Celebrity Pastors

Among misfits. A misfit in the trailer park at night. A misprint with a sixth sense. Been sick ever since my brother died of an O .D. My true sense never made sense, either to me or anyone else inside of the sheep pens.

My ninth sniff on my right side. Tell me what's the bottom line. The bottom line is I'm not right. I'm not left but this elephant won't fight. Then the deep end and I can't find my assigned seat to sit in.

My theology don't fit in. Black sheep of the reformation sheep pen. I'm just another Baptist baptized again. The best child of Anabaptist bars, bourbons, and beer cans. Hey, what's up ladies and gentlemen?

Welcome to Open Air Theology. I am one of the co-hosts of this fantastic YouTube show and my name is Jeff. I'm also one of the pastor elders of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church in Tallahoma, Tennessee.

If you're ever in this area, come check us out. I'm going to pass it over to my homeboy, Brayden.

Yep, Brayden Patterson, pastor of Valley Baptist Church currently in southern Idaho. Come check out the church if you live in the area and also going to be the pastor of Grace Bible Church here soon, coming December.

I've been called there to pastor the Grace Bible Church in Moore Park. If you live in that area, it'd be a great blessing to see you. Yeah, co-host of Open Air Theology. Great blessing to be able to be on a show with this brother as well as Tom.

We'll talk.

About him. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We got rid of that. He got on. We don't play. We don't play. You know what I'm saying? All that gray, he was cramping our style. He was making us feel old.

So, we just was like, nah, bro. I have a YouTube channel called Reformed Ex-Mormon, but I won't pass it to Tom because Tom's not here tonight.

Yeah. Well, he might be here in about 30 minutes. He might be. He better be. He's old. He's decrepit and he's brittle. So, it is what it is. He was out hanging out with his besties. We are the resties, okay?

We're not his besties, okay? We're just the other guys, okay? The other guys. So, you know, chopped liver is, yeah.

It's chopped liver.

Chopped liver. So, how was your Lord's Day?

Oh, it was a blessing. It was a good day today. I was able to preach on Galatians chapter three verses 24 to 29. It was a real great blessing just to see what was one of the main purposes of the Mosaic law, which a lot of people overlook, and that was to bring about the Christ.

And so, you have Judaizers twisting that to say, this is how you obtain salvation, or this is how you become a Christian. And Paul's saying, no, you're extending the law beyond its time period and you're ruining the whole purpose of what the law was for, which was to bring about the Christ.

And so, it was a real great blessing to do that. Matt Slick and a friend of mine was able to come and worship with us today here at Valley Baptist Church. That was really, really nice. And we were able to go and get some late lunch, early dinner after, and just hang out and fellowship with one another.

So, it was good. How about yours? How was your Lord's Day?

Man, it was fantastic. We had a baptism today, and those are always good Lord's Days, because we usually have extra people coming to witness this wonderful picture of the gospel. And so, it was just fantastic, man.

And then we had some other unexpected visitors. It was just an emotional day in a good sense, right? So, we had our biannual business meeting, so we have two a year, and then we had a lot of stuff to go over.

And man, it was just, everyone is just in one accord, and it's just really good to see that, because, I mean, you probably witnessed business meetings going wrong, right? Because this is how you have Second Baptist, Third Baptist, and all these other church splits, is on kind of business meetings.

But seeing everybody on the same page, and just, I don't know, man, it was fantastic. It was a really good Lord's Day. I felt like the message went well. It was received well. I kept, you know, people kept coming up to me, talking about how the message blessed them, which, that's always a blessing to me, man.

There's nothing, I mean, like, listen, if your pastor's message touches you, tell him. Tell him, because he's labored all week over that message. And there's nothing, I mean, there's nothing like receiving those words, and then giving them to God, because God has spoken through you, right?

And so, you might not want to blow up his head, but listen, he is laboring over your soul. He's working hard to articulate well, the message of scripture. And if that message touches you, let him know.

But a question. So, at our church, we have about 40 ,000 people. It's all taped off, so people can't come talk to me. How are they to come to me if I'm super famous?

