Let's Talk About Celebrity Pastors
Welcome to the Uncut Podcast. I'm Pastor Luke. I'm Pastor Cameron.
And this is the Uncut Podcast where we talk about faith, life, Bible, the ministry, and
try and have uncut and honest conversations about those topics. So today we're going
to be kind of talking about, don't really know what we'll title this episode yet, but
maybe something along the lines of like celebrity pastor or the cult of pastors or something
like that. Church, yeah. It's a good point.
It's difficult to know what to kind of title it or how to even talk about it.
Where do we categorize it?
Categorize it in the realm of things that happen in the church that shouldn't?
Or is it a particularly personal or individual, not individual, but as an individual's issue or not?
Yeah. Well, I guess we'll just share the context of why we're even talking about this.
We sat down here and were recording, we were just catching up and we just ended up starting
talking about it and we're like, maybe we should just turn on the mics.
The thing that brought up the conversation was just last night I went and saw Jesus Revolution,
which is a movie that's currently out in theaters right now.
It follows the start of Calvary Chapel and the Jesus People movement, which was a co-movement
that happened alongside the hippie revolution during the 70s. I'm somewhat familiar with
some of the ethos behind some of that because the congregation and the denomination affiliation
I grew up in was sort of birthed out of kind of the overflow or the tail end of the Jesus
people movement. And, you know, essentially it's hippies who tried drugs but found Jesus instead.
I'm psychs like i don't know how else to describe the beginning of the jesus people movement especially after having watched that movie that's the movie color kind of colors it as that as people who were hippies,
we're trying to do everything that they could and find enlightenment love and found it lacking and then found jesus instead and that created a.
And out of that comes a lot of our modern church sensibilities in ways that we're maybe
not even fully aware of.
We could even just spend a lot of time talking about the history of modern contemporary music
and how that was kind of birthed out of all of that.
But I watched this movie, it's in movie theaters right now, Jesus Revolution, and it was interesting
because it's a well-made, well-produced movie and it even approaches some interesting topics
for a Christian movie, some topics Christian movies wouldn't typically talk about.
Like what? What kind of stuff? Like it kind of approaches, there's sort of three main characters I would say, two of
which were pastors who were heavily involved in starting the Calvary Chapel movement, and.
Then one who is kind of in his journey to discover Christ and kind of his beginning
steps into ministry, which, so like just for context, all of that, like you've got Lonnie
Frisbee, who was kind of this hippie Jesus guy, and then you've got Chuck, I don't remember
his last name, but he was a pastor at Calvary Chapel.
And these two pastors kind of co-together. Chuck Smith.
Yeah, Chuck Smith. Started this movement in California. It grew.
They were in this massive tent having nightly meetings for years,
baptizing hundreds of people a week in California at this beach.
So it kind of follows them.
And the movie...
Doesn't paint them as perfect people right the movie allows some of their faults to show through the movie kind of.
Maybe slightly hands at some of the other faults or kind of just ignores them or wasn't inside of the scope of the film if i'm gonna be generous around like why didn't they talk about that well that wasn't.
That didn't happen inside the time frame of the movie or something like that.
But it allows to kind of bring forth this idea or perhaps the thesis of saying, well,
like, maybe God uses broken people.
And that's like, how do we deal with complex people who impact our following towards faith
and towards Jesus and are really helpful and are doing God's work but end up at the end
of the day being broken in some way and still being used by God, which I think is a really
interesting message, but they still softballed it a little bit.
And then the other thing that the other character who's having his faith journey through this
whole movie goes through a hero's journey.
It's essentially the movie ends, summarizes and becomes his version of his testimony is
Pastor Greg Laurie, who you may or may not know of. I'm somewhat, I've maybe heard two of his
sermons. He's not someone I've listened to or paid a ton of attention to, but he is a pastor of one
of the largest churches in the United States and is kind of like maybe one of the closest things to.
Holding a modern day Billy Graham Crusades. So he does, has at least in the past, I don't know
know if he's currently hosting, but he has had big stadium evangelistic events in the
vein of Billy Graham.
So I exited the movie with some conflicting questions and feelings, and I went and I did
me, I'm a film buff, I love talking about film and dissecting it and all of that.
So immediately I'm looking at all the production history and everything.
Well Greg Laurie wrote a book called The Jesus Revolution. I think there's two other authors involved in that.
And then he co-produced this movie.
And the question I'm kind of stuck sitting with is as much as there's some good things
to maybe talk about and the movie was inspiring and sparked some great conversation and they
did some things that Christian movies haven't done before, even if they maybe kind of didn't
go all the way, I'm still kind of left feeling like the movie was a bit of a, I don't want
say propaganda because that's not the right word, but it kind of just casts these two,
pastors who are now dead, Frisbee and Chuck Smith, in somewhat questionable light, portrays
complex, whereas Greg, who is a current pastor, is kind of put through this very like.
