Chris​Hubbs​.com

There have been some strong reactions across the internet the past couple days to some remarks that Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Dr. Albert Mohler made on his daily podcast The Briefing. The provocative headline: “Controversies involving Episcopal leaders affirms liberalism and Christianity two rival religions”.

A little ways down in the piece it’s clear he’s not talking about political liberalism, but rather Protestant liberalism. And he says that Protestant liberalism (he singles out the Episcopal Church) and Christianity are “two rival religions”.

Why does he make this audacious claim? He points first to a recent tragedy where a female Episcopal bishop in Massachusetts was driving drunk and hit and killed a bicyclist. Mohler theorizes that the woman was appointed a bishop, even after one prior drunk driving conviction, because “the diocese was in a rush to elect a woman as bishop”. Secondly Mohler notes that the dean of a leading Episcopal seminary (also in Massachusetts) is stridently lesbian and pro-choice, and is stepping down from her job, Mohler conjectures, not because of those views, but because of financial mismanagement at the school.

Mohler says that these two examples demonstrate that the Episcopal church has a different “moral code”. (This seems fairly self-evident, albeit with the caveat that not everyone in those denominations may agree with those value norms.)

But then he audaciously claims that because of this different “moral code”, Episcopalians (and apparently, by extension, the rest of ’liberal Protestantism’) are not actually Christians, but rather, “rival religions” to “orthodox Christianity” (by which, of course, Mohler doesn’t mean Orthodox orthodox, but rather those that agree more closely with his set of beliefs).

By their fruit you will recognize them

Now we shouldn’t be hasty to discount Mohler’s evaluation criteria. After all, in Matthew 7 Jesus says that we will know false teachers by their fruit. “A bad tree bears bad fruit.”

So, to summarize Mohler’s argument, these two Episcopal leaders are exemplars of a set of moral priorities that demonstrate that liberal Protestantism isn’t, in fact, Christian.

But is it really reasonable to go from observing two pieces of rotten fruit to concluding that the whole section of the orchard is bad?

Alrighty then…

First, I’m more than a little astounded that Mohler would suggest that a “moral code” is what delineates “real Christians” from “rival religions”. (Apparently we don’t need to worry about theology much? Odd coming from the head of a seminary…)

But if, from a couple highly-visible examples, it’s appropriate to conjecture the “moral code” and thus orthodoxy of an entire branch of Christianity, let’s use Mohler’s own Reformed Baptist Evangelicalism as an example.

Let’s consider the case of C. J. Mahaney, who while being fawned over at conferences for writing books on humility was also running roughshod over staff without any accountability, had a history that included blackmail of rival leaders in his denomination, and who was at the helm of a denomination that covered up multiple accounts of child abuse.

And then let’s consider the case of Mark Driscoll, who built a megachurch on his reputation as “the cussing pastor”, bought his way on to the NYT Bestseller list with church money, and finally resigned in disgrace and saw his church shut down after a plagiarism scandal was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

What should we conclude from the “moral code” demonstrated by these two leaders (certainly at least “bishops” if there were a formal hierarchy) in Mohler’s theological circles? Is it fair to suggest that Reformed Baptist Evangelicalism is some sort of rival religion to Christianity because Mohler and many with him embraced these men until their patterns of sin finally became too public to ignore?

Of course not.

Christians, of all people, and reformed, “total depravity”-believing Christians most of all, should be the first to line up to admit that we are all sinners, and that moral uprightness is (blessedly) not the criteria by which our faith is judged.

Yes, true faith will change how we live, how we calibrate our “moral codes”, how we allow God to make us more like Jesus every day of our lives. And by all means, let’s strive, vigorously, to champion righteousness within (and without!) the church.

But publicly dismissing an entire wing of Protestantism as a “rival religion” because their set of acceptable sins is different than your own is arrogant foolishness, and Albert Mohler’s listeners deserve better.

I have many friends and family in liberal Protestant denominations who I am happy to embrace as brothers and sisters in Christ, even when we disagree on moral priorities. I will continue to learn from them, and hopefully them from me. One day a perfect man will sort us out and open our eyes and show us how wrong we all were in various areas of belief and practice. Thank God that man’s name will be Jesus and not, well, anybody else.

Mark Driscoll resigned today from the pastorate of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Driscoll has been embattled in several controversies over the past year including allegations of plagiarism, verbal abuse of staff. For the past several weeks he had been on a leave of absence while a small group of Mars Hill leaders investigated a long list of charges brought against him by many former church pastors, elders, members, and staff.