Well, you know, that's because you're a superstar.

I don't have to talk to people at my church. If you have so many people, or you have a taped off section where people can't come talk to you, right? They want to come talk with the pastor. What if they can't even come talk to you?

And what does that look like? What kind of pastors are those?

You know, there's several kinds, like I've experienced several kinds of pastors, right? You know, like you see the pastors that sit on thrones, right? Like literally thrones on the stage. So, I want to talk about pastors that don't sit among the congregation first.

So, you have the throne that's on the stage right over by the pulpit that the pastor sits, and awkwardly, the congregation and the pastor are looking at each other during the worship. Then you have, you know, the kind to where you got like this black backdrop on the stage, and then when it's time for the preaching, the pastor comes out from behind the backdrop, right?

Or, you know, like...

I've seen them where they like fly in with like a cane.

Yeah. Yeah, that's my next thing.

It's pretty cool. Like they pull Spider-Man, you know what I mean? Just on the stage.

Yeah, like if I could get the...

That's what I'm saying, dude.

Yeah, I mean, we got to figure that out. Can you do something about that? Whoever's listening to me on my phone, right? Can we get some literal web coming out of my wrist so I can fly in? I want to out celebrity.

The celebrities, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah. So, today's topic that we're talking about is celebrity pastors. And so, Jeff, Tom, and I, we've been just talking about some things that we... We think there's a pretty big issue within Christianity today, and that's the idolization of pastors.

And every denomination, every group of Christians have this issue, I think, going on within their camp. Every denomination, every camp has these kind of issues. And that is pastors that are elevated above that place that your local pastor is at.

Jeff, I'll turn it off to you. What if somebody in your church says, my favorite pastor is John MacArthur?

I've had this happen before.

Yeah.

Is John MacArthur going to have to give an account over your soul when he dies?

Yeah.

How about instead of looking to a pastor that's not going to have to give an account over your soul, look to the pastor that's going to have to give an account over your soul?

Amen.

How about giving that guy a chance?

Amen.

How about giving the one that labors over you in word and prayer a chance? Am I out of bounds? Now, is there anything wrong with listening to MacArthur or, you know, name it, right? We can go through Paul Washerism and a pastor, but he is highly idolized, right?

And Paul Washer will tell you himself, don't do that. I think Paul Washer out of all of them, in my opinion, would probably be the one that said,.

Stop it.

Stop it.

What did he tell Michael Schultz? Just me or just flesh.

Yep.

Remember the first conference. Michael Schultz says, hey, he said something about the main guys here or something like that. Speaking of Paul Washer and Paul Washer just looks at him and says, just flesh.

Just a humble dude.

Just a humble dude.

And I would say most of these guys, hopefully, would kind of echo that same thing, right? We're not to put one another on pedestals, right? You're not to be out of reach, especially in your own church.

Absolutely.

And I definitely have a problem with, you know, people in my congregation, they're listening. Again, there's nothing wrong with people in my congregation listening to other church leaders, pastors, so on and so forth.

But they might, just might want to put the pastor who's having, who's laboring over their soul and would have to one day give an account of them above those who they're listening to.

Yeah.

And there's different, there's absolutely, there's different. So John MacArthur, when he prepares a sermon, he's not thinking of you, Jeff, and he's not thinking of me.

He's thinking, hey, no, he's not.

Stop it.

You're idolizing right now, Jeff.

Stop it.

I made a Bible for him.

You did make a Bible for him.

He might think of you when he looks at the Bible.

Hey, listen, I was walking, I was at the last G3 and I was walking out of the, so I hadn't met him in person and stuff like that and was in his office. And I was walking out of the elevator and John MacArthur, Josh Bice, and one of the guys from Ligonier were getting into the elevator.

And John MacArthur said, hey, ain't that the Bible guy?

Real recognizes real.

That's right.

You and the dispy.

No, but seriously, John MacArthur is not thinking of you, Jeff. He's not thinking of me. He's thinking about his church that he's tending and feeding through the preaching of the word, right? He's there being a pastor for the people there.