Very nice treatment sure i don't know that there is anything to say negatively about me i don't not here to like say well.
Yeah but it poses a question to me of like.
If i was in greg shoes or like if someone i don't know i don't think my life deserves a movie but i don't know i'm like.
But if it did, how would it be told? Yeah, how would it be told?
How would you want to tell it? How would I want to tell it?
Would I even want to be involved in producing the movie? It just seems like that seems wrought with so many possibilities to be called out on,
the carpet for the way you make it or what you put in it or what you don't or whatever.
You could definitely talk about that as far as this movie.
Sure.
If you do more looking into Chuck Smith and Lonnie Frisbee, you would find more things
of like, that seems, you know, so they skated over some things and you're just kind of,
I don't know, it kind of felt like Greg kind of walks out as this like, you know, star
amongst broken people a little bit.
Sure. But that is, it's less, this isn't like a.
So we're not, we're not here to talk about. Not here to talk about.
Jesus, or Greg Laurie. Greg Laurie.
But merely is just kind of a jumping off point of like celebrity pastor is like a thing it's.
And like, it's been a complex thing since, I mean, for a while,
But I feel like every year at this point, we're seeing multiple articles or public scandals
surrounding this pastor, this pastor, this church group.
I think there's like, what, two or three documentaries about Hillsong now, just all these different things.
It's something that I think we as pastors have thoughts about and we hear people have these conversations and people are wrestling through them and so
we want to kind of enter into that little bit. One of the things that I think is
important to note is that,
When you talk about celebrity, celebrity pastors, you're usually talking about pastors who have,
pretty, I mean, I guess it makes sense by virtue of numerics or.
Platforms or whatever, that they have really, really large ministries.
Greg Laurie has a really large ministry, you know, and other pastors that you would be like,
like if you just were walking down the street and you say, you know, Hey, can you give a pastor?
They might, someone might name a celebrity pastor, a big influential pastor.
Uh, and what happens, I think is that there is a false perception that that's the norm in
Christianity, that there is, that Christianity is made up of thousands and thousands of
large, large churches, conglomerations, churches as corporations and businesses
with charismatic CEOs at the helm.
And so what you see at elevation is the same thing you're going to see at Calvary Chapel is the same thing you're going to see at, um, Harvest Bible
Chapel or Trinity church in Scottsdale or what name your mega church is the same
that you're gonna see at a church in Jamestown, New York or Columbus, Ohio or whatever the case may be.
Yeah, I think like an interesting something that might surprise people right because like if we.
Like when you ask somebody like if I were to come up to somebody and ask them like
okay well like what size church do you attend and say they attend a church of about 100 people,
They would say, well, I attend a pretty small church.
It's a pretty big church. Yeah. Statistically, actually, that's close to average.
If you take all of the churches across America and you average the size of them, the average
size would be somewhere around to 100 to 150 people.
And a significant portion of churches exist 100 people or less.
And even the biggest Christian churches in the world are not in the United States.
Right. Yeah. They're in places like South Korea. Yeah. very large Christian churches in China even.
Yes, underground. Yes, extraordinarily large Christian churches in Africa.
But yeah, we get a sense of like, oh Christianity is America's religion
and that's why we have all these big mega churches here.
Well, one it's not, and that's a, it's not America's religion.
That's a topic for another podcast.
But also like it's not, when you say, I go to a church of 100 people,
Like you said, that's an average or even above average in some places.
Yeah. Yeah. And so we… Church size. I think it's because of the public visibility of large churches.
They're the churches that we tweet, talk about, end up in the news.
We begin to get this sense of like, oh, like, you know, like if a church is successful,
It will just default to being the average church, which is this large multi hundred
or sometimes multi thousand type church.
And I think statistically and historically like maybe need to set some context and just
say that's not normal or that's not, it's not an accurate portrayal of even the facts
or the state of the church across America.
Yeah, nor does it indicate a church that is overwhelmingly blessed as opposed to a church
of like, okay, God is obviously blessing the church of 2000 and not blessing the church
of 100.
Yes. Or like God is, the church of 2000 is doing something right.
Church of 100 is doing something wrong and that's why they are the different
sizes. There's so many, so many factors that go into church size and most of
them are inconsequential to the mission of the church itself.
Almost not worth talking about. Yeah, but it is worth saying like we're not I don't I don't want us to get into the trap of I feel like the large church can look at all the small churches and say just not faithfully executing the mission like you're stuck in your ways.