Driscoll’s resignation is he latest blow to a church already staggering under the recent closure of several campuses and the resignations of many other pastors and staff.

I will continue to pray for Driscoll, his family, and the many people who have been hurt by his words and actions over the past years. I hope this can be the first step in a process of healing and reconciliation for all concerned.

That might be a good place to stop this post, and yet there is more I think it’s worth saying. Perhaps you may think it uncharitable to say any more, but I think not. I get no pleasure out of Driscoll’s resignation, and want to hope that this is really his first step on the road to repentance. And yet to be as wise as serpents we should consider what he said as well as his actions.

Driscoll’s resignation letter is addressed to the Mars Hill board of investigation, but was clearly written with a broader audience in mind. In the letter Driscoll didn’t confess to anything that hadn’t been addressed before.

I readily acknowledge I am an imperfect messenger of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are many things I have confessed and repented of, privately and publicly, as you are well aware. Specifically, I have confessed to past pride, anger and a domineering spirit.

A couple of thoughts here: first, that we are all imperfect messengers of the gospel. Which makes this a very non-specific confession of something that he doesn’t even identify as sin. Yes, he reiterates confession of ‘past’ pride, anger and a domineering spirit, but doesn’t address any of the multitude of very specific charges that have been levied against him. Second, he doesn’t address the plagiarism or the use of a quarter million dollars of church money to get his book on the NYT Bestseller List.

Driscoll still seems to be blaming others a lot for the situation:

many of those making charges against me declined to meet with you or participate in the review process at all.

And later:

Recent months have proven unhealthy for our family—even physically unsafe at times…

While these statements may be true, they seem to be deflecting attention from his faults and calling attention to his accusers. This hardly seems like a contrite spirit of repentance.

In addition, he says his resignation is not because he did anything wrong, but because “aspects of [his] personality and leadership style have proven to be divisive within the Mars Hill context” and it would be best “for the health of [his] family, and for the Mars Hill family, that we step aside”.

He also emphasizes that there haven’t been any charges of anything criminal, [sexually] immoral, or heretical, which would disqualify him from ministry. The Mars Hill board who investigated him also state that he is still qualified for pastoral ministry. My question here is how the scope of qualification has been narrowed so far that only crime, sexual immorality, or heresy will disqualify you. Consider 1 Timothy 3:

Here is a trustworthy saying: Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.

This is a sobering text for anyone considering a call as an elder. But if we truly believe these are the qualifications for the office, Driscoll, by his own admission in many cases, is disqualified.

As a friend of mine noted, this move by Driscoll also allows him to leave on his own terms, and to suddenly place himself outside of any structure that could hold him accountable. (This, too, seems to have been a pattern of Driscoll’s over the years.)

It will be interesting to see what becomes of this situation over the coming months. This isn’t the end of difficulties at Mars Hill; there are still the Global Fund shenanigans to deal with that may yet bring additional charges. Will the neo-Reformed types who once championed but more recently distanced themselves from Driscoll take this opportunity to now declare him again fit for ministry and bring him back into the regular rotation of conferences and book deals? Or will there be a longer-term awareness that there is confession, repentance, healing, and reconciliation that needs to occur?

If you’ve read this far and think I’ve been unfair to Mark, take a few minutes and go read some of the other statements of confession that have come from Mars Hill pastors: Lief Moi, Jeff Bettger, Kyle Firstenberg… Then compare them in detail and tone to what Driscoll is saying. One of them is not like the others, and we should not be afraid to ask ourselves why.

Let’s continue to pray for the Mark Driscoll and his family, for Mars Hill Church, and for all those who have been affected, both positively and negatively, by Driscoll over the years. God’s heart is for grace, healing, and reconciliation. Ours should be, too.

Pastor, author, and counselor Paul Tripp recently resigned from the Mars Hill Church (Seattle) Board of Advisors & Accountability. There was a lot of speculation at that time as to why Tripp was resigning, and in what capacity he might stick around as a consultant and counselor. Tripp cleared that up today with a statement on his website wherein he describes the inadequacy of that sort of external accountability.

It’s because of this love [for the church] that I accepted the position on Mars Hill Church’s BoAA. But it became clear to me that a distant, external accountability board can never work well because it isn’t a firsthand witness to the ongoing life and ministry of the church. Such a board at best can provide financial accountability, but it will find it very difficult to provide the kind of hands-on spiritual direction and protection that every Christian pastor needs. Unwittingly what happens is that the external accountability board becomes an inadequate replacement for a biblically functioning internal elder board that is the way God designed his church to be lead and pastors to be guided and protected. So, since I knew that I could not be the kind of help that I would like to be through the vehicle of the BoAA, I resigned from that position.