When I am writing a sermon, when I am delivering a text, when I am praying on behalf of preaching God's word and preparing messages, I'm thinking of the people I'm going to be presenting it to, the people that I care for, the people that I'm tending over, not the person I might see it on YouTube, not the person I might hear it on Facebook.

I'm thinking of the church that's before me. And so there's two different categories, I think, of celebrity pastors. There is idolization that takes place in every group, in every camp. Whether you are charismatic, whether you're a cessationist, whether you are all millennial, premillennial, you're going to have different celebrity or idolizations of people, of especially pastors in those areas.

But also, one thing that we have made fun of, that I would not group John MacArthur and Paul Washer and other big names, Votie Bauckham, other big names like that. I would not group them into some of the celebrity pastors that are doing the things like spider-manning down to the stage, holding onto a rope.

That's two separate types of things going on.

For sure, for sure, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

What's taking place in the reform camp versus the evangelic fish? Two different things.

Two different things. Two different things.

You're talking leveling up, 10 knots is right. The way that they treat their pastors and stuff like that. Again, I was a part of, mostly you all might not know this, but I was originally ordained in the context of the assemblies of God, churches of God, so on and so forth.

And there was a time where I could have saw a future in that. In that, right? Like there was a time whenever I was involved with planting a church. And we were talking about me having to speak multiple times a day, going to different locations.

And I was game for it 12 years ago. I was like, okay, sign me up. I'll do it. Whatever the Lord wants me to do. And that's not what the Lord wants anybody to do, right? If your church is getting so big to where you have to have multiple services, how about plant a church?

How about?

That's right.

Plant more churches. That's what we see in the book of Acts.

That's right.

Instead of planting churches in different locations and you going to each different location, or you had been put up on some kind of a video stream, to be filtered through, so on and so forth. How about planting a church and raising up other men, teaching them how to preach, sending them off to feed the sheep?

Because it's not about one man.

What would be the pros of doing something like that, Jeff? What would be the pros of having fellowships instead of thousands in numbers, of having fellowships of two to 300 people? Maybe even smaller, maybe a little bit bigger, but smaller fellowships versus bigger, larger ones.

The first thing that jumps off of me is intimacy with your congregation, like knowing who it is that you're talking to, right? Imagine knowing someone so well, you don't have, if something's wrong, you don't have to say, hey, how are you doing?

Like you can see it on them, or you know their lives so well where you've been, maybe like with our church, we have a group, like it's like a group chat through Discord, where we have prayer requests, we have praises, we have different announcements, we have a man's group, women's group, we have different things to where we're actively in each other's life every day, even if it's just by messages, right?

So if somebody goes to a store or whatever and ends up witnessing to someone, they text us the name of that person, Red does this quite often, he's on here, and he texts the group and lets us know what's going on, when we see him, we can ask about that encounter, right?

Because we are, even if sometimes we're having to do life on social media, we're still doing life and whenever we connect in real life, we're able to have these conversations. So I would say the most important thing about it is knowing one another.

There's no way to know who, like earlier you were talking about when John McArthur prepares his message, he's thinking about his congregation. I would say yes and no.

Yes and no, I agree.

Because he's unable to fully know everyone in his congregation because his church is so big. And I'm not trying to rain down on J-Mac, right? But in one sense, it's true. There's no way that he can fully know everyone the way that I know the people in my congregation.

Right.

The way I would look at it too, is if you look at the early church in Paul's exhortation to Timothy, or even in the churches in general, there's a certain level of intimacy that was expected amongst the fellowship there, because they were smaller.

They were smaller in numbers rather than larger and disconnected from one another. They were involved with each other's lives. And unfortunately, you don't see that that often in big churches, right? How can a pastor give an account for somebody's soul that he never talks to on a regular basis?

Yeah, yeah. And let's say, I'm gonna give you a question. So let's say you've passed away. You're standing before God and God mentions a name that you have to give an account for and you say,.

I hope when I say who,.

