“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.

Americans pride themselves on their ingenuity and know how. We’re a country that likes to think of itself as being able “to get things done.” There’s a significant blessing in such a self-image. It motivates. It stirs. It drives and propels. Thinking of ourselves in this way inspires us to think of possibility, invention, and creativity. Those are good things.

But, like everything else in a fallen world, good things also have unintended and sometimes unforeseen consequences. Usually there’s a soft underbelly to ever superhero, an Achilles’ heel to every ideal. The American cultural ethic is no exception.

Starting with the Wrong Question

Here’s one significant problem with our tendency toward ingenuity, know how, and getting things done: It prompts us to ask the wrong starting question. We begin by asking “How?” and very seldom ask “Why?”  And because the church exists in this milieu, the church and her leaders often exhibit both the strengths and weakness of the American cultural ideal.  We don’t often see it, or stop to ponder it.  But it’s at work in us all.

Therefore, the most necessary first-order question for pastors and people to ask and answer when it comes to living out the faith is “Why?” Why do we do this? Why don’t we do that? Why does the Bible instruct us to think this way and not that? Why does this example inform our practice or this precept prohibit that practice?  Why do we believe certain teachings and reject others?

Not asking the why question and delving for a rock solid answer, leaves us open to pragmatism.  Pragmatism is that philosophy, crudely stated, that says “Do what works.”  It is an answer to the “why” question, but it comes in the form of a “how.”  It says, “We do this because it works this way.”  There’s a place for that; it’s just not at the level of first principles.  Pragmatists assume that a satisfactory answer to “how” provides a self-evident reason for “why.”  That’s the problem.  And the pragmatist is genuine when they say “they don’t see the problem with their practice” when the critic says, “But why?”  They really don’t see the problem with their practice or decision because they’ve chosen to allow “how” considerations to drive all the other questions.  (By the way, “I don’t see it” is not a good retort in disagreement.  It’s a statement about our vision, not about the merits of an argument)

Too Much Attention to “How”

That’s what I fear I see in the discussion about multi-site churches.  They’re not from the devil, but they’re not clearly from the Bible either.  And it seems to me, their adoption reflects the pragmatic concerns of “how to handle growth” in some cases, or “how to plant churches.”  A really big “how” squeezes out careful reflections on “why.”  Why intentionally organize bodies of believers in such a way that pastor-teacher leadership remains absent?  (I know that’s not every multi-site, but that’s the one I’m addressing).  Why choose the strategy of broadcasting video interstate and sometimes across national borders when the NT clearly establishes the pattern of local congregational leadership? Why not raise up a “good enough” preaching pastor to serve that body and “particularize” (if I can borrow language from my presbyterian friends) that body as soon as you can and as soon as is healthy?  And are the answers to the “why” questions so compelling that we can set aside biblical precedent?  If not, we’re pragmatists of the worst kind, even if we’re theologically orthodox on so many other important issues.

Here’s how the “why” questions help us: They root us to the text of the Bible (assuming one uses the Scripture to answer the questions) and drive us toward faithfulness.  How questions really turn on the principle or value of effectiveness.  We all want to be effective at preaching and spreading the gospel and making disciples.  Nothing wrong with that.  But the primary principle for evaluating Christian ministry and Christian life is not effectiveness; it’s faithfulness (1 Cor. 4:1-3, for example).  ”It is required of stewards that they be found faithful.”  Required.

Our Lord’s parable of the talents does not overturn this didactic principle from the epistles.  They lie in harmony.  And the parable of the talents, which seems to require fruitfulness (which we all want), actually depends on faithfulness.  Did the servant prove faithful to employ or unfaithful in burying the stewardship entrusted to him?  The Lord produces the increase.  We must be faithful.

Asking tough why questions and pursuing rich biblical answers keeps us from becoming unfaithful to our Lord.  And asking “Why” also has this happy benefit: It then informs the “how.”  It’s possible to get effective how answers while completely missing the why; but it’s more difficult to miss good how strategies when we’ve nailed the biblical why.  When we’ve nailed a biblical why and chosen a suitable how, we sleep like the farmer who planted his seed and new the harvest would come in God’s time.  We sleep; we don’t cast around anxiously or aimlessly looking for the next great “how.”

“Who” Is on Third

Now, the other way pragmatism rears the ugly side of its head is by prematurely asking “Who?”  That’s what I fear I see in the Elephant Room invitation of Jakes and others.  In the course of last week’s events, the stated purpose of the Elephant Room morphed.  It changed from a conversation among Christian brothers to a conversation among leaders.  In all honesty, I think that was a decision made with the best of intentions in order to make comfortable the most people–a potentially embarrassed Jakes who might be uninvited, potentially uncomfortable panel members who might not wish to endorse Jakes, and a potential viewing public that might view the Jakes invitation as an endorsement of Jakes as orthodox.  I think the ER folks were trying to serve multiple important needs.