(Emphasis mine.)

I think Tripp’s point here is key - that healthy, functional leadership comes about by having a local group of elders who can support, protect, and guide the pastor(s). There is no substitute for “firsthand witness” to what’s going on at the church.

All of us involved in church leadership, whether pastors, elders, or other, should be reminded that mutual, humble accountability to people right there within the local church is the best way to stay on track.

My post from March 2012 about Matt Chandler taking over the reins of Acts 29 has seen some renewed activity this past week with the news that Acts 29 booted Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church from membership in the church planting network.

Last week’s move is a significant one, seeing (as Wenatchee the Hatchet has documented) that for most of its existence, Acts 29 was, both by leadership and funding, nearly indistinguishable from Mars Hill.

In 2012 I had four key thoughts:

Chandler was a strong enough personality to bring about change.

This seems to have borne itself out; it can’t have been easy for Chandler and company to call on Driscoll to resign, but under Chandler’s leadership Acts 29 has done exactly that.

Chandler could help change A29 culture

Not sure that this has really happened, but I’m hopeful that it will start to as days go by. For too long the A29 church planter model appears to have encouraged not just the Mars Hill church style but the Mark Driscoll leadership style - brash, vulgar, MMA-loving, trash-talking, in-your-face “leadership”. One good that could come out of Driscoll’s current woes is for some of his acolytes to recognize the folly of emulating that persona.

Acts 29 could start to get some distance from Driscoll’s controversies

Well, that one clearly hasn’t happened yet.

Driscoll could have some room to rest and grow

I was hopeful that with A29 leadership off his plate, Driscoll might have time to relax, refresh, and recharge. Perhaps I was a little bit optimistic.

Regardless of where you stand on Acts 29 and Mark Driscoll, this is no time for gloating. I continue to pray that Driscoll will come to real repentance and seek reconciliation with those he has harmed, and that the Acts 29 network will be strengthened, not damaged, from Driscoll’s ouster.

As a follow-up to my last post: Leadership Journal last night took down the controversial post, replacing it with this note:

A note from the editors of Leadership Journal: We should not have published this post, and we deeply regret the decision to do so. The post, told from the perspective of a sex offender, withheld from readers until the very end a crucial piece of information: that the sexual misconduct being described involved a minor under the youth pastor’s care. Among other failings, this post used language that implied consent and mutuality when in fact there can be no question that in situations of such disproportionate power there is no such thing as consent or mutuality.

The post, intended to dissuade future perpetrators, dwelt at length on the losses this criminal sin caused the author, while displaying little or no empathic engagement with the far greater losses caused to the victim of the crime and the wider community around the author. The post adopted a tone that was not appropriate given its failure to document complete repentance and restoration. There is no way to remove the piece altogether from the Internet, and we do not want to make it seem that we are trying to make it disappear. That is not journalistically honest. The fact that we published it; its deficiencies; and the way its deficiencies illuminate our own lack of insight and foresight, is a matter of record at The Internet Archive. Any advertising revenues derived from hits to this post will be donated to Christian organizations that work with survivors of sexual abuse. We will be working to regain our readers’ trust and to give greater voice to victims of abuse. We apologize unreservedly for the hurt we clearly have caused.

/signed/ Marshall Shelley, editor, Leadership Journal Harold B. Smith, president and CEO, Christianity Today International

I offer my thanks to the editors for making this decision, and encourage them to examine the processes that led them to publish it in the first place, in hopes that they won’t make a similar decision next time.

As if it had been too long since the last evangelical church sex abuse scandal, Leadership Journal (an imprint of Christianity Today) posted a long online article this month titled “My Easy Trip from Youth Minister to Felon”. Tagged as an article on topics including “adultery”, “failure”, “sex”, and “temptation”, it’s a long-ish first-person account of a youth pastor describing his progression into what sounds like an extramarital affair. Then on the last page you find out the “other woman” in question was a teenager in his church. Suddenly a cautionary tale about temptation turns out to be a story about a pastor grooming and abusing an underaged girl in his congregation. Disgusting.

My intent here isn’t to provide a full summary or address the article - RawStory.com reported on it and many Christian bloggers have chimed in. The Twitter hashtag #TakeDownThatPost quickly sprang up, and I found myself sympathetic.