That person wasn't in my church, because that would be bad. Another good example too, is let's say somebody's in our church and they pass away and they never talked to me. Am I able to give a message of assurance to the family that this person was actually saved when I've never even talked to them about the gospel and seeing if they actually had faith in what was being preached from the pulpit?

There's a lot of unfortunate... I think this, I don't know, because I don't want to be super like with just John MacArthur. I was trying to say Johnny MacArthur.

Well, he is the most known, so we're not really raining down on John MacArthur.

No, no.

He is the most known and probably just like you, I've listened to a lot of Johnny MacArthur.

Greatly bless me.

Greatly bless me.

Greatly bless me.

But how can you give an account for somebody's soul? I'm thinking back when I was first saved. Don't hold this against me, audience. When I first was saved, I was attending a Calvary Chapel. I know, ah, ooh, it hurts still today.

I don't think I was really saved right then. I was. But I remember going and listening to this guy. I will rain down on this guy. This guy, his name was Pastor Bob. I think it was Bob Caldwell if I remember right.

Pastor Bob, I remember after one message, it was one of the earliest Sundays and I was going through a lot with LDS stuff and I wanted to talk with him after the service because I noticed that in the past that they would do a prayer time after the service for anybody needing prayer to come up and talk to him.

And I really liked that. And I would do that at our own church too. Hey, if you need prayer, come talk to me right now, right? I remember sitting there with my, at the time, girlfriend, Emily,.

But now my wife, Emily.

We were sitting there and I wanted to go talk to him. We sat there for like 30 minutes and there was still a line of people and we just had to leave. It was just, I can't even get prayer from the pastor, the guy that just preached the message because of how many people are going to him for prayer.

That was kind of obnoxious. And I even remember speaking of celebrity pastors, this gentleman, the last time I ever turned to, attended his church was the last day he preached at the church. And that was because he got up on an Easter Sunday and gave a rundown of all the stuff he had done in ministry and didn't mention the resurrection of Christ one time.

Didn't even talk about it on Easter Sunday. And I just was like, this is wrong. And I remember leaving there so disappointed and upset with it. I stopped going to Calvary chapels after that because of how frustrated it was, how frustrating that was, that experience was.

Yeah, I stopped attending the Assemblies of God churches whenever I was in a service. And I said, man, I feel like I should have received it. Like, no, what'd I say? I said, I feel like I should have paid a cover charge to get in here.

And then about 10 minutes later, they passed the plate. And I was like, oh, here it is.

There it is.

But I've literally been in there where they said, lock the doors. Y 'all didn't give enough.

Holding you hostage.

I love it.

Yeah, they didn't play, son. They bucked down on your money. It was all good. But something else that, you know, like, how could, is it possible to stop the train? So that's a question I want to ask. Is it possible to stop this train, this train of celebrity pastors?

Like, is it possible to put an end to it? What do you think?

I think it starts at the individual level first, not even just the celebrity pastor individual, but you as a person that's watching or attending it. The reason I say that is I won't say the person's name online, but I remember being at a certain place, seeing this very well-known person sit in a room and was extremely rude to everyone in that room.

Yet everybody was still fanboying over him and loving everything that he had to do, even though the guy was being a jerk. And instead of just saying, this guy's being a jerk, I'm walking out of here. It was, this guy's the hero that I want to be around.

So I'm going to go be around and being a jerk no matter what. It was just an idolization that was coming from the core of them. And it was sinful what that guy was doing, but it was also sinful for that person to continue to participate and still idolize this guy, put him on a whole different pedestal that no one should be elevated to, in my opinion.

And so I would say that the first thing is, is that people have to recognize that they are fanboying over someone. This man is still a man.

Stop.

Stop placing an over amount of,.

Is it called faith?

Is it called expectation? I don't know, but stop holding this guy in this glorious, onerous position that you just have to be around him no matter what. That's an idolization on your part.

So stop it.

Yeah.

And I would say like the, how do I say this without pissing everybody off? Well, this is open air theology, right? It's our fault. These guys are in the position that they are now because of us. Like, right.