But what’s the real problem?  It wasn’t their earlier purpose statement.  The real problem was asking the “who” question before really taking heed to their original “why”–to foster unity among Christian leaders who differ methodologically.  Had the organizers of the event stuck firmly to that why, rooted in a careful articulation of biblical command and precept, the “who” would have been dictated by the “why.”  Jakes would never have appeared on the short list because a historically orthodox definition of “Christian” would have required clear adherence to the Trinity.  But the pragmatic “who” superseded the foundational “why” with the resulting controversy that followed.  We might also argue, as others have (here, here, here, and here), that a robust biblical answer to the why’s of pastoral ministry might have pre-empted the invitation of Noble and Furtick, whose ministry philosophies appear to depart significantly from biblical pastoral practice.

As I stated in another post, MacDonald and Driscoll may invite anyone they wish to their events.  But isn’t that a rather pragmatic, free-wheeling answer to a problem caused by pragmatic free-wheeling decisions?  It would be better that all our invitations be rooted in our Master’s instruction (Titus 3:10; 2 John 9-11).  Why invite a man to share your platform who could not be an elder at a biblical church?  Notice we’re back to “Why?” not “who?”  Our deepest problems are settled by faithful answers to “Why?”  When those answers ring true to the Bible, the follow-on questions of “how” and “who” get so much easier and serve only to strengthen, not change, the “why.”

A Parting Prayer

Now, some may wish to interpret this as an attack on MacDonald and others.  Such an attack is the farthest thing from my mind and heart.  I’m not judging MacDonald.  Each man stands or falls with his own Master.  The Lord knows us all, and He will reward us properly and graciously.  This isn’t written to ridicule or embarrass.  It’s written with the prayerful hope that we all might grow in faithfulness to our Lord.  It’s written in the recognition that we all need help in growing in faithfulness; I know I do.

Recently I picked up Richard Baxter‘s The Reformed Pastor again.  Those of you familiar with Baxter’s classic know its searching content.  For those knew to the title, “Reformed” does not mean “Calvinism” or “the doctrines of grace.”  It refers to the need for reforming the minister and his labors in keeping with God’s call to watch ourselves and our sheep.

Anyway, I was struck by five questions that conclude J.I. Packer’s introduction to the book (p. 18).  They left me with much to ponder.  In the spirit of sharing my pain with others, I list the questions below:

1.  Do I believe the Gospel Baxter believed (and Whitefield, and Spurgeon, and Paul)?

2.  Do I then share Baxter’s view of the vital necessity of conversion?

3.  Am I then as real as I should be in letting this view of things shape my life and work?

4.  Am I as rational as I should be in choosing means to the ends that I desire, and am charged to seek?

5.  Have I set myself, as Baxter set himself, to finding the best way of creating situations in which I can talk to my people personally, on a regular basis, about their spiritual lives?

Good questions all, possessed with a certain logic that begins with the gospel and conversion and compels sober, prayerful reflection on the strategies we employ in our ministries to be sure our people are first soundly converted, second established in the faith, and third encouraged daily to persevere.

What’s your strategy?

So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God.  Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.  I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself.  My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent.  It is the Lord who judges me.  Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes.  He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts.  At that time each will receive his praise from God (1 Cor. 4:1-5).

Jonathan Leeman, commenting similarly in The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love:

Statistics may have their uses for churches, but the most important things about a church cannot be measured—the differences between fake and real, between flesh and spirit, between the minds of men and the mind of God.  Only as we stand before God on the day of judgment will the real measurement of things be revealed.  Sadly, too many pastors and churches attempt to measure their ministry by what is seen rather than what is unseen. (p. 61)

How freeing it is when stewards of the gospel live each day in light of that Day knowing Whose judgment really and ultimately matters–not their members, not the courts, not even their own, but Christ’s alone.  For on that day we’ll be seen for who and what we really are, and we’ll receive our reward.

The pitfalls are many.  We may value the opinions and judgments of our people too much, swinging wildly between the last compliment and the last criticism we receive from our people.  Or we may think too highly of human courts, the court of public opinion outside the church, and give too much attention to being acceptable to the world.  And how often have we judged ourselves?  How often do we either condemn or excuse ourselves?  How often do we make the mistake of concluding we must be innocent because “our conscience is clear”?  How humbling for Paul to reveal that even though his conscience is clear regarding his life and ministry he still cannot conclude his own innocence as though his conscience were infallible.  Feeling okay about what we’re doing is not the same as being okay in God’s sight.

Why do we look to the judgment of others or to our own judgment of ourselves so often when such assessments are so unreliable?  Why do we take other people’s flatter or criticism so seriously?