But then my friend Randy chimed in with a slightly different approach. And that led me to a different, more interesting question. Rather than calling for the editors of the publication to reconsider and take down the post, might it be more appropriate to simply raise awareness that the publication has chosen to post such content, and then let people form their own opinions of the publication and its editors?

Now that’s a conundrum.

What’s the right approach?

Because on one hand Randy’s proposed approach seems pretty attractive. It allows me to just state the facts. If anything, the factual headline (RawStory.com: “Ex-Youth Pastor describes felony sex crimes as extramarital friendship in Christian Journal”) draws far more attention than a “#TakeDownThatPost” hashtag. And let’s face it, if some organization with which I didn’t expect to align did something like this I wouldn’t be campaigning for them to self-censor - I’d just point out where I thought they went wrong and leave it at that.

But this is Christianity Today we’re talking about. I typically respect them quite a bit. Only two weeks ago I recommended their editor Mark Galli’s recent piece on sanctification. Their executive editor Andy Crouch wrote one of my favorite books from last year. I’d like to think there’s some restorative action I could encourage rather than just throwing them under the bus. And to simply draw attention to their unwise action and let others draw conclusions seems an awful lot like I’m trying to drag Christians’ names through the mud, which also doesn’t seem like a good idea.

If you can’t say something nice…

I suppose there’s another option: just don’t say anything. It’s not like the world is looking to me for comment on every issue, right? I was starting to feel that way and then I saw the story going around Facebook and local friends personally looking into it. Now I feel some amount of compulsion to comment, if only to let them know that they’re not alone in being upset about CT posting this article.

So where does that leave me?

I’m not a CT subscriber, so I can’t vote with my feet by cancelling a subscription. I sent an email to the editor of Leadership Journal this morning expressing my concern. I don’t feel like there’s a lot of value in actively joining the Twitter crowd and propagating the hashtag. So what else do I do? (Do I need to do anything?) Pray for the situation, sure - for the victim, the jailed man, the countless other victims out there. But other than that I’m not sure there’s much to do, or much more to say that others aren’t saying more eloquently than I would.

If the abuse scandals of the Catholic church, Sovereign Grace Ministries, Bill Gothard, Vision Forum, and others haven’t yet made it clear enough to us in the evangelical church: covering up, weasling around the topic, addressing it as only sin/repentance and not as a crime, characterizing pastor/youth sex as ‘relationships’ rather than predation - this has got to stop. Let’s not bring even more disrepute to the church than the abusers already have. Let’s again call our elders to be above reproach, and hold them to it.

While we may all personally want to shy away from casting the first stone, God is not mocked. As a church body it’s well past time that we find the pile of millstones and remind ourselves how Jesus advised they might be used.

I’ve had my adventures growing up in the church. In 35 years of church attendance I’ve been a part of a C&MA church, a fundie homeschooling church, two independent Bible churches, two Conservative Baptist churches, and now an EFCA congregation. My family has also been highly influenced by Mennonite and Bretheren folks along the way. We’re an interesting crew.

Let me tell a little bit of my story in order to set things up.

In my mid 20s I was getting involved in leadership at the first church I joined as an adult. Somewhere along the line I got acquainted with Mark Driscoll and started listening through every sermon of his I could find. This led me into what has since been termed the neo-Reformed camp.

One year I went with my pastor to a Desiring God pastor’s conference and heard John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Don Carson, Justin Taylor, and Voddie Baucham. I listened intently as Piper encouraged me to not waste my life, and I still have my Moleskine notebook wherein I hurriedly scribbled Driscoll’s 14 non-negotiable points of the faith. I read C. J. Mahaney’s book on living a cross-centered life and heard his friends tout his credentials to write on humility. I was young, still learning my theology (I’m an engineer, not a pastor!) but had found a place I liked.

But then somewhere along the line things started to change for me.

I read N. T. Wright’s Surprised By Hope and came to realize that the dispensational, Left Behind view of the end times didn’t make as much sense as I had once thought. I read Peter Enns Inspiration and Incarnation and realized that the “literal” reading of the Biblical text wasn’t always the right way to read it. My book pile got overwhelmingly Catholic and Anglican, and the Calvinist I found most winsome ended up being an Iowa essayist named Marilynne Robinson.

I resigned from the church plant I was helping lead because I was completely burned out and had no other way to find rest. I eventually saw that church plant transition to leadership of a young pastor who turned it into a real Acts 29 church plant.

Over the past couple of years I’ve seen a lot of other bits of the system that I once idolized come crumbling down.