So we leave our secular lives and become Christians, right? So in our secular lives, those that we idolize would be movie stars, raps, you know, rap stars. Listen, you're saying this to someone who loves a good freestyle, right?

Yeah.

You know, and so we take that general idolization. Can we say that? Y 'all know what I mean?

Yeah.

And we apply it into the Christian circle, right? And so it's constantly like we're trying to make goading cows to dance around.

Yeah.

And so it's our fault. We're constantly looking for someone to look up to. And my dear friends, how about those in your church? How about finding someone in your church to mentor you? How about looking to your pastor, right?

Someone, hopefully you go to a church where you don't have to, that you can walk up to your pastor, shake his hand, hug his neck and have a real conversation.

Yeah.

I was going to say that. So like, it's almost, so imagine that, that idolization of a music star, whatever that,.

You said rap.

So I'm just thinking of Eminem off the top of my head. Could you ever imagine sitting down with Eminem and smoking a cigar or going and hanging out and just chilling? I can't, like, there's like that, that burden of this guy is just in social interactions.

He's just not going to be able to hang around with me, right? That should not exist with your pastor. Your pastor, let me say this very clearly. If you want to go and hang out with men's group, you should be able to go and smoke a cigar with your pastor.

You should be able to go give him a handshake. You should be able to hug him. You should be able to ask him how his family's doing. There shouldn't be this expectation of, oh man, he's, he is hit the peak of the Christian epicenter of socializing.

And I just can't go and talk with him.

For sure. For sure.

Like, I feel like, like for me, like, I don't idolize any man. So, so like a big star right now in the area that I grew up in is, is Jelly Roe. I'm sure you've heard of him. So me and Jelly Roe, we kind of grew up in the same circles.

And actually when I stopped rapping, like, you know, Brad knows Jelly Roe personally also. So when I stopped rapping Jelly Roe, that's when Jelly Roe started. That's when he got out of jail and started rapping.

So I had to stop rapping. I wasn't getting anywhere and, and focus on a career in roofing. And, and so like, there's a good chance because we live in the same areas that I'll bump into Jelly.

Right.

And I, you know, I could, I could bump into Jelly, sit down and have a cigar with him and would not fanboy out. Like I'm not the type that fanboys over people. You know, because I like, that's never been who I am, who I was or whatever.

And so, so I feel like, like, that's something that I can do, but I don't. Again, so Martin Luther, like, if we want to be honest, Martin Luther is, is the fanboy of the reformers. I mean, it is the goat and cow of the reformation, excuse me, is the goat and cow of the reformation.

Like, let's face it, right.

Yeah.

All the reformers dance around this guy.

Yeah.

And, and, and, and I think even that's wrong. Like, I think, you know, I love my Lutheran brothers, but out of all the people in the, that came out of the reformation, like those guys again, but I love them.

And that's not to say like, you can't show gratitude and thanksgiving. That's, that's blessing you. It's just that if you put them above that of being a man,.

Yes.

That's wrong.

Yes.

That's wrong.

Like, I think, I think of Sam Waldron, right? Sam Waldron is my hero in the faith. That's a guy that I enjoy listening just so thoroughly to. And Jeff and I, we were just talking about just the, this last conference with Open Air Theology.

Just what a blessing it was to be able to meet this guy. And then just the humility that he had and the safeguards that were in place. And just the way that he was conducting himself was.

The way he conducted himself.

Yes.

I mean, it's something to actually learn from.

That's right. That's absolutely right.

I, I, I love listening to him, but Sam Waldron is still a man. Like you can't put him in this, this position of more glorious than any other man. It's still, he's a man. He's still a sinner. He's still been saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

Um, yeah.

Hey, Brian, I was wondering what you think about this question right here. I have an answer, but.

Uh, in the sense of elders preaching or like what, what, I guess, maybe do you think?

So from what I'm taking and please elaborate, but what I'm getting from this, you're saying should, uh, should there be a different, should the elders take turns in the pulpit biweekly? And so that's how I'm interpreting what he is saying.

Bi-weekly. Like different men that like.

Yeah. Yeah.

