Is There a Solution to the Christian Celebrity Craze? Yes. What Katelyn Beaty’s book offers as a counter to the celebrity syndrome among evangelicals in her book Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits are Hurting the Church, makes this book doubly effective and valuable. It’s easier, isn’t it, to expose and criticize than to expose and propose concrete, realistic, long-term resolutions. Her last chapter is the best chapter in the book because it’s wise and ordinary and commonplace Christian truth.
I could not agree more. This book has been an invaluable "companion" volume to TOV.
I think the call to obscurity is even more true for those of us who are white males, but I recognize that's a longer conversation than can be had here.
Preaching through TOV, and using Beaty for additional texture/insight, has been incredibly helpful, for me at least. It reminds me of what I once wanted to be, and of why its good I am no longer on that path.
Celebrities for Jesus? It is an oxymoron if we begin from Jesus himself. Jesus had strong words for Peter who wanted to build temples for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. God's strong word to Peter was, "Shut up and LISTEN TO HIM." Listening to Jesus is always a good place to start.
I have provided counsel for some churches with respect to their pastoral searches. One question that never has failed to reveal plenty: Who are the pastoral candidates' best friends? Many times, you either find these folks lacking in any real friends or simply having sycophants.
“Jesus chose obscurity.” A wonderful meditation on that theme is G. Campbell Morgan’s short book The Hidden Years at Nazareth. Eg, “no man is fit for the great places of service who has not fitted himself by fidelity in obscurity.”
I could not agree more. This book has been an invaluable "companion" volume to TOV.
I think the call to obscurity is even more true for those of us who are white males, but I recognize that's a longer conversation than can be had here.
Preaching through TOV, and using Beaty for additional texture/insight, has been incredibly helpful, for me at least. It reminds me of what I once wanted to be, and of why its good I am no longer on that path.
Celebrities for Jesus? It is an oxymoron if we begin from Jesus himself. Jesus had strong words for Peter who wanted to build temples for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. God's strong word to Peter was, "Shut up and LISTEN TO HIM." Listening to Jesus is always a good place to start.
I have provided counsel for some churches with respect to their pastoral searches. One question that never has failed to reveal plenty: Who are the pastoral candidates' best friends? Many times, you either find these folks lacking in any real friends or simply having sycophants.
“Jesus chose obscurity.” A wonderful meditation on that theme is G. Campbell Morgan’s short book The Hidden Years at Nazareth. Eg, “no man is fit for the great places of service who has not fitted himself by fidelity in obscurity.”