I saw Mark Driscoll systematically run out the folks at Mars Hill that disagreed with him, and then spend more money than some of my churches have spent in an entire year’s budget just so he could get “New York Times Bestselling Author” added to his resume.

I saw C. J. Mahaney resign from his denomination over allegations that they covered up child abuse and that he was, ironically, one of the least-qualified people to write a book on humility.

I saw Justin Taylor warn authors against interviewing with a Christian radio host who accused Driscoll of plagiarism, with no word of repentance or apology when her accusations turned out to be correct.

I saw Doug Phillips, the head of Vision Forum (a fundie pro-homeschooling organization) and ministry partner of Voddie Baucham, resign from his ministry after confessing to having an inappropriate relationship with a girl young enough to be his daughter.

What I didn’t see was a lot of public acknowledgment of sin or calls to repentance from those folks surrounding my one-time heroes. The talk was all on the “watch blogs”, where people wrote from perspective somewhere along the spectrum between “godly concern” and “reckless rabble-rousing”. What I did see was a lot of wagons circling, and defensive statements that were factually incorrect and either closed to comment or removed when the comments got loud.

I saw Gospel Coalition teachers define the Gospel in such a way that anyone outside of their little group was probably on the outside looking in. One of Driscoll’s 14 non-negotiables I wrote down that day was penal substitutionary atonement. Al Mohler says that Young Earth Creationism is key. For Wayne Grudem, Owen Strachan, and others in the CBMW, complementarianism is up there at the Gospel level.

What I didn’t see was any acknowledgment that there have historically been various understandings of atonement theory, the age of the universe, the role of women, etc, within the accepted bounds of the church. What I didn’t hear was an acknowledgment that there was a lot of room for negotiables within the bounds of the Apostle’s and Nicene Creeds.

And I’ll be honest: it made me angry.

I’ve spent too much of the last couple years being worked up about these topics. I’ve written angry posts about neo-Reformed Calvinism, young-earth creationism, Biblicism, and gay marriage. And what have I learned? Primarily this:

It’s not worth it.

These online debates have perhaps won me a few cheers but also caused me a few headaches with people within my own church who didn’t understand my attitude or thought I was just trying to cause trouble. They’ve given me a feeling of righteous outrage and truth-telling, but have also helped cultivate in me an attitude of adversarial cynicism that infected my relationship with my own local church.

What it’s taken me a decade to work through and realize is that an awful lot of it is just noise, just hot air. Yes, there are injustices that need to be addressed, but is my blogging actually doing anything productive there? Not really. Does anyone at my church outside of a few of the pastoral staff care about most of these topics or find them worth arguing about? Probably not.

So while it may be exciting to jump on the bandwagon du jour, I’m not sure it’s all that profitable, at least for me right now. There are a lot of other things I can write about and very positive ways to do so. It’s also more peaceful.

So, there are folks I’m unfollowing on Twitter. There are blogs I’m unsubscribing from. There are debates I’m just going to stay out of. And that’s OK.

It’s not that I’m getting less opinionated; I’ll just be sharing my opinions less, and hopefully in more meaningful ways and circumstances. It’s not that I’ll be less upset by injustice and misconduct by church leaders, but instead I’ll stop thinking that my blogging is doing more good for the situation than my praying would be.

Not having the ability to magically make peace for all of America’s evangelical theological battles, I’ll content myself with striving to blessedly make peace and demonstrate love in ways that are meaningful to the people around me. That, for me, is choosing the better part.

To those of you who have been hurt or offended by these posts of mine over the years, my sincere apologies. Let’s talk over coffee sometime soon. I’m buying.

And to those of you who do feel called to continue that sort of blogging, please continue. Go and shout from the rooftops. But also try, as much as it depends on you, to live at peace with all men. Give the benefit of the doubt. Quote accurately instead of selectively.

Loving and defending the innocent and helpless doesn’t mean you always have to be an ass to the oppressor.

There’s been a lot of virtual ink spilled in the Christian blogosphere on the gay marriage topic the past couple of weeks after the World Vision U-turn. One of the benefits of not saying anything about it myself is that eventually someone comes along who says things a lot better than I would. Today that person is Jen Hatmaker. (All the emphasis in the quotes below is hers.)

First, she says,

…the reason I’ve always held this conviction [about where she stands on homosexuality] close, inviting only my real friends and family and community in, is because I am loathe to be a pawn in a hateful public war. I refuse to be a point in some win column, used for my influence and lumped into ancillary groupthink I don’t share. I’ve said before that this conversation best belongs in true relationships, around dinner tables, over coffee, in real life, and I still believe that.

