This is the church, this is the steeple, register now to see all the preachers...

I wonder at the story above and tend to agree with J's comments. And because I know your firm stand on the abortion issue, one wonders if you know anything about Randy Alcorn (he is a prolific author who pastors a church in the Portland, Oregon area). Read up on him - he's suffered greatly for righteousness sake.

For instance, he was arrested and jailed for protesting at an abortion clinic. Being a type 1 diabetic, he requested insulin supplies. The nurse at the jail, instead of handing the supplies to him, threw them on the dirty concrete floor of the jail cell to show her disdain for him and the pro-life movement.

The abortion clinic sued him and won a huge judgment, so that anything he makes over minimum wage goes to them until the debt is paid, therefore he makes a point never to make over minimum wage, getting no royalties off of his books etc.

I have problems with the purpose driven Rick Warren, and with N.D. Wilson (if he stand with his dad on the Federal Vision), but other than that, I would be very blessed to grow in grace under the teaching and preaching of these men.

I recently read an excellent biography of A.W. Pink whose writings have blessed the church in great ways, but one of the caveats of the biographer (Iain Murray) was how Pink had isolated himself. So much so that at the end of his life, other than his wife, he had very little fellowship due to his contention with other churches. In some areas he was very correct, but in others he was straining at gnats.

For instance on pg. 303 Murray writes this about Pink: "In his relative isolation, and in his removal from the encouragements to be witnessed in normal church life, the temptation to feel, 'I only am left' was powerful." I realize that in this blog article we're not discussing church life per se, but still sometimes the mind set appears to be similar to that of Mr. Pink. Remember that God has preserved many other good men, but no perfect men....

Blessings,
Nancy

Paul,

You're saying that sending a flyer with the pictures of the speakers contained therein is the kind of thing Calvin had in mind?

I'll admit to being not a little suspicious of the conference "circuit" that seems to have overtaken the "Young, Restless, and Reformed" community, but to say it's idolatry?

Is it wrong to "see" a speaker? Must I just hear him? Could we extend the benefit of the doubt to - say, Francis Chan (whom I would quibble with on a number of things) - who appears to be a guy who walks a good talk with reference to a number of issues, not the least of which would be the near rejection of "money" and "influence" in a very well-to-do area of the country?

I have this one criticism to offer here- and I've really been edified by this blog. But a lot of the discourse goes like this.

Post: Blunt angry statement, sometimes verging on what I think most people would agree is unnecessarily angry and demeaning to brother Christians (post itself may make a great point- or not)

Response: Person whose nerve was touched by cocksure tone towards brother Christians.

2nd Reponse: Obviously, since I've hit a nerve, I must have been correct, because you wouldn't have gotten angry if I wasn't right.

Commenter to first response: In love, it would be best if you stopped talking here and went away.

To be perfectly honest, I think that many of the posts on the blog are needlessly abrasive and spoiling to pick a fight, and the authors are often too ready to assume that those who are bothered by it must therefore just be proving them right. I'd say it's a legitimate criticism of this post in particular. I also think that many of the responses are needlessly hostile and that Tim and David often have very challenging and correct things to say. This is a case where I think it is a good point- the slick, varnished look of the conferences that are everywhere in the Reformed world do unsettle me. But we need to think about how we are going to speak to our brothers about these things.

Much as I agree with the problem of evangelical personality cults and the images that promote them, I'm inclined to think the text of this email is not particularly strong evidence for it. The wording throughout is unpolished and sketchy, and this as well as the obvious typo ("WtHEN") makes me think it's more reflective of carelessness in composition than anything else.

In some contexts, I would find the use of "see" more damning; here, though, I could easily see myself using the same wording if I were sending out such an email. One of the essential elements distinguishing a conference from an audio program is the ability to see, rather than just hear, the speaker; and so in announcing or publicizing such a conference, it would seem odd to do so by mentioning the very dynamic that a listener could get without attending. And for that matter, it wasn't a desire to hear Jesus better that prompted Zacchaeus to climb a tree.

All in all, it's not phrased as it should have been, but I'm giving the benefit of the doubt, here.

Dear J and Nancy,

Mick is exactly right in his points. Nothing in this post casts aspersions on any man mentioned in the email, nor minimizes for a moment the fruit and godly deeds done by the speakers mentioned. Had the post been intended to denigrate any one of them, it would have done so clearly.

Instead, it points out a very real danger in our evangelical culture, and one that runs right through the heart of the most humble servant who constantly sees his image paraded before his fans. We as sinners have perfected the craft of ascribing glory to God while giving it to another, of trying to wrest from God that which He will not share. And so this post is hardly an ego trip, but rather a faithful warning to godly men—not because they are godly, but because they are men, with hearts like ours: deceitful above all things, desperately wicked, and unknowable even to ourselves.

Sincerely,

Josh

Two of our dear friends who serve as missionaries in foreign lands wrote asking what the point of this post was, and I responded:

Dear Doris and Vivian,

Thank you for the question. David and I have faulted John and others for moving into planting churches and congregations where they preach by way of video feeds, replacing their persons with moving images of their persons; replacing pastors among and preaching to their flock with moving images of a pastor--a virtual pastor.

