Bottom line: social media is making things much more difficult for celebrity pastors and their ministries, as disgruntled members and former staff members have an easy voice via social media to spill the beans on church and pastor misbehavior. This has definitely taken its toll on Mark Driscoll's church of late if you have been following any of his PR disasters in the last 6 months. As reported here Mars Hill has laid off staff and have been begging for money, as has the landmark SBC church in Jacksonville done in the last 6 months.
Times are tough for the celebrity men of God and their massive churches and egos.
And things aren't going to get any easier.
Says Krattenmaker:
"[He] might be right about this being the beginning of the end for celebrity megapastors. Until that process runs its course, however, fans of the Driscolls, Furticks and the rest have a big question to ask themselves. Who, ultimately, are they following? Jesus? Or their pastor?"
Great question.
6 comments:
Dog, just get ready for the faux outrage posts saying "how dare you put up a post at all right now much less one which is veiled criticism of Ervin Caner.
I meant Ergun. Dang auto correct
Anonymous 4:21,
Can we leave Ergun Caner alone, please. It is not the time or the place. His name was not mentioned or implied in this article.
I think it is your comment and not this post that is a veiled criticism of the man.
Lets just suppose that Ergun really did want to repent. Lets say that he truly is remorseful and broken over everything. It is hard for a man to express godly sorry while he is being pelted with stones.
Give it a rest. There are other fish to fry.
Tom is doing exactly what a shepherd is SUPPOSE to do, warning the sheep about the wolves. That is the job of a true shepherd. A job that if the leaders of the institutional religious system would take seriously, there would be no need for blogs like this one.
Great article. I hope internet vigilance does more to keep spiritually abusive leaders in line. I am curious though, as to why no one on the internet is holding Driscoll accountable for complying with his post-scandal mea culpa:
Driscoll: "I will also be doing much less travel and speaking in the next season. In recent years, I have cut back significantly, but I will now cut back even more. I have cancelled some speaking events, and I am still determining the best course of action for a few that I’ve committed to, as they are evangelistic opportunities to invite people to salvation in Jesus Christ, which is something I care about deeply."
Driscoll is scheduled in October 2014 to be a keynote speaker at the Gateway TX Leadership Conference where he will be teaching nearly 4,000 megachurch pastors how to be just like him. Attendees are all pastors so we can assume no altar calls will be occurring.
Just this week Hillsong also named him as a keynote speaker for their giant Hillsong Europe Conference for July 2015 where he will be speaking to thousands more saved people - again, no altar calls.
What happened to "resetting" his life and eschewing his "celebrity pastor" status? Why is failing to keep your word or commitments so unimportant to this man and why are Gateway and Hillsong aiding and abetting this man's self-diagnosed weakness?
Why are almost 4,000 pastors willing to pay money to also support this? So they to can become Celebrity Pastors because it's worked out so well for Driscoll? Where is the integrity? Somewhere well beneath the bottom of the collection plate, I'd guess.
Gateway church and Hillsong church are both heretical.
Go pull up sermons from both "preachers" regarding their twisting of clear Scripture texts to fit their agenda and you'll see why.
My eyeballs almost hit the floor as I listened to them purposefully take Jesus' teachings about Himself and salvation and twist and contort it to mean something vain and shallow and frankly, demonic.
You would have to be Biblically illiterate or unable to read clear English in order to believe the lies they spew from the...stage. It's THAT obvious!
Driscoll being involved with any of these churches is very telling.
CB
All Dog has ever done here is shine the light on Caner's long history of deception. So I guess it's wrong to call out a public celebrity pastor for his conduct lest his kid commits suicide because he's sad about the criticism? I sincerely doubt this is what caused any suicide by the way, I'm just pointing out the untenability of such an argument.
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