And yet for the sake of those following her as a leader, she is willing to lay her cards on the table:

I want you to know that I land on the side of traditional marriage as God’s first and clear design. I believe God’s original creation is how we were crafted to thrive: in marriage, in family, and in community, which has borne out for millennia in Scripture, interpretation, practice, and society (within and without the church).

But wait, she’s not done, and her follow-up point is important.

However, I remain disturbed and pierced at how many Christians have handled the gay community publicly. It is a source of extreme grief. We may share theology, but the application of that truth remains a disconnecting point. While Scripture does command us to “speak the truth in love” (and surely Facebook is the dead worst place to exercise that practice), that is not the end of our biblical responsibility.

She then recounts Jesus’ summing up all the law and the prophets as “love God and love your neighbor”. Powerful stuff. And the man wanted to know “who is my neighbor”? What’s my out? And Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Here’s Jen’s words again:

As I lay in bed, it was instantly and perfectly clear that the gay community has been spiritually beaten, stripped of dignity, robbed of humanity, and left for dead by much of the church. You need only look at the suicide rates, prevalence of self-harm, and the devastating pleas from ostracized gay people and those who love them to see what has plainly transpired. Laying next to them, bloodied and bruised, are believers whose theology affirms homosexuality and allows them to stand alongside their gay friends. (Again, you don’t have to agree with this, but there are tens of thousands of thinking, studied people who hold this conviction.) The spiritual gutting of these brothers and sisters is nothing short of shameful. The mockery and dismissal and vitriol leveled at these folks is disgraceful. Also wounded on the side of the road are Christians who sincerely love God and people and believe homosexuality is a sin, but they’ve been lumped in with the Big Loud Mean Voices unfairly. Painted as hateful intolerants, they are actually kind and loving and are simply trying to be faithful. The paintbrush is too wide, the indictments unfounded.

And then she brings it home:

We don’t get to abandon the theology of love toward people; the end does not justify the means. That is not Christ-like and it is certainly not biblical. As a faith community, it is time we relearn what “speaking the truth in love” means. Something that actually feels like love is a start. If the beginning and end of love is simply pointing out sin, then we are doomed. … I am convinced we need no more soldiers in this war. We need more neighbors.

Thanks, Jen, for a powerful word.

There’s been a lot of talk about Christian celebrity the past several days, but Richard Beck hits on something important this morning by making the distinction between being popular and being a celebrity.

In short, the diagnostic test that you are dealing with a Christian celebrity isn’t the fact that the person is in a spotlight speaking to thousands. Because that might just be a talented and popular person up there. And there’s no shame or elitism in that. What makes the person a celebrity or not isn’t the size of the crowd. What makes the person a celebrity is where the person is before and after the talk. Let me repeat that. The test of Christian celebrity is where the person is before and after the talk. If the person giving the talk is in the audience before and/or after the talk then that’s not a Christian celebrity. That’s just a talented and popular speaker. By coming “down from the stage” to be with the crowd–it’s an Incarnational move here–the speaker is erasing any elite distance or distinction between themselves and their audience. Connecting with the crowd before and after is an act of solidarity, hospitality, humility and service. The speaker is making themselves available. And that availability is the exact opposite of celebrity.

This is a very helpful distinction. I remember attending a Desiring God pastors conference probably a decade ago and seeing Mark Driscoll ushered in by security after everyone else had already been seated, and quickly ushered out after he had spoken and before anyone else could get up to leave. That gives one sort of impression.

On the other hand, two years ago I went to Nashville to a small event where N. T. Wright was speaking. Dr. (Bishop? Rev.? not sure what title he prefers) Wright had just flown in from England that day. While clearly the focus of the event, he spent the first hour of the evening sitting in the crowd enjoying the local musicians who were there to sing, then after speaking for an hour spent at least another 90 minutes patiently signing books, taking pictures, and talking to a long line of folks. Popular? Yeah. Celebrity? Not that day.

The discussion also reminds me of this picture which I saw recently in the news:

Here’s the Pope, on a Lenten retreat, just another priest in a pew. Now, granted, Pope Francis is a celebrity by about any definition; but it seems clear to me that he’s trying as hard as he can to not be a celebrity; to be personal, real, accessible, and pastoral even in the most visible religious role in the world.

Even us non-celebrity (and even non-popular) folks could learn a lesson or two from the good Bishops of Durham and Rome..