You're not willing to reach the people like we can they can make some assumptions and kind of,
straw man and kind of be accusatory of like you're not reaching people for Christ like we are,
and then the small church equally can look at the large church and say the same things and say the
same thing like you're just compromising you're you're not reaching people for Jesus you're just
gathering people none of that's a whole bunch of weeds in your church not a lot of harvest like
Like, you know, that's all just, you know, and so both ends of the spectrum can get a
holier than thou perspective and look down or up at each other or cross the aisle and
point fingers.
And so I don't want us to fall into that trap. Yeah, no, I'm not interested in doing that because I think any pastor, I'm really skeptical
of any pastor who would say, I don't want to grow.
I don't want my church to grow.
Why wouldn't you? Those are people and your church grows by people and if people are here to hear the
gospel then yeah, that's a great thing.
Would I rather preach the gospel to 2,000 people or would I rather preach the gospel
to 50 people? The more people that hear the gospel the better, right?
So it's not universally a bad thing.
So it's just a, there are more, there's more to the conversation that exists there.
But I think the point that we wanted to make today was not even necessarily about church
growth or church size in as much as we wanted to talk about what kind of, what happens when
a church grows to a certain point.
And usually that usually I'm not aware of any, I'm not aware.
It doesn't mean they don't exist. I'm not aware of any large churches.
And when we say mega church, you typically are meaning over 2000 people. Yes.
I'm not aware of any mega churches that are, that exist, that don't have one
central kind of mass notable, charismatic leader or figure to them.
Um, and when that happens, it becomes very easy as we've seen, I think throughout, you know, throughout the last several decades, uh, it becomes
very easy to see that those, those figures, they're magnified in their influence.
What happens at the same time is that that magnified influence begins to reveal humanity, their humanity.
And those who follow those leaders can get kind of uncomfortable with the humanity of their Christian leader being revealed.
And so they, I think, tried to magnify their holiness and put them in a place that is kind of a...
Above approach or not needing accountability because look at how significant their ministry is or.
Or or Even refusing to believe that hey this person is Flawed flawed a human a sinner in need of God's grace
someone whom God both is and will hold accountable, someone who is not above the truth of God's word
in terms of accountability structures with the church. And so when that personality gets
elevated, elevated, elevated, elevated, and then something happens, a big reveal happens,
about their something that they did or something that they said or whatever the case may be
an illicit relationship or whatever and the character comes like crashing down.
It causes a lot of, it causes a lot of, it dysregulates people quite significantly and
not just individuals in their own personal faith.
Like I followed, like they led me to Jesus. How could they do that?
How could that happen?
And now what does that say about my own faith? Yes.
But then it completely dysregulates and has the ability to really turn upside down the.
Whole church.
I think probably the most significant example that we have most recently is what happened at Mars Hill.
Yeah, probably the biggest profile. It's been talked about the most in the longest is Mars Hill. Yeah for sure. That's pastor Mark Triscoll
You know, he's continues to be a pastor down in Scottsdale, Arizona a new church down there at Trinity, but a pretty serious like.
Like, um, accusation.
Yeah. Yeah. there was no singular like.
Like a lot of times there's usually like a singular thing or like scandal.
For Mark I think is unique in that it was like a consistent, like the narrative was that it was a
consistent character of just harshness and domineering and things not becoming of pastoral leadership.
Yeah. And in some cases you see stuff like that happen and maybe a pastor is removed from
ministry and the church takes and they have, not a succession plan, but they install a
new pastor and that pastor leads and they try to lead through that transition and they
work through it and it's difficult and it's hard, but the church survives because the
church belongs to Jesus.
Well, in Mars Hill's case, the church that Mark pastored. Mostly dissolved.
I mean, it did dissolve. It did dissolve. Right. And we're not talking about us.
We're talking about like 12 locations and tens and tens of thousands of people. Yeah.
I think there's a few campuses that still exist as autonomous churches, but that's the minority.
By the name, or so. By the name or something. Or they probably even changed their names, but they were able to hold a congregation
together and still manage to continue to be churches today, but not very many of them
from my memory.
Yeah. So that kind of- But they dispersed into individual churches.
They didn't remain a church as they were. Right. And Mark took some time off of ministry.
I know. I think he spent some time at Gateway down in Texas.
And I don't know, obviously I don't know Mark and I don't know- We've never met the guy.
Well, there's been aspects of his ministry that have been a blessing to me.
And so, again, it's not about Mark in particular.
But one of the things that happened in that whole situation, I think, is indicative of
what can often happen is that when there's one singular personality that is at the helm
or the center of all things church, and that personality comes crashing down, what happens to the church?