There’s coming a Day when everything will be brought to light, and we will know ourselves as God has known us.  That’s far more sobering than the comments–positive and negative–we receive after the morning service.

I make a few specific applications from this reality:

1.  Pray, “Lord give me a clean heart.” (Ps. 24:3-4; Heb. 10:22)

2.  Work to be faithful in the small things so I may be found faithful in the big things, entrusted with more, and find my happiness with God (Matt. 25:21, 23).

3.  Do not fear man, but fear God (Matt. 10:28).

4.  Do not live to please men, but live to please God (Gal. 1:10).

5.  Look to my reward from God in the life to come, not in the world of men (Matt. 6:1-24).

Over at Cutting It Straight, the blog of John Brand, I had the opportunity to answer that question and pay tribute to two men who have deeply shaped my life and ministry. You can read the post here.

How would you answer that question?

I really enjoyed this conversation between Sinclair Ferguson and David Meredith of Smithton-Cullodon & Nairn Free Church, Scotland.  The interview is quite wide-ranging, including Sinclair sharing his own testimony of conversion, university studies, reflections on his years with William Still, thoughts on preaching and unction, Presbyterianism in the U.S. and Scotland, and a few minutes on his writing.  It’s a wonderfully edifying chat with one of my favorite preachers.  I need one of those accents!

HT: Ref21

Perhaps one of the most important things to settle in ministry and as a church is how to define “success.”  Without question, we all have some notion of what constitutes “success.”  And whether it’s explicit or implicit, whether it’s written down or unspoken, our notion of success drives our behavior and our self evaluation.

Very often churches and church leaders define their “success” in terms of numbers.  Some defend measurement as an acceptable approach to gauging progress and effectiveness.  They speak of the number of baptisms or converts, church attendance and budgets, and other numerical assessments as shorthand for “success.”  Others reduce “success” to one factor: faithfulness.  ”Whether the numbers change or not,” this group tells us, “is not the issue.  The issue is whether a leader and church have been true to God’s design and intent.”

Here’s what both points of view can sometimes miss: persons and their stories.  We can miss that behind every number are tons of persons.  And a “faithful” man may in his own way miss persons by making persons into an abstract mass of “people.”  I know that numbers tell us something about people, but only at aggregate levels, levels that become useless with individuals.  And I know that a faithful pastor will love and care for people.  But he can begin to think that people get in the way of being faithful.  What we need are ways of defining and talking about the church and the work of the ministry that tells the stories of God’s work in, with and through persons.  Isn’t the church and leadership about God’s design and will for persons?  Isn’t the best measurement of “success” what happens in, to, and with persons in all of their beauty and ugly?

When I worked in policy advocacy world, we used to spend a lot of time and money trying to tell stories.  Every set of stats needed a person’s story to lead it or illustrate it.  Policymakers and advocates do it all the time.  Journalists employ personal story.  Even businesses are getting much better at it.  Consider this commercial from Chick-fil-A (HT: Tim Peters):

Powerful, isn’t it?

As powerful as this is, the greatest stories to tell are the stories of God’s work in the persons that make up our church families. One wonders why that’s not how we view “success” and “faithfulness” more often. We have a lot to tell!

So, I suppose this post is an encouragement and challenge to all us pastors and churches to talk much more about God’s work in personal stories as a way of defining “success” and “effectiveness.”  It will also be a much more personal and intimate way of helping others to see the Lord Jesus at work in all the beauty and ugly.

For instance, instead of saying “We had 400 baptisms last year,” which only says one thing: “We’re big.”

Instead, how about saying something like, “The Lord blessed us with 400 baptisms last year.  Let me tell you about one of those.  Sarah is 17.  Her mom died during child birth.  Her father blamed Sarah.  Can you imagine being a little girl raised without her mom by a father who every day blamed you for your mom’s death?  By the time she was 17, she hated men, even though she had become sexually promiscuous.  She also hated God.  She cursed God, wondering why he brought her into the world and took her mom at the same time.  Why did he leave her with a father that hated her.  And why did God call himself a “Father” if that was what fathers were like?  She was hopeless, until Jesus invaded her life.  Another teenager at our church, Jenny, met Sarah during physics class.  They became lab partners, and one day Jenny spoke to Sarah about Jesus.  A miracle happened.  God gave Sarah a new heart and she put her faith in Jesus.  Sarah still has a lot of struggles, but we can see the new life emerging and the fruit of repentance beginning to blossom.  She confessed to her father her years of hatred and rebellion, and asked his forgiveness.  He didn’t forgive her.  He said he still blamed her.  But Sarah has committed herself to honoring her father and loving him in every way she can.” And so on.  You get the picture.

