Celebrity preachers
I’m still thinking through what is often referred to as celebrity preachers. I am keen to encourage those I have pastoral care over to spend more time reading and studying the Bible than listening to someone else explaining it to them. Last night I started reading Kent and Barbara Hughes’ book Liberating Ministry from the Success Sydnrome. I was reminded of the importance of being a committed and regular Bible reader. As someone who isn’t a regular listener to mp3 sermons, it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t challenge myself. As I reflected on yesterday morning’s reading time before the kids got up, I realised I spent about as much, if not more time reading an essay (a very interesting and engaging one on preaching and church) as I had reading Isaiah (I’ve finished Proverbs and started on Isaiah). So, this morning I decided, again, to spend my time reading the Bible, praying about issues that it brought to mind and leave the computer off and other books/papers to one side.
I’m still not sure how much time I’ll give to thinking through celebrity preachers. Maybe I should first of all be committed to my own Bible reading and prayer, then diligent in my own sermon preparation. As it is, many older, wiser and smarter people have put a few of their thoughts together, so check them out instead.
I’ve never been mistaken for Brad Pitt (h/t Con Campbell) (http://www.challies.com/archives/articles/ive-never-been-mistaken-for-brad-pitt.php)
The Nameless One (http://www.reformation21.org/articles/the-nameless-one.php )
What to do when the sermon is bad (http://yingyee.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/when-the-sermon-is-bad/)
Thanks for the exhortation Josh. I think with our celebrity obsessed world, its easy to get carried away by celebrity preachers. Not always helpful, especially when we assume that ‘fame’ = knowledge. Need to go where the real knowledge is – the bible.
A couple of thoughts,
1. The celebrity culture is really prevalent in our world and this obviously filters into the Christian world. We are built for praise and in our sin, instead of praising the God that we were built to praise, we praise the creation (Rom 1 I think?).
2. With the rise of the information age, we are all hungry for more and more information, but have much smaller attention spans. We’d much rather be told something by a preacher/book than think it through and work it out ourselves from the bible. So a push for more bible reading is needed (as you have pushed in the past!).
I’ve also done some thinking into this on my blog:
Ordinary Pastors
Thanks josh