The Dark Side of Christian Celebrity

We have a love-hate relationship with celebrity culture. We who consider ourselves part of this New Calvinism hate the idea of celebrity, but have no clear idea how to avoid the reality. We say we hate a celebrity culture, yet stories about our celebrities dominate blogs and periodicals; a sure way to draw in massive amounts of traffic is to write about each new scandal connected to each of our celebrities. We see the dangers posed by a culture of celebrity, but also see that to some degree it is unavoidable. After all, there are men and women we honour and respect and look up to, who are worthy of our regard and worthy of the leadership we give them.

We expend all kinds of effort in celebrating these people we love, and commending them to others, and spreading their fame. We serve as evangelists for their books and their churches and their conferences. We build them up in our own minds and in the wider church culture. We do this naturally and almost without thinking about it. “You’ve just got to read Don’t Waste Your Life!” “Have you seen Paul Washer’s Shocking Youth Sermon?” “Don’t you read that blog? Don’t you follow that Twitter account?”   Continue at Tim Challies

See you in Seattle, Pastor John MacArthur?

Dear Pastor John MacArthur,

Let me start by saying thank you.

Thank you for preaching the Bible year after year. As a new Christian, I listened to a lot of your sermons via technology and learned a lot of Bible from you.

Thank you for staying faithful to your wife. You’ve been in ministry long enough to see a parade of scandals, and young men need examples of fidelity to their marriage covenant.

Thank you for staying at your church for so many years. It’s become vogue for a pastor to sell enough books that they can quit ministry in a local church and go do something else. Thank you for serving one church for the long haul. I hope by God’s grace to do the same.

Lastly, thank you for having courage and boldness. Admittedly, we disagree on some things that I would consider secondary and you would consider primary, but a man who takes the Bible seriously and has passion to defend truth is rare in our day.

You have made deposits in my life through your ministry and for that I thank God and appreciate you.   Continue at Mark Driscoll

Teaching the Sanctity of Life at the Answers Mega Conference

The Answers Mega Conference is right around the corner—but it’s not too late to register your family to attend our major national conference for 2013. The Answers Mega Conference is July 22–26 in beautiful Sevierville, Tennessee (near Gatlinburg). Once again we’ll meet at the city’s excellent convention center.

This year, you’ll hear from some excellent speakers on the topic of life issues in our culture. Just this week, Steve Ham, our director of international outreach, gave a talk in our staff meeting on the sanctity of life and the image of God. His main point was that the value of human life is derived from the Word of God. In Genesis 1, the Lord God says that man is made in His image:  Continue at Ken Ham

Churches That Boldly Stand on God’s Word

I often document examples of the rampant compromise taught by many church leaders and academics, which is rife in the church in general. For example, see my blog post from yesterday for an example of shocking compromise in the Christian Reformed denomination that undermines God’s Word.

At the same time, it’s also important to know that God still has a remnant—a powerful, faithful remnant in this nation. There are many godly families and pastors who stand boldly on the authority of the Word of God. Let me just give you an example of two.

I speak at many AiG conferences held in churches across this nation. Recently we held AiG conferences in Blackshear Place Baptist Church in Flowery Branch, Georgia, and also First Baptist Church of Naples, Florida. The senior pastors of these churches wrote to us after the AiG conferences with these words:

Our recent “Answers in Genesis” conference, led by Ken Ham and his team, was one of the best attended and most enthusiastically received seminars in my 21 years here. First Baptist Church of Naples, Florida will not be the same, with many gaining a new trust in the authority of the Word, a stronger belief in the creativity of our universe, and a fresh passion for the glory of God. The use of multi-media, the speakers’ lively sense of humor, and incorporation of up-to-date data allowed Mr. Ham to captivate all ages for an extensive period of time. The resources of Answers in Genesis are practical and very popular with our folks. In Christ – Dr. Hayes Wicker.

Here is another from a church where I first spoke in 1997:    Continue at Ken Ham

When Your Preacher Is Not John Piper

Many who have had the privilege of hearing John Piper preach in person would testify that it felt like a monumental event. His preaching powerfully combines truth and passion, leading to convicted and exhilarated listeners. After the sermon, certain hearers might leave wondering if they were just in the presence of a figure who will be talked about in future centuries.

Then they go back to their home church, where several things are different, including the preaching. Thankfully, the gospel is still proclaimed. In fact, the sermons are thoroughly biblical, but the ability of their regular preacher simply does not measure up to the phenomenal preaching they recently heard.

Unless you attend a church led by of one of the celebrated preachers of our day, you most likely have faced a similar situation. Either at a conference or on the internet, you have heard exceptional preaching, but each Sunday you're back in your simple little home church that hardly anybody beyond your town knows about, with its "nobody" of a pastor who will probably never preach to thousands.

What if your gospel-preaching pastor is not as good as one of the great orators of our day? Is it time to sell the house, pack up the family, and change churches? No, I don't think so. But what should you do? Keep Reading >>>

How to Shrink Your Church

Pastors and churches spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year attending conferences, buying books, hiring consultants, advertisers and marketers, all to try and accomplish one thing: to increase attendance -- to be a bigger church.