Our churches are full of persons radically impacted by the Lord Jesus.  Each and every Christian is a trophy of God’s grace, God’s success stories.  We should tell them more often and move away from numbers and claims to faithfulness that really keep the story focused on us.  After all, whose success are we really talking about?  Ours or God’s?

A re-post from the 9Marks blog.

This past Lord’s Day, I had the privilege of preaching 1 Timothy 5:17-20. “The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, ‘Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,’ and ‘The worker deserves his wages.’ Do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses. Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning.”

It was an honor to preach this passage to a congregation that has been full of love, support, and encouragement to me and my family these past five years. There was great liberty in unfolding the text without fear of being misunderstood, without need of rebuking the people, and withut having to fight against an impulse to complain or to pander because we’ve been treated with “double honor” since arriving. What a blessing!

But if I am to believe some of the survey statistics published on pastors and their view towards the ministry, the vast majority of my fellow pastors do not feel this way and are not receiving proper care from their people. Consider these figures compiled by the Schaeffer Institute:

Hours and Pay

• 90% of the pastors report working between 55 to 75 hours per week.
• 50% feel unable to meet the demands of the job.
• 70% of pastors feel grossly underpaid.

Training and Preparedness

• 90% feel they are inadequately trained to cope with the ministry demands.
• 90% of pastors said the ministry was completely different than what they thought it would be like before they entered the ministry.

Health and Well-Being

• 70% of pastors constantly fight depression.
• 50% of pastors feel so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.

Marriage and Family

• 80% believe pastoral ministry has negatively affected their families.
• 80% of spouses feel the pastor is overworked.
• 80% spouses feel left out and under-appreciated by church members.

Church Relationships

• 70% do not have someone they consider a close friend.
• 40% report serious conflict with a parishioner at least once a month.
• #1 reason pastors leave the ministry — Church people are not willing to go the same direction and goal of the pastor. Pastors believe God wants them to go in one direction but the people are not willing to follow or change.

Longevity

• 50% of the ministers starting out will not last 5 years.
• 1 out of every 10 ministers will actually retire as a minister in some form.
• 4,000 new churches begin each year and 7,000 churches close.
• Over 1,700 pastors left the ministry every month last year.
• Over 1,300 pastors were terminated by the local church each month, many without cause.
• Over 3,500 people a day left the church last year.

That’s a sad and alarming picture, isn’t it? Work long hours in a job with too many demands for too little pay. Many have the wrong skills and the wrong expectations. Families being pressured and battered. Pastors are discouraged and depressed. No friends, serious conflict once a month, and people who will not follow. Is it no wonder so many quit so soon?

According to one survey, only 23% of pastors report being happy and content in their identity in Christ, in their church, and in their home.

I suspect, however, that men in these situations might be crippled all the more were they to faithfully preach a text like 1 Tim. 5:17-20. They would be seen as self-serving and courting with more hostility and dissatisfaction from a people already running afoul of God’s call to churches to honor faithful servants.

So, I’m hopeful at least some of God’s people would consider these statistics, reflect upon their church’s treatment of their pastors, and perhaps lead a conspiracy to make sure faithful elders receive “double honor” from those they teach and lead. Let’s face it: we can’t get survey statistics like these unless it has become an unchecked commonplace among congregations to gossip and gripe rather than to breathe grace toward church leaders. These statistics indicate a pandemic culture of disregard and dishonor aimed at pastors. That’s to the church’s shame.

I’m praying that Hebrews 13:17–rather than rejected as giving too much authority to leaders–might be embraced by individual members and congregations as one means to growth in Christ and deeper joy as the family of God. “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.”

Challies quotes from a section of Iain Murray’s forthcoming biography of John MacArthur. I couldn’t agree with these words more, and I can’t praise my wife enough for embodying every virtue mentioned!  That’s why I put her picture next to this quote!

Murray writes:

If whom we marry is the next most important thing to conversion itself, it is doubly so for every pastor. John Watson, advising students for the ministry at this point, warned that of all men “they ought to be most careful in the choice of a wife, for she may be either a help or a hindrance not merely to his comfort but to his work.” A good wife, he continued,

advises her husband on every important matter, and often restrains him from hasty speech … receives him weary, discouraged, irritable, and sends him out again strong, hopeful, sweet-tempered. The woman is in the shadow and the man stands in the open, and it is not until the woman dies and the man is left alone that the people or he himself knows what she has been.

MacArthur would have no doubt about the truthfulness of Watson’s words. He would go further and say with Spurgeon,

A true wife is the husband’s better half, his flower of beauty, and his heart’s treasure. In her company he finds his earthly heaven; she is the light of his home, the comfort of his soul.

Amen!  Thank you, love.  I’m grateful to God for you.

I really appreciate this brief post from Joe Thorn on lies we believe about our time and ways to rebuild a healthy schedule.