need to have written a book or two.  Then you qualify as a “celebrity pastor.”  If people actually buy and read the book, quote you a time or two, then you’ve moved up to “rock star pastor” status.  Or, if you speak at a conference and your conference address gets published, that makes you twice the “celebrity” and “rock star” because (a) you were a conference speaker and (b) you made it into print.  Congratulations!

Sometimes people assume that if you actively and creatively promote what you’ve written or spoken then the act of promotion itself is self-aggrandizing and celebrity-seeking.  But why labor to speak or write on something important enough to speak or write about if you’re not going to tell others you think this important and have something to say?

Or perhaps “celebrity” and “rock star” work as synonyms for “young hipster“.  Still others seem to believe simply preaching to a large church makes you a “rock star” pastor.  If your church rolls boast more than 200-250 people, then you must be a “celebrity.”  After all, rather than stick to Jewish limits for walking distance on the Sabbath, people drive a number of miles to hear you speak, and some would even attend a satellite church to hear you.  Ipso facto–A “rock star.”

Notice something about these definitions?  They all attempt to define the concept by proxy.  They’re not statements about the essence of celebrity.  Rather, they’re symptoms, signs, or outward activities–a kind of ”celebrity in the eye of the beholder” definition.  They lack precision or nuance.  In short, these are inferences and speculations.  They won’t suffice for defining the phenomenon we’re concerned about.  We could all list scores of persons who use Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and market their writing or organization but would not be “celebrities” or “rock stars” in the commonly assumed pejorative sense.

So there must be something else, another way of addressing the issue.  Since most evangelicals use these terms as pejoratives–negative slurs–we dare not settle for lazy proxies.  If we’re going to label a man and express contempt for him, we ought to do it with precision.  Good derision no less than good praise depends on good definition.

Trueman’s Take

Carl Trueman, regard by some as the “watch dog” on this issue, offers perhaps the most helpful blog reflection on defining “celebrity.”  In “Public Figures and Celebrities: A Key Distinction,” Trueman distinguishes between someone simply well-known and public and someone courting celebrity.  Right up-front he helpfully identifies the problem with blurring the distinction between “public figures” and “celebrities”:

Anyone who performs any public action such as writing, preaching, or making a speech, becomes known by some section of the public at some level.   The more well-known such a public figure is, the more we think in terms of fame and being famous.  This is unfortunate as these words somewhat blur the distinction between being a public figure and being a celebrity.  After all, unless one allows a distinction between being well-known and being a celebrity, then one really denies that it is possible to criticize celebrity culture in the public sphere: such criticism, as a public act, would mean that the critics were immediately co-opted into that which they were critiquing.  Such incoherence would thereby render the exercise self-defeating and hypocritical, allowing for it to be dismissed on logical and moral grounds.

So, “celebrity” and “rock star” ought not be used as synonyms for “public” and “well known.”  ”Celebrity” and “rock star,” according to Trueman, include a certain dallying in secular and ungodly tendencies toward image production, fanfare, and shallow notoriety.  Here are the four aspects to “celebrity” that Trueman identifies:

1.  Being a celebrity “carries with it connotations of branding and marketing.” He adds: “There is a difference between someone who writes and speaks, even one who is very popular, and someone who has actually achieved a level of popularity combined with particular market appeal and particular marketing mechanisms.”

2.  Being a celebrity “is often accompanied by a strange familiarity whereby the celebrities are referred to in quite intimate terms by people who have never met them or have only the most passing of connections with them.”  Celebrities are people that other people feel strongly about even though there’s little or no actual relationship.  Trueman comments: “Being the object of such pseudo-familiarity is often a sign of the possession of celebrity status.”

3. “Celebrity also brings with it a certain fetish quality whereby peculiar power is ascribed to the person, a power which they do not instrinsically possess.” Trueman here takes aim at the tendency of some to invest unquestionable authority in a person (“this must be right because ‘X’ says it”).

4.  “Celebrity often today brings with it a certain aesthetic influence.” In other words, people begin to dress, speak, and act like the “celebrity” in question.

Based on these statements, movement toward “celebrity” and “rock star” status involve: marketing savvy, either currying or enjoying emotional attachment from those who do not know you, fetish quality, and aesthetic influence.  Trueman readily admits that aspects 2-4 may have more to do with the audience than the person being “celebrified.”  He opposes the idea that because a person’s admirers respond with over-familiarity, make a fetish of the man, or mimic him then the man himself can automatically be blamed for seeking celebrity.  But he also contends that the well-known public figure–especially pastors–have a responsibility to work against these tendencies in their audiences.  Lord willing, we’ll talk more about responsibility in a later post.  But for now, stand back and think a minute about this definition of “celebrity.”

What do you think of this definition?  Does this suffice as a good working definition for our theory that the church and pastors are vulnerable to “celebrity” and “celebrification”?  What strengths and weaknesses accompany this definition?  If three-quarters of the definition may be met by followers without the active design of the “celebrity,” how useful is this definition for describing the pastors in question?

In social psychological terms, I’d say–as helpful as Trueman’s four-part reflections are–the definition lacks “construct validity.”  It has good “face validity” (it looks and sounds correct) but it fails the test of “discrimination validity” (it fails to distinguish sufficiently from other phenomena).  In other words, the definition fails to measure what’s happening with the pastor or preacher or actor or athlete in question.  It tells us mostly about ourselves, audiences, spectators, and fans–but it doesn’t really tell us about the “celebrity.”  Again, in social science jargon, there’s a “confound.”  In this case, we confuse levels of anyalysis–individual and group–with the one term.