I'm absolutely convinced this is the wrong tack.

Success is a slippery subject when it comes to the Church. That our ultimate picture of success is a crucified Messiah means any conversation about success will be incompatible with a "bigger is better" mentality. Yet, bigger and better is exactly what most churches seem to be pursuing these days: a pursuit which typically comes in the form of sentimentality and pragmatism.

Sentimentality and pragmatism are the one-two punch which has the American Church on the ropes, while a generation of church leaders acquiesces to the demands of our consumer culture. The demands are simple: tell me something that will make me feel better (sentimentality for the churchgoer), and tell me something that will work (pragmatism for the church leader). Yet it is not clear how either one of those are part of what it means to be the church.

Sentimentality is mother's milk to the church which has ceased to believe our faith should really make a difference in the way we live our lives. Instead of proclaiming resurrection, the sentimental church will devote their entire Sunday worship service to Mother's/Father's Day -- or worse yet, Valentine's Day. Not that we don't appreciate our parents and sweethearts, but the yielding of precious worship time to the celebration of greeting card companies signals a much deeper problem: we have lost track of the story of God. Yet, for a church to grow bigger, losing track of the story is precisely what is required.  Read the rest HERE

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Church Size: The Fault Line in the Movement

It can be good to have a "tribe" (e.g., Acts 29, 9Marks, SGM, the PCA)  where you resonate with the philosophy of ministry and get good resources for your work.  I'm also glad for what God is doing to bring people together across Reformed "tribes" through movements like T4G and The Gospel Coalition. Part of what God seems to be doing is forging trust and partnerships between groups that do things differently.

 

But from my observation (at conferences and in personal conversations), there seems to be still be a fault line running through us: church size.  I've sat in conferences where the speakers talk as if you aren't a good pastor until your church hits 2,000 people in attendance.  I've also heard small church pastors who seem to assume that large crowds always indicate that the message is being watered down.

A few suggestions on the matter:

• Drop the "better than" language.
  

Large churches aren't better than small.  And vice versa.  I don't care what your surveys say, you can easily find examples and statistics to show the superiority of whatever it is that you happen to be doing.  The fact is, some churches grow big because the ministry is faithful and the Lord is blessing.  Others grow big because the itching ears of the masses are being appeased.  Some small churches are doing great work in difficult places.  Others are small because they are lame and ineffective.  Most churches (big and small) do some things well and other things less well.     Keep Reading >>>

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The Crisis of Conference Christians

I speak at conferences. I host conferences. I appreciate conferences. 

I am also very concerned about conferences. Or, more specifically, conference Christians.

The Conference Christian

By definition, a conference Christian is someone who spends a great deal of time (and often money) attending Christian conferences. They love hearing the speakers, love singing with the bands, love letting the world know who they meet and what they are experiencing via blog/Facebook/Twitter, and love meeting up with other conference Christians. Some of these conference Christians somehow manage to work a job in around all their conferences. Others are ministry leaders spending tithe dollars to pay for their hobby/vacation/fanboy obsession. Keep Reading...

What You Do In Your Hotel Room Gives Witness: A Warning for Conference-Goers

Jason Helopoulos offers a wise warning for those attending the upcoming Gospel Coalition Conference, and for attendees of any conference really, and you should read it. I'd like to renew a different sort of caution of my own from the lead-up to last year's T4G:

A word of warning for the thousands entering Chicago next month for The Gospel Coalition Conference: what you do in the privacy of your hotel room can be a witness against the gospel. Think this is unwarranted?

From Steve Farrar's Finishing Strong:

A number of years ago a national conference for church youth directors was held at a major hotel in a city in the mid-west. Youth pastors by the hundreds flooded into that hotel and took nearly every room. At the conclusion of the conference, the hotel manager told the conference administrator that the number of guests who tuned into the adult movie channel broke the previous record, far and away outdoing any other convention in the history of the hotel.

My friend Justin Holcomb helped me in looking into this phenomenon, recalling from his own research in an email to me: Read it HERE

Here Come the Conferences: Encouragement and Some Warnings

Every year we see the same cycle: the snow melts, trees begin budding, the sun begins to dominate the sky again, and Christian conferences abound. Evangelical Christian have a calendar as fixed as the seasons (and I’m not talking about the liturgical year). I am a fan of good Christian conferences, with restraint. Therefore, let me encourage and warn you about the conference season.

Encouragement

1. Conferences are a wonderful opportunity to hear some great Christian teachers. They achieve a purpose in gathering together a large contingent that induces these gifted teachers to share their gift. You will hear some of the best lectures and sermons of your life at conferences. This is probably the best reason to attend.
2. City, regional, and national conferences facilitate Christian fellowship outside the local church. It is important to remind ourselves of the greater church. This checks our tendency towards arrogance and parochialism on the one side and encourages a Christian worldview on the other. Keep Reading>>>