So the different, so if you have three elders, it are, let's just even it out for elders. Each one speaks once a month, so on and so forth.

I, I, I don't think there's necessarily an issue with that. I think there's one that ends up messing with that because then you're hearing four different voices from the pulpit every Sunday. And it, it, it really affects the teaching because if one person, I'm telling you, if you go to one elder to another elder, even within the same church, the, some of the minute conclusions that they will have while exegeting a text will be different from one another.

To another.

And the way that they're applying it might be a little bit different to another. Um, I, and I, I'm just saying that in general, if you have ever tried to preach alongside somebody where you preach this chapter, then you, I preached this chapter, you guys are going to have conflicting understandings, or at least the presentation's going to be slightly different.

So I would say no, but that doesn't exclude the plurality of elders and having an elder teach from time to time. I don't think there's, but I do think one main lead pastor or lead teaching elder is.

The way to go.

Yeah, that's my opinion. The sheep need to be led by a constant, a constant one voice when it comes to the preaching and teaching. However, other elders or gifted man should, could and should preach from the pulpit.

And I would also say, I don't think it should be from the exposition. So if your pastor is like, I'm preaching through John right now. Um, if, if, if, if Pastor Cal wants to speak, he's not going to speak from John.

He's going to bring a text that he's been mowing over so on and so forth.

Right.

Because my brain, like I have been saturating myself in John. Pastor Cal does not have the time to saturate himself in John the way that I have in order to come up with the same interpretation. And so it would be much easier for him to, to, to, to find something that he's been maybe in his study that he's been, that he's been studying over the last six months or something like that to bring forth.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's good.

Yeah.

And I mean, situations depend right on different things. Like right now at the Valley Baptist, I'm, I'm getting ready to go to grace Bible church. And so my elder and I, we have said that we're going to, uh, we're going to slowly transition to him taking over preaching through the book of Galatians.

So right now I'm in Galatians three, just finished chapter three. And so in this transitionary period for a month and a half, we're going to start preaching every other Sunday through that same book. But I'm sure we're going to run into what you're talking about, Jeff, is that there, there is if a pastor, even if it's a Bible study, if you're, if you're having somebody teach a Bible study, it's, it's difficult to get on that exact same page that that was talked about the week prior or where the person, the week prior was leading towards.

So, yeah.

Is there any other questions we can talk about right now or back to celebrity pastors?

Let's get back to the celebrities.

Well, so I think there's also a danger to, and this is something that I think we, we want to discuss and something that maybe we'll discuss in greater length, undoubtedly in a future show. Is there a danger, Jeff, to pastors becoming circuit preachers?

Elaborate a little bit.

Is it wrong for a pastor that is the pastor of a local body to spend more time outside of his church preaching at other churches than being in his own pulpit with his own.

People?

No, never. There's never a, there's never a time for anything like that.

Like, yeah.

So you're saying no, that's not a good thing.

No, it's not a good thing because a pastor, pastor is just Latin for shepherd, right? And so a shepherd is to tend his flock and there was times when a shepherd would be out in the field that he would bring his, his, his sheep back to, to a main sheep pen, like kind of what you see taking place in John chapter 10.

And then he would, and for the most part, there would either be a hired hand there or the pastor or the shepherd himself would, would hire someone to watch over his sheep or it could be to where he's, he's passing on the secret trade of being a shepherd to someone else.

And he would have this person to watch over his sheep while he went and spent time. Um, maybe resting or something like that, because, but for the most part that, that shepherd spent most of the time with the sheep, it was a lonely life in one sense, hard life rewarding, but it was a tough life.

Yeah.

So what, what would be some of the dangers that could befall a pastor. That, which again, I don't think it's a good idea to call them a pastor because if you're not pastoring sheep and you're just going and speaking at other churches, you kind of validate the.

Title.

What are some of the dangers that could happen with a pastor that, that has seen to go do.

Certain preaching? For one, the sheep won't know his voice, right? I mean, that's just clear application from the text. The sheep won't know his voice.

Danine just made an absolute great point that I just want to read it. You might want to put this one on the screen.