And when you build a system that fully relies only on the pastor that is there, and then
all of a sudden the pastor is not there anymore.
What happens? Well, in Mars Hill's case,
it all came crashing down, not just his leadership, but the church as well.
Yeah, so there's the large organizational fallout that a church can experience.
And then there's also just that personal, individual fallout that can happen,
of like, which I feel like we've just heard, I've heard that, I've seen those social media
posts. I've seen or heard that like, that pastor just like let me down by having a moral
failure. And now I'm just like, I can't trust church or I can't like, there becomes this
like moving away from church or even a wholesale questioning that can lead to a wholesale questioning
of religion and faith in Jesus.
And I think that really begins to get at the, I guess at the point of, and a question I
think we have to ask ourselves is like, if a leader that you're following, listening
to of your church fails in some way.
Which they will. Which they will, right. And they do. Yeah, they do.
And sometimes it's super public. A lot of times it's just private, but they will fail. They will fail.
And then that becomes a reason for you to question your relationship with Jesus.
Question that resonates in my heart at that moment was, were you a disciple of Jesus or
were you a disciple of this person? Yes.
Yes. And that's where, like that, where I think really crystallizes for us,
the question of celebrity pastor. I was, you know, when I was job hunting for this position
or position in churches, I would run across and was in conversation with other people who were
also looking for jobs. And, you know, they would run across these churches and they were just like,
well, you know, and you could read the job description, you're like, we want,
and they would describe a celebrity pastor. They were like, we want somebody who's gonna,
you know, be a charismatic speaker, it's gonna write books, who's gonna do this and like,
people will craft their job descriptions for a church or a pastor that they're looking for.
Because there is a belief that if we can just get someone who looks like a celebrity pastor.
Who's got this big personality, massive speaking gifts, maybe massive writing gifts,
our church will be successful. And so, I don't know, I think there's this unhealthy assumption
happening in some places where that's what a pastor should be or must be.
Yeah, certainly.
While you were saying all that I was just like...
Kind of internally asking myself the question like when did that become preferable to someone who.
Just faithfully and consistently and persistently in the simplicity of their own life
leads you to follow Jesus. Like at what point have we come to prefer the figurehead at the center or
the top of the heap rather than the person that just consistently, faithfully, simply,
and even maybe behind the curtain many of the times points you to faith in Jesus.
Yeah. I wonder if there's a little bit of this from a theological perspective, a little bit of
like a salvation by association feeling going on.
The closer I am to this seemingly super important, super close to God person, it puts a value
on, creates a value statement about my own personal salvation.
Yeah. Right? And if, well, if I'm just being led by the typical less than a hundred people in their
church pastor who is praying for you every day.
Knows your name. Knows your name. You know, is, you know, like faithfully teaching God's word, is working in the context of
a small community of people. I can't grow in my relationship with Jesus through their
leadership. It's got to be through the guy's book, who I am, the pastor who writes the
book or the books or has the TV ministry or the huge following.
Yeah, it's both an association to the person and association with the church, probably.
Want to be at this like, they're, it's like an excitement high that we can almost get off of being,
with that really charismatic, upfront public leader or that really like dynamic,
large, constantly growing, expanding, new campus, new this, new that church.
Yeah, I don't know that like when did that shift happen? I have a, someone who is now
a good friend. When I was pastoring in Chicago as an associate pastor, very small church,
church plant, like less than 50 people. And they came and they became part of the community
and part of the church. And I remember they came up to me and they were like, this is,
so weird for me. They're like, I didn't think I was going to like a small church. I was,
like, why? And they were like, well, I've only ever grown up in these large churches.
And they were like, it's so special that you know my name and that you talk with me and
we have dinner together. And when you preach, there's such a personal element to it. And.
I asked her, I was like, well, did you know your previous pastor?
And they were like, well, no.
Like his name, his name. Yeah.
They know. I don't think we ever had a conversation together.
Like they were always insulated by so many layers of people that like, you know, to be like inside of the same room as this pastor with 50 other people
would have been like huge, huge.
I'm like, holy cow. like, I'm so close to this pastor, but like on a regular basis, like, you know, to be
with 50 people separated from the pastor was a big deal. And I was like, that is a like,
and that was their norm. Yeah. And so coming into the small church, being very dubious
and very doubtful of whether or not they could actually grow or benefit or thrive in a small
church because it was so different from their norm.
Like I'm like, for me that is mind-boggling and was just an indicator that something has
shifted at some point.
Yeah. And I want to be clear too that I think some of the responsibility or a great...
Percentage of the responsibility of the creation of celebrity pastors is our fault, not theirs.
Tell me more about that. I think I know what you're saying, but keep going.
