The Sad Irony of Celebrity Pastors | Spectator USA

Young people need churches that are more serious about securing souls than filling up seats. They need pastors who help them to follow Jesus as we Christians live as exiles in this world instead of putting our hope in politicians to make our culture the way it once was.

Christian celebrities will continue to fall. But they don’t have to fall so often. They don’t have to inflict so much pain. Change will only come when Christian leaders remember a few painful truths. Their hearts are deceitful. They do not deserve their fame. God does not need them. Instead, they need Him. And they need to remember those truths eve

Without lapsing into hostile wariness about all of our activities, we need to look out for signs in our individual and church lives that show that we enjoy the trappings of the faith more than its substance. In

Taylor faults the Protestant Reformation and modern evangelical Christianity for disenchanting the world and turning the focus on the self rather than on God through shared religious rituals.

And don’t think for a moment that these failings are isolated to Zacharias alone or to people like Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell Jr. or Hillsong’s Carl Lentz. These powerful men were coddled and enabled by other powerful men and then automatically and reflexively defended by thousands upon thousands of angry and loyal Christian followers until

Humans disappoint, especially those we expect to share our beliefs and values. We see other believers fail to display the deep love for one another and the stranger that is commended in our sacred texts. We witness others compromise our deepest values, sacrificed for access to power. Integrity seems in short supply. We attend services where the peo