So, it’s difficult to see how we could reliably brand a man a “celebrity pastor” or “rock star” pastor when we’re mostly describing the attributes and actions of the crowd.  Let me hasten to agree with Trueman that the pastor or leader in question has responsibility for thinking about how they discourage adulating tendencies in others.  But at the level of whether or not we should call a pastor himself a “celebrity” or “rock star,” it seems prudent to me that we call a moratorium until we’re equipped with better definitions.  I think that’s especially important because the use of these terms implies something sinister about the hearts of the men so labeled.

One More Attempt

In another post, Trueman cites email correspondence with a Bavinck scholar.  This attempt at a definition gets closer to a one-sentence definition centered more on the individual pastor himself rather than the effects of celebrity in the surrounding culture–whether broader secular or smaller evangelical culture.  He writes:

I would define the current notion of celebrity, for example, around the categories of aesthetics carefully cultivated and public self-disclosure of personal details with the goal that the public then celebrates this person in public arena etc.  … Sacrificing the difficult details of your private life in order to gain public adulation is a key part of secular celebrity, and I wonder if the way some of these preachers sacrifice the harder details of their private lives (or more often, the private sins of their wives/children – after all, shaming one’s self isn’t that good an idea as a preacher) in order to get public adulation is just the same thing.

This writer defines celebrity, in part, by the designed outcome–public celebration of the person himself.  The aspiring celebrity carefully cultivates an appearance, a persona, and strategically uses the details of their personal life to meet this goal.  That, I think, is the gist of most evangelical uses of the labels.  That, I think, is why the entire discussion is troubling on so many levels.

If evangelical pastors really act this way, they are not “pastors” in any biblical sense of the word.  If this is observable in a man, he should be immediately dismissed from the pastoral role.  But it’s troubling on another level.  Calling someone a “celebrity,” insofar as we imply they’re celebrity-seeking, requires us to make judgments about a person’s motives we simply cannot reliably make.  While it’s true that we may judge a tree by the fruit it bears, some folks are attempting to judge the difference between banana and plantain from the distance of a 1,000 miles.  In many cases, the critic’s emotional dislike while being unfamiliar with the “celebrity” may simply be the negative cousin to the celebrity-making public’s emotional attachment from the same distance.  One man hates the disclosure of private life while the other is drawn to it.  Six in one hand, half a dozen in the other.  And we’re still left asking ourselves, “What are we really observing in the person?”  We don’t know.

Toward Some Working Definitions

It’s taken me a while to get here (sorry about that), but here are some beginning definitions I hope might be helpful to those convinced they should continue using the terms.

Celebrity Status–a social standing conferred or withheld by some public or audience.

A person may use their gifts and abilities to seek notoriety or fame, but they cannot by those efforts make themselves famous, any more than they can make themselves loved.  Think of all the aspiring Hollywood actors waiting tables in L.A. hoping for that ‘big break.’  No matter how strenuously the aspiring celebrity may attempt to fashion and advance their image, the media and the public always play a substantial part in the image-making process and the determining role in conferring celebrity status.  In short, celebrities don’t make celebrities; people make celebrities.

Celebrity–an individual on whom celebrity status has been conferred, without regard to their merit or their intention.  They have a high- or popular-profile in media or other outlets important to the public.

Celebrity-Seeking–that behavior that looks for the applause and adulation of others, that aims to maintain a positive portrayal of self in the public, often on superficial and dishonest grounds.  See also idolatry, pride, self-aggrandizement, self-exaltation, delusions of grandeur.

Here’s what I hope these terms do for us.  They distinguish levels of analysis–whether we’re describing public attitudes and actions or individual.  In the case of “celebrity-seeking,” we may focus on observable behavior and not put entire groups of pastors under the dark cloud of a vague label.  I hope this says more squarely that the ability to confer “celebrity status” and the proportional responsibility for that action lies with the audiences or groups in question.  If it’s true that the ability to confer celebrity status lies with the crowds, then that raises basic questions about the propriety of pointing at public and influential pastors as though they’ve anointed and proclaimed themselves to be “celebrities.”  Again, I’m not denying the responsibilities we all have in the public square.  I’m simply placing the primary locus of control at the celebrity-making group level rather than the individual pastor level.

Frankly, I don’t think we have any good definitions available to us at all.  Even those who think about pop culture and celebrity as an academic career lament the shifting sands of definition in this area.  Honestly, I think we’d be better off treating this issue the way we sometimes treat discussions of “Calvinism” or “Reformed theology”–better to describe and explain what we’re talking about than to use the label that miscommunicates so much.

What We Teach Titus

My four year old sometimes repeats things he hears.  Sometimes it’s cute.  He will appropriately use a phrase befitting someone in their sixties.  The weird juxtaposition of old-age wisdom and his four-year-old frame triggers a good chuckle.

But his mimicry isn’t always funny.  Sometimes he picks up a word he shouldn’t repeat–ever.  At four years old, he doesn’t know what he’s saying and he doesn’t have the mental faculties as yet to distinguish between good things to emulate and the evil company that corrupts good manners.

So we have a simple rule in our house.  If you don’t know what a word or phrase means, don’t use it.  Plain and simple.  Know what you’re talking about, otherwise avoid that term.  This entire “celebrity” discussion reminds me of that principle.  Until we know what we’re talking about, we should avoid the terms–especially when there are more respectable ways of referring to prominent people, like “prominent,” “high-profile,” “public” and so on.  As Christians, we should show honor even when we’re attempting to point out serious problems.