So we could make the assumption or the statement that, okay, like you have this charismatic figure,
who is like sets out to be, I am going to become a celebrity pastor. And so they have the right
hairdo and they learn the right preaching style and they write a book and somehow all the stars
align and they magically ascend to the top of a mega church or they build a mega church from the
ground up and all of a sudden like poof, by their own initiative and hard work, they have
become the quote unquote celebrity pastor that they wanted to be for whatever reason,
whether dubious reasons or really God honoring reasons, whatever.
Yeah. A bit of the tech startup narrative laid over top of church. Correct. Yeah.
Just... Steve Jobs comes to church. The hard work. Yep. They did the hard work.
That narrative, we could say that, okay, that would be one way to look at it.
The other way to look at it is that we as Christians, and I'm a pastor so it's talking,
both ways, but that we as Christians create celebrity pastors because we need them or.
Not we need them, that's maybe the wrong word to say it, but we think we need them.
We think we need them or the sin in our, the idolatry of our lives that is still latent
the midst of our sin.
Creates something to worship that is tangential to Jesus, but not Jesus himself.
That is right in front of us that has generally a lower standard or calling to follow than Jesus does.
You know, if we follow a Christian celebrity pastor, it means we read their books and we listen to their podcasts,
and we retweet them when we see something that we agree with, or we watch their services online.
It's a very, very easy, easy follow. When Jesus says, come and follow me, He bids us come and die.
Come, pick up your cross, follow me. Just want to let you know, I have no place to lay my head.
Even foxes have holes and birds have nests. The son of man has nowhere to lay his head.
It is a followership unto death of self.
And so it is much easier.
To follow an enigmatic figure that is tangential to Jesus and gives us a sense of proximity to Jesus
without actually following Jesus himself.
And so it gives us this feeling of being like, I'm doing the right thing, I'm doing the good thing,
but it's a deceitful idolatry, similar to like one of the first podcast episodes that we did about Scripture
and how we can fall into a tendency as Christians to worship the scripture.
Father, Son, and Holy Bible.
Exactly, right? Where that is a veiled form of idolatry that worships something other than the Triune God himself.
Do you think that we're doing, like, do you feel like this is too far of a stretch?
You're sharing, saying all of that. I'm like, the picture that's coming to my mind is picture of
the Israelites at the bottom of Mount Sinai waiting for Moses to come back down. And they've come to
this mountain, they've been led out of Egypt, they've been delivered. And Moses is up there.
Like actually Moses invited them up there, but they didn't come. And Moses is up there and Moses
spends a long time up on the mountain and get into Ten Commandments.
And the people get restless and they build for themselves a golden calf.
And the language surrounding the introduction of that calf by Aaron to the people is, behold,
here's the golden calf that we built out of the jewelry you had.
It's something visible, you can see, it's tangible, it's here, it's not up on the mountain,
it's something familiar even.
Behold, this is the God that led you out of Egypt. and they begin to worship that idol saying that it is the God that led them out of Egypt.
When the God that led them out of Egypt is the presence is the cloud that's more invisible up on the mountain. Scary.
Scary. Holy. Like all of those things. Full of glory. So I guess like I'm just in my own biblical imagination.
Are we committing a similar sin?
Are we replaying a similar narrative by building golden calves out of pastors and churches and ministries?
And not realizing that we're suddenly buying a slight deviation from the God who did deliver us.
Yeah, I think that's appropriate, an appropriate connection or application. I was thinking,
actually, as you were talking about Moses, I was thinking about when the Israelite people
were clamoring for a king like all of the other nations around them had.
Mm-hmm, and God was like I'm your king. Yeah, I Know I want to be your king
It was like the most pure form of a theocracy you could ever have right, but they were like no no no
No, all of the other people around us. They have a human king,
We want one of those two right and that became a very very complicated history for Israel exactly
You know God obviously works through the the history of redemption to bring about Jesus through that
that, you know, but, um, but yeah, I think, uh, I, I don't think that's an inappropriate.
I don't think that's inappropriate. Um, uh, connection, connection at all.
I think if we were to say, okay, maybe...
If we begin to dig down into what all of this leads to, I guess, it is a question that we return to a question you mentioned a little bit earlier,
what that we kind of skipped right over was when, when my pastor fails or when a pastor
fails, how then could I ever be expected to trust Jesus, the church, faith, whatever,
You know, like, my pastor, he fails, what now?
How can I ever, like, I'm so disappointed, I'm so hurt, I've got to leave the church or the faith or whatever.
I think that there, I think that's really an important question because it happens at an absurd level.
And what's happening implicitly is that there is definitely a misappropriation of theology
of pastoral ministry there.
