Celebrity Religion -

Fred Smith wrote in his blog on March 12, 2007, the following:
I was invited to attend a luncheon of 17 leading pastors, including Stephen Olford. During the table conversation he said, “My brothers, I am weary of celebrity religion. You know I have received my share of honors. But if when I die my family does not say, ‘There is something of God in the man I will have failed.’”

I must confess that I too am having a hard time with the current ‘Celebrity religion.’ More so after doing the series on the Beatitudes, with the thought that these Kingdom attitudes don’t characterize those of ‘Celebrity Religion.’

We have all heard the reports and experienced some of this first hand:
1. The proverbial Senior Pastor Parking spot closet to the door.
2. The assistant that greets the Pastor and carries his Bible and briefcase into the church.
3. The ‘bodyguards’ that surround the Pastor and keep those that he is called to minister to away from him.
4. Escorting the pastor out the back door after preaching so he won’t ‘be bothered.’
5. The Senior Pastor refusing to visit the hospital or do funerals for his church members.
6. The Pastor who requires his staff to forgo medical insurance and other amenities but has his taken care of.
7. The pastor who never goes to the office but stays at home.
8. The Pastor or traveling minister, who charges $40,000 per speaking engagement, wants a limo to pick him up, and wants to stay in the penthouse of the hotel.
9. The minister that jets around in his 20 million dollar plane and says we are not doing enough for the poor and suffering.
10. The pastor who sells his congregation to another pastor.
11. A pastor who has no qualms of drawing people away from another pastor’s church all in the name of God.
12. A pastor, who despite repeated attempts to get him to join with other pastors in the city, suddenly declares he has the true vision for the city and invites them to join with him.
13. A pastor who only meets with the ‘rich’ people in his church.
14. A pastor who berates someone publicly for their lack of faith to be healed.
15. Pastors who live a double standard and are not the same in and out of the pulpit.
16. A Pastor whose theology is all over the place and not grounded in the Bible.
17. Those Pastors that are trying to reshape the church without a single idea of where they are going.
18. Pastor's wife who comes in late for the service and leaves early so as to 'miss' people.
19. People who go to church to see 'a man' rather than Jesus!
20. People who change Churches because of the personality of the Pastor.
21. You are welcome to add to this list.....

Php 2:4-8
Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death — and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion. TMB

Dear God, let us as Pastors restrain ourselves from a life of special privileges and be as Jesus was- poor in spirit, humble, and among the people.