We Nerds Are Sick of the Jocks (At Least I Hope So)

When will leaders get sick of mega-church pastors?  They are the Paris Hiltons and Kardashians of American evangelicalism and they are, in the main, very shallow and simplistic. It could be argued that the shallower and sillier they are, the larger the church. Thus, Joel Osteen ranks near the top. We’re all so afraid to just blow them off because we’ll be told that we’re just jealous of their large churches.That makes as much sense as saying that a man is an adulterer because he criticizes a man with a wife. We don’t covet their large churches because many of us don’t even think they have churches. Accusing us of coveting their large churches because we are fed up with their pushiness is more akin to accusing us of lusting a wasted hooker because we hate the pimp. It’s like thinking that a nerd’s scorn of a dumb jock’s ineptitude with anything requiring intelligence is really a suppressed anger for not getting on the ball team when, in fact, nerds could not care less if sports never existed.

We live in completely different spheres of thought about what is actually church. And that’s why it really rots that they dictate the conversation about church.

 Anyway, I’ve dropped a few lines on twitter that share my thoughts about the American fascination with the cook kids in the mega churches, thinking that I was alone in my vexation. Here’s a sample:

• After the shallow and juvenile tripe from Driscoll and MacDonald, adults speak: shar.es/fdsg7
• @La_Shawn He [Tebow after declining to preach at prosperity church] has more theological sense than some evangelical mega church pastors.
• Certain Celebrity pastors are the Kardashians of evangelicalism and all the groupies are atwitter about their latest attention grab.
• 1 lesson from ER: people with the money frame the discussion. Only in weak evangelicalism does your opinion have weight becuz you’re hot.
• When revival comes there will be an outbreak of new churches and revived old churches and a decrease of mega churches.
• Poor mega church pastors. Because they have always believed that numbers are proof of blessing, they now think they can never be wrong.
•  Got very helpful idea from a pastor with a church 1/3 the size of mine. Why do we think mega church pastors know more what’s relevant to us?

And I said this in the comment section of the previous post:

We normal guys out here who are unaffiliated and don’t have our umbilical cords attached to a celebrity preacher-man are getting sick and tired of being verbally spanked anytime we call it the way we see it. Just because we get shouted down by the guys who can put on extravagant Elephant Rooms in which the elephant is not actually discussed doesn’t mean we little people don’t know what we’re talking about. And we don’t like it when Driscoll and MacDonald can say what they want about anyone that disagrees with them, but when we respond in kind we’re told that we’re unloving fundamentalists. Even racists. We’re especially weary of the Kardashian-like drama imposed upon us by leaders who have both too much time and too much power to even remember what it’s like to be normal.

And then there’s this in the comment section from a pastor who recently divorced his church from the Harvest Bible Fellowship:

Frankly, I’m sick and tired of big-shot, mega-church, celebrity pastors who think they are the ones who get to decide who is worthy to be heard, and who isn’t.

Nice to know the sentiment is shared.