We've misunderstood, this person has misunderstood what a pastor is, what a pastor does and doesn't
what the expectations of them are and aren't.
And then,
there's been some misalignment in what the foundation of their faith is, for sure. And so
I think it's valuable to have some conversation around that because we, I think the church may
feel like they are honoring their pastor more.
They're honoring their pastor by deifying him more. Yeah.
And the higher that they elevate their opinion,
or understanding or viewpoint of them.
That's what we're supposed to do. But we actually put pastors in a lot of danger when we do that. Yeah.
Um, when we have an expectation of their, uh, their relationship with Jesus,
their character, their life that is anything other than still human, still
sinful, still needing of repentance and confession of their sin, still screwing up, still relying
on Jesus every single day, every single breath for the grace necessary to continue leading.
Now that's not to say.
That there are not increased standards for Christian conduct, for holiness that pastors must have.
That's clear in scripture. There's not even an argument there.
But that is not to completely divorce that from the reality that we as pastors, we are men
who must ask every day for the renewed and refreshed forgiveness of the Lord as we repent of our sins,
as we confess to Him, as we trust once again in His grace and mercy and salvation in our lives,
we turn our back on sin, walk towards relationship with God.
And every time we expect that our pastors are someone other than that,
We put them in extraordinary danger, like somehow that they are exempt from the human frailty of sin in all the ways that we see sin manifested in normal people's lives.
Pastors are perfectly capable of sinning just as great and in some cases, I believe, even more so. Yes.
Yeah. I want to try and venture and say something that I haven't heard very many people say.
I want to say it well. Okay.
Let's take, for example, Ravi Zacharias, who is now dead, but early prior to his death
and in post his death have come whole lot of revelation about a very sinful and destructive
life he was living behind the scenes.
Yes.
And. Makes me sick to my stomach. It does.
It is probably like, I read the full report that was released to the public by his ministry
after his death and they did like a personal investigation and everything was, I mean,
it was awful.
Horrendous. Absolutely horrendous things that he was doing. And the thing that I think terrified me the most about that report was the report ended
saying there's more, but that was not the task of what we were tasked to investigate.
But everything we have investigated and found indicates that there is more wrongdoing or
a greater depth of what we found than what we did find.
But we were simply asked to verify if there was, they weren't tasked to be exhaustive.
So they stopped their investigation at a point.
And that for me was probably the most like...
Shaking sentence out of that entire document which you can read online and all of that stuff
So I say all of this not in any way to excuse the awful things that Ravi,
Zacharias committed and did and how he very much harmed people.
But I am left with a question, right I listened to many of his sermons and benefited from them and
and he seemed to preach the gospel and to elevate Jesus.
And there is that question of how did he get to a place of such darkness, brokenness, evil, and sin?
Now this is all absolute speculation, but I wonder if at some point, right?
Like we always like the more that, Um, you don't get somewhere.
You get, you get to a place like that slowly. Yeah. And over time, yes.
A thousand small decisions. That's one big one.
One. Yeah. Thousand small decisions in order to get there.
And my question is, is like at what point did, was there a point at which he, and
there has to have been this massive divide inside of him personally, knowing
what he was doing and in the public figure that he was putting forward.
At what point did he want to get off that road he was going down?
And I wonder that if the pedestal, the almost deification of him, of being like this public
and speaker who is just like so close to God and it's just so awesome. Did that keep him
from turning around at some point? What did it become more difficult for him to experience
accountability or make a choice of repentance because of the celebrity culture that was
surrounding him. And so, I guess to kind of dovetail, what I'm trying to say and trying
to put is to clarify what I think you were saying of when we elevate our pastors to this place of
They must be perfect.
Does that actually put them in a cage that could prevent them because of guilt and shame from confessing,
confessing, repenting and like, um, without, without the fear, like what, what would have happened if,
if right, this is all speculation, but in an alternate universe, if Ravi much earlier in that
that journey down that thousands of decisions had like repented and gotten
help. And was that possibility perhaps prevented? Not again, I'm not excusing
his behavior. His choice should have been to have repent and got help. He,
didn't.
Or were there, were there? I mean, I don't know. I haven't read the report to
be honest with you. So I don't like, I can't speak to whether this was reality
or not, but I would have to imagine that there were other people that saw what was going on.
Yeah. They ran up against it and they were like, this is weird.
And he would push back and push them away off accountability.
And there was like, oh, okay, well.
Well yeah. And it's something like that where we say we kind of begin to make a rationalization
That like well all of the good that we're doing all of the good that the ministry is doing,
all of the hope that it is offering, the proclamation of the Gospels.
Was Robbie preaching the gospel?
Sure as heck was. Yeah. Right, his personal life was not aligning.