Now we have a conference brochure where the header's subject line says "Come see (famous men)." And I have no doubt pastors considering attending the conference who read that and take a moment to think about it wince and wish it could be changed. They wouldn't object to it publicly, but if they'd written it or were given a chance to edit it, they'd change it to "Come hear" or "Come listen."

Why?

Because none of us want celebrity culture to corrupt the word-centered Faith God has given us. We're on guard against images of Jesus and we know the danger of super apostles and replacing the Word of God with the word of man and the image of men--the super apostles.

So line up a conference and invite everyone famous (and their brother) and send out ads promoting your conference with pics of the famous men and vivid colors and flashy graphics and free book offers and first person invitations with more occurrences of "I" this and "I" that than you can shake a stick at; and then all that's left is to send out the e-mail with the conference web page link.

If that e-mail has a single line to hook people into clicking through to the conference marketing, and that single line is the header's subject, and the header's subject has made one small error of replacing "hear" with "see," and people think in our image and celebrity crazed day that particular mistake most assuredly means nothing--trust me!

Well, hey; what do I know, anyhow?

Which is to say words have meanings. And this is a mistake that should make us all sit up and fasten our seat belts. If Rob Bell made it, no biggie. If Rick Warren made it, little biggie. If Tim Keller made it, medium sized biggie. If John Piper made it, major biggie. If Doug Wilson made it, beam me up, Scotty.

We're not opposed to John holding his conference; and we've said nothing about those he's invited this year; we love John and Nathan's father and we know several of these men personally and commend their ministries.

Nevertheless, super apostle personality cults and each man building his own kingdom are corruptions of the Reformed world just as much as the broader evangelical and emergent worlds. We must be on guard not to give ourselves to paying big money to see Apollos and Cephas and Paul hobnobbing with one another, but rather to seeing Christ exalted, high and lifted up with His train filling the Temple.

Love,

"It damages churches that are served by unknown men with 'lesser' abilities, whose pulpiteering just can't compare with Rev. Dr. Polished from a faraway city, heard via podcast."

This summoned up for me the memory of the Director of Placement Services during my seminary days (35 years ago, now). He bemoaned to me over lunch one day how harmful it was to seminarians preparing for pastoral ministry to see in chapel (four times weekly through the semester) graduates of the seminary who had big fine churches (i.e. 1000+ on a Sunday), big fine national ministries with big fine budgets and big fine results (hundreds of thousands of contacts a year), big fine book contracts, etc. etc. Because he worked with placing graduates -- when fresh out of seminary, and later as they sought different pulpits or ministry venues -- he knew that the vast majority of the seminary graduates were going to end up in small churches (less than 100 on a Sunday); with no national visibility for their church or themselves for the entire lifetimes; with cramped budgets that would keep their salaries at or below poverty level; that their recorded sermons would gather dust in closets; that sermon notes taken by their listeners would end up in the trash (I found such notes in a waste bin in our church foyer one Sunday, a truly sobering discovery!); they'd never write a book, or never get one published if they did write one.

"We should invite these invisible men in our Chapel week after week," he insisted. "The ones who have ministered in these kinds of settings for 20 or 30 years. They know a thing or two about perseverance in pastoral ministry."

I'm not sure how to think of conferences. For sheep -- well, I've urged my entire parish to attend this or that conference when it was local and when it featured someone whose message I deemed valuable for my flock. Thus far none of them featured speakers who with "value" as celebrities. For pastors themselves, conferences can afford an opportunity for fellowship rarely found in any other setting. But ... well, let's say that those available to me almost invariably are extravagant exercises in marketing.

So, Ken, this isn't a problem confined to the Reformed world.

I have written and deleted so many comments to this post. I'll just say that I agree with it.

And Joe Helt and I went last year.

"I have to fight all the time against wanting to be known, and wanting to "matter."

Okay, okay. I know what you're aiming at here.

But, is there no place for ... what? sanctified ambition? I mean something like Paul wanting "to matter" (if I may steal your terminology for a moment), to run his race so that he's a winner?

Something for another blog, perahps, so as not to hijack this one.

>>This just wasn't one of them.

Sure it was (and is). Trust us. We've been around this fame game since we were born and it's as much a problem within the Reformed community as any other. The images--that whole "see" thing and John's video worship services--point to the meta-narrative.

But maybe if we'd say it about Rick Warren or Joel Osteen.

On the other hand, I'm privileged to have you disagree. And signing your name, too. Gotta love it. As Dad used to say, criticism is the manure in which God's saints grow best.

Love,

And here I thought I was the only one tired of conferences that were essentially "Rock Star" confabulations. I'm also tired of wondering what Sproul and Warren, Mohler and Chan have to do with one another and why I need to go "see" these guys and hear a pleasing and well delivered mixture of truth and error in order to be a better Christian.

It's rather like the bad revivalism of the 19th century that drew people to go "see" the celebrity revivalists of that time and experience their dynamism first hand. All in all, it can't help but leave people dissatisfied with the meager faire they receive at their own pathetic local church via the ministrations of their pedestrian non-celebrity pastors. I'm almost as tired of Reformed Rock Star Shows as I am of getting a new and desperately needed niche bible translation every month.

I wonder if the pastors at the churches in Galatia or Corinthians felt that way when a new letter from Paul arrived.