This article has been adapted from TheoMedia: The Media of God and the Digital Age (Cascade Books, 2013).
If you had a public message to air in the ancient world, there was a range of accepted mechanisms in place for engaging a crowd. Jeremiah preached from the Temple steps, and Paul knew he could gain a hearing on Mar’s Hill.
But there were other voices sounding from those public spaces, many of them eager to gain a mass following. And the mass communication activities of prophets and apostles often resembled the stratagems of ancient world celebrities.
Paul took pains to distinguish himself from the audience-craving Sophists, itinerant speakers who used their rhetorical skills to wow the crowds and stuff their purses. “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel,” Paul declared (1 Cor 9:16), yet the public squares were filled with the voices of others clamoring for a hearing. The words of God burned like fire in Jeremiah’s bones, but false prophets were engaged with what appeared to be the same line of work.
Celebrity Culture, Consumerism, and Gospel Proclamation
Bearing witness to the gospel within the media mechanisms of a culture that loves celebrities was, and still is, a knotty challenge. Unwholesome motives and worldly gimmicks so easily sabotage our calling to proclaim Christ, through voice, stylus, or keypad.
A further complication we face today is that the messages of many Christian leaders are materialized in purchasable products. These are usually books that can be immediately added to an online “shopping cart” by following a well-placed link (as at the bottom of this article!). To a frightening extent, this association means that our public messages have to be marketable to be received. We should be wary when the words of our public messages are so often hyperlinked to webpages asking for a credit card number.
But God is still putting fire in prophets’ bones. The Spirit still calls us to quill and ink (and to keypad and pixelated text). Church leaders whom God has assigned a public message must be faithful to their calling. Yet they must also resist the corroding effects of celebrity and consumer culture.
I am not sure anything Jeremiah had to say to the Jerusalem populace would have sold like hotcakes on the Temple steps. But we also know that Paul had to clarify his distance from the Sophists because their rhetorical antics and his own activities seemed to share some parallels. So how do we navigate the murky waters of voicing divine wisdom and prophetic speech in a culture that worships fame and loves to buy and sell media products?
Enter: John the Baptist.
Christological Redirection
The forerunner of Christ was a major celebrity in the ancient world. Hordes flocked to him from a broad geographical range. His following was immense. We should acknowledge, though, that his ministry launch base was quite counterintuitive (the wilderness) and his clothing was a far cry from designer jeans (camel’s hair). Jesus pointed out that John’s ministry did not conform to the expectations of his own day (Matt 11:7), so we should be careful assuming he would have conformed to the protocols of “platform building” in our own.
I am not keen on character studies in Sunday school curricula, but I am quite pleased for focus to be directed to the Baptist. After all, Jesus called him the greatest man born of a woman (Luke 7:28; Matt 11:11). It makes good sense to give a little attention to the man Jesus himself called the greatest. And the all-consuming vocation of the greatest man born of woman was to point to someone greater, and then fade away: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
The fourth evangelist has taken particular care in showing that the ultimate function of his public ministry was redirection. There is no self-orientation in John’s celebrity status. At one point his disciples are disturbed after realizing that Jesus’ ministry had overshadowed their own. This is a case of ministerial territorialism—the ministry of Jesus was getting a bigger piece of the populist pie. But for the Baptist, this was the surest sign of his ministry’s success.
There is no question that John had a divinely mandated public persona. The man had a message, and he kept preaching as the crowds grew larger. But his calling was to highlight another then slip offstage to let his own ministry fade into obscurity.
Ecclesial Assimilation
When he does slip offstage in John’s Gospel, though, his voice is not obliterated. There is no record in this Gospel of the Baptist’s death. But we do find that his voice becomes indistinguishable from the voice of the church. Biblical translators have a hard time figuring out where to place the quotation marks signifying John the Baptist’s voice in 1:16-18 and in 3:31-36. His words bleed into the words of the community.
As a first-century “celebrity,” John the Baptist both redirected to Jesus and blended back into the church. His voice is amplified to testify to Jesus, yet not permitted to stand over and above the voice of the church. To the extent that the people of God follow John’s redirecting gaze, his own ministry dissolves into the wider ministry of the faith community. So a two-dimensional trajectory marks the Baptist’s celebrity status: he is always pointing to Another while simultaneously fading into the collective voice of the church.
How to Redirect and Assimilate via Social Media?
Modern-day celebrities stereotypically love the stage and resist being absorbed into the audience. But the “stage presence” of Christian leaders is only permissible when their own voices fade into the church and redirect to Christ. As we see increases in church attendance, satellite campuses, book sales, blog stats, retweets, or online followership, we shoulder greater responsibility to point away from ourselves and become absorbed into our hearers, viewers, readers, and followers.
Though well suited for self-aggrandizing, the social media of our digital age can also be used (to a certain degree) for practicing this ministry of Christological redirection and ecclesial assimilation. This is not to suggest that Paul would have blogged, that Jeremiah would have used Facebook, or that John would have tweeted, “The kingdom of God is at hand.” The point, rather, is that their example and the content of our gospel message suggest a more nuanced use of the media channels of our day. What we proclaim—from temple steps, from Mar’s Hill, or from cyberspace—can direct those within range to Jesus. And the “celebrity/fan” divide can soften and blur as online readers are allowed to interact through social media with prominent pastors and Christian writers.
Like John the Baptist, many of us have a message that needs public airing. Faithful proclamation in John’s day of public heralding and in our own day of social media use is marked by pointing to Someone greater while identifying ourselves with the faith community following our gaze.
Involved in Women’s Ministry? Add This to Your Discipleship Tool Kit.
We need one another. Yet we don’t always know how to develop deep relationships to help us grow in the Christian life. Younger believers benefit from the guidance and wisdom of more mature saints as their faith deepens. But too often, potential mentors lack clarity and training on how to engage in discipling those they can influence.
Whether you’re longing to find a spiritual mentor or hoping to serve as a guide for someone else, we have a FREE resource to encourage and equip you. In Growing Together: Taking Mentoring Beyond Small Talk and Prayer Requests, Melissa Kruger, TGC’s vice president of discipleship programming, offers encouraging lessons to guide conversations that promote spiritual growth in both the mentee and mentor.