Not at all. With the principles of the gospel, but the proclamation was there.
And so do people, maybe you have a person who has come to faith through Ravi's preaching
or through his ministry now asking, is my faith even legitimate?
Right. And I would say, yes, it is. Cause your faith is never in Ravi to begin with.
Yeah. Right. But there could be this sense of those who were seeing it,
but not, but like, but who were close enough to Ravi to be like, well, you know, he's doing so much good.
There's some bad here, of course. And if the bad comes out even more, then the good will stop.
And so we'll just kind of like, eh, I don't like it, but we're gonna let it ride.
Right. See, he's so gifted that we just gotta let him be on the leash or let him be off the leash. Yeah.
But there's a thing, you know, and I read this to you before we started about,
celebrity pastors being a brand.
Yeah.
And- Personal brand is a big thing. A personal brand. And what is the name of Robbie Zacharias' ministry?
Robbie Zacharias' ministry. International ministry. Yeah, so he was the brand. Yes, he was.
And brands don't take action against themselves it's counterintuitive to the purpose of the brand, which is to elevate the brand.
And so built in even to the reality of, well, Ravi's at the center of it all,
Ravi's at the center of it all is an inability to, not an inability, but an unwillingness
to take action against itself even when the consequences are eternal.
Yeah.
And that's not even to say, like, that's not even to make, I don't even want to get into the question
of like, well, what do we think about Ravi's salvation? Oh, gosh. Like questions that can't be answered.
Cannot be answered.
Right. That's why my whole comment is speculative, But it does serve to point towards the danger that this elevating pastors to something beyond.
Just beyond a fellow Christian is dangerous. Not just for us, but for them.
It's dangerous.
I would say elevating pastors beyond the place that scripture elevates them is dangerous.
Because I would agree that we have higher standards for character, conduct, and holiness than others do,
Right. Which is why in situations of moral failure or, you know, like significant issues
in leadership or anything like that, that it is appropriate at times to take corrective
and even like organizational action against someone who has not met those standards. That
That doesn't exonerate us from operating in a spirit of grace, spirit of truth, heart
of love for that person, but it certainly does not leave us just being like willy-nilly.
Permissive. Permissive, right. Gullible. Right.
So to the person who would say, well, my pastor has failed, how can I trust or how can I go
church any longer. The first thing I encounter them with a tremendous level of grace and,
sorrow over the ways in which they've been not necessarily deceived, but misled in terms
of where as you grow as a Christian, where is your faith being placed? The role, one
One of the roles of the pastor is always deflecting attention away from themselves into Jesus.
John the Baptist, he must increase, I must decrease all the time.
Anytime anyone is giving praise, we're seeking to guide that praise to the right place.
Place it here, not on my shoulders, or I'm thankful that you maybe recognize that God
has a calling on my life.
I appreciate that. It's helpful for me. It's encouraging to me. We work hard.
But I am not Jesus. I am not Jesus. I am not him.
And so it becomes a point of like, I think it is a personal ministry philosophy to continue to.
Remind people of that and to do that and to uphold that all the time, all the time, all the time,
all the time, all the time. And so step number one, like, well, how do you, is that when we,
as pastors, we must be continually doing that so that we don't run the risk of people's faith being
in us, rather than that being in Jesus. And then we center our ministries around that reality too.
Way we structure. I could be gone tomorrow from this place. The gospel would still be preached on Sunday. Mm-hmm.
You know? And then the next week and the next week and the next and the next and the next, right?
Because the central figure here is not me.
The central figure is Jesus all the time, right?
And we... I think, like, I don't know, probably the average is at least once a month from the
stage we try and say something to the fact of, we're not perfect.
Yeah.
Like... Don't rely on me for your salvation. Right. Like, because we're not.
No. So it seems weird to say, maybe it's not weird to say, is that I think the most surefire
way to protect yourself as a regular church-going person from being disappointed by your pastor,
is having a proper theology of sin.
To understand the universality of sin, the depth of sin, the humanity of your pastors.
And then understanding that they are men accountable by God, accountable to God, and accountable
to the church.
And then ensuring that they are discipling you to Jesus rather than themselves.
They should be talking more about Jesus than they should be talking about themselves.
It's maybe a little oversimplification, but I think you get the point here.
I think this is a point from a book by Eugene Peterson.
I can't remember which book, but he talks about an applied theology of total depravity.
And for some of our listeners, they just got really excited because they said the word total depravity.
But for those who don't know, total depravity is the belief that sin touches all aspects of a person.
Not that we're as evil as we could be, but that sin touches all of me and touches everyone.
And so a lot of times that stays as kind of like a part of an argument in a theological
system and doesn't be much more.
But if we take that and we decide to apply that, that means that when I encounter someone,
the person who's sitting in the pew next to me, this is something that like us, we as
pastors have to have very integrated into our hearts, and I think we do here, is that,
when someone comes to us and says, you know what, like, I got this problem in my life,
I've got sin, I've got brokenness.
Not shocked.
Because that's humanity. Yeah, that's what the Bible teaches. Yep. That's what total depravity means
And so we are constantly I am constantly I feel like,
Trying to tell people like the sin that you were almost absolutely afraid to name,
That you think you're the only person in the room heard it heard it You're not gonna surprise me. No
No one is going to walk into a room.
Like I have purposely exposed myself to just about everything.
I'm not naive about human nature.
I will not be surprised by what you have to say.
I've probably heard it before.
And I think there's a little bit of an applied theology there of sin and understanding that
all people are touched by it. All lives have been affected by it and all of us are being redeemed from it by Jesus.
And that does apply to pastors. Oh, of course.
And again, like we're doing this, the balancing act of saying like pastors are human.
There is a standard through which pastors are called. Sure.
I mean, we could do, we could probably do a whole episode on a whole podcast episode
on paths of restoration for pastors.
Sure. Or even just opening up the Bible. Or for people. Yeah.
For people. We could do that too. How do we get from a place of failure in sin to maybe reconciliation with God and others?
Because reconciliation with God is like...
The gospel. The gospel. It's virtually instantaneous upon true repentance and confession.
Reconciliation with others tends to be a little bit more complicated, not because we have
higher standards of reconciliation that God does, but because our own sinfulness then
stands as like landmines in our willingness to reconcile with others.
And so sometimes it's just a little bit more complex or difficult.
Oh, and there's a lot of gray.
Like I think something I think we probably have to continually say like forgiveness does
not mean return to the way it was before.
I think like I talk with a lot of people and they're like, well, I just can't like they hurt me so bad.
Like I could never like we have you could forgive them. is a choice, but it does not necessarily mean that things go back to the way they were.
Because there's a whole question about, again, like you said, it could be a whole podcast episode of like...
Does a pastor who has massive moral failure, do they just get to come back?
And that's a really tough question to answer. Very complicated. Very complicated. Very gray.
But it's not a de facto assurance. But we do have to, as Christians, continue to actually practice
the gospel. Of course. With everyone inside the church. Yeah, pastors included. Yeah.
Right. Well, maybe we should write that down as a... Yeah, maybe. You know, like even just
this, you know, the question of reconciliation and our non-pastoral relationships with people
who have done significant harm to us. Yeah. Well, we could... Forgiveness is a massive
topic. I feel like every time we talk about it, people resonate.
Yeah. It's probably one of the better sermon series that has been preached here. I don't
know, maybe three years ago. I don't know, maybe we'll put it in the show notes if we
find it when that sermon series was. You can look back on our YouTube page, Conduitt's
YouTube page and find that sermon series called Break Free.
But yeah, the reality, the difficulty of forgiveness. you are a human.
You're going to have to reckon with forgiveness, period. If you want to live a life that is.
Free from offense and harm and pain caused by others, there's no way around it.
So yeah, we can talk about that. We can talk about that at some point.
Yeah. So we covered a massive topic in one episode. I mean, not exhaustively.
Certainly not exhaustively. I was trying to think about back like if you could catalog
or categorize all these moments where you've looked at someone and you're like, oh geez,
I really thought that they were different. I can remember my first celebrity pastor church
scandal that I remember.
Then, just a litany of them down the line. I pray by God's grace that both of us will be spared from,
those experiences. And certainly, it is a measure of God's grace that does that, but it is also,
a measure of our own continued pursuit of holiness to Jesus and our willingness to
confess and repent both to God and to others, our sin, and I think creating a culture of
humility and applied theology of total depravity that can be helpful in creating a culture of
of safety to do that in the midst of, you know.
What the consequences may be but.
As always we we appreciate you tuning in yeah listening watching commenting we love that some of you are taking us on your commutes and with you throughout the day and like,
you know We love hearing from you guys. Yeah, and love receiving questions and comments
I think we're gaining on a good group of questions to have a mailbag episode.
Probably hear pretty quickly.
So if you have a question or a topic, not just a question but maybe a topic that you
would like us to cover, we would try to do an episode, a mailbag episode where we cover
several different topics or several different questions in one episode.
The best way to do that is to text us.
We have a text line that you can text your mailbag questions to.
It's 716-201-0507 and send those in and we will have a mailbag episode coming up fairly soon.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, thank you everybody for joining us. Till next time. Till next time. Yes.
Music.
