The Problem with Pastor as Rock Star

A lot of kids grow up wanting to be a rock star. These days the term “rock star” is applied much more liberally than the days of heavy metal. Athletes are rock stars, movie stars are rock stars, software designers are rock stars. The rock star aesthetic has been democratized.

You don’t even have to live a rock and roll lifestyle to be a rock star. These days even the most un-hip of occupations can achieve rock star appeal. Including pastors.

Somebody once said, “The Gospel came to the Greeks and the Greeks turned it into a philosophy. The Gospel came to the Romans and the Romans turned it into a system. The Gospel came to the Europeans and the Europeans turned it into a culture. The Gospel came to America and the Americans turned it into a business.” And business is booming. Millions of churchgoers file in to buildings each week, line up in rows like shelves at Walmart, and watch the stage. They come for one purpose: to see a show and hear a pastor.

This, by uncritical standards, is success. But while this phenomenon increases, I believe it can be damaging to the spiritual vitality of the American church.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying pastors who look or act cool, or who speak dynamically, or who lead confidently, or who have large congregations are the problem. I’d have to rebuke quite a few of my friends if that were the case.  And, I am not against large churches. It is not the look, following, or size of the church, but the culture of the SuperPastor that can do great harm.

Furthermore, I think that any pastor of a church of any size can fall into the “rock star” trap.  It is a sin issue and not just a size issue.

I see four general problems with the rock star pastor and I will propose four fixes:

Personal Imbalance
No, not mentally. (Well, maybe mentally.) No, the problem of balance with a superpastor type is the distance at which ministry is done. Superpastors tend to either fly high above and lord over their ministries like detached dictators or they try lifting too much on their own. Both of these problems can stem from an enlarged ego. In the previous case, the superpastor thinks the normal work is for ordinary pastors, and in the latter case, the superpastor feels strong enough to handle it all.

Sometimes the superpastor is a passive sort who lets everyone else pass the buck to the pastor, afraid to delegate for fear of other people’s failures tainting the ministry.  In the case of the “lord on high” superpastor, the leadership culture is just as toxic, because staff and member tend to affirm aloofness and enable dysfunction. In either case, the biblical view of equipping others for ministry is absent.

Hindering Community
If the church life revolves around one person’s speaking gift, it is incredible difficult to move to community. A community “won” to a single voice is not won to community, but to spectatorship.  Thus, when pastors say, “it’s all about the weekend,” they tend to create an audience rather than a biblically functioning church community.  This is still true if your church is an oft-criticized seeker megachurch or a your verse-by-verse preaching point.  Either way, if you get thousands sitting in rows but can’t move them to sitting in circles, true community is hard to find.

As a guy who travels around speaking, I understand how quickly it can happen. For the last few weeks, I’ve spoken at a church close to my own house while the pastor is on a short sabbatical. But even in delivering biblical messages, I’m not engaging in biblical community with those people. It takes more than a stage to create a community. The temptation must be fought that a mass of people gathered to hear one person speak is equal to biblical community.

A gifted communicator can draw a crowd, but biblical community will sustain a congregation. A great orator is fun to have at worship, but cannot build community during the other six days and 23 hours of the week. Great preaching will be used by God to bring others to faith and sanctify God’s people, but it will also encourage the body to do life together on mission.

I’m not saying that every person in the community should have immediate access to the pastor. But I am saying that every pastor should be in some accountable biblical community. 

Approval Addiction
Many rock star pastors enjoy having their egos stroked. When pastors become rock stars, it seems that they quickly learn how to strut while sitting down.  But when they become the face of the church, the church becomes identified with the pastor. Thus, the measure of success is tied to the pastor’s capacity to draw a crowd, sell books, and speak at the cool conferences. The scorecard of the church shifts from faithful growth to publicity ratings.

An approval-addicted pastor develops the split personality of an insecure bully. Paranoid that their reputation might be damaged by incompetency in others, the pastor resorts to pushing people around. Rock star pastors are addicted to measuring success by whether or not they get their way. Their measure of success becomes about meeting their personal needs, not submission to the mission of God. A rock star pastor is fanatical about approval, but not God’s.

Selling Out the Church’s Future
You can just check the headlines. When a rock star pastor falls, the church rarely recovers. When they do, it is through extricating their identity from that of the pastor’s abilities and personality. No pastor is indispensable. It’s good for pastors to remind themselves, “Others filled the role before you were born and others will fill it after you’re gone.”

But the rock star pastor constantly needs more attendees, Facebook fans, and Twitter followers. In a twisted bit of logic, they work to make the gospel well-known through their own fame.

Some have pointed to the multi-site movement as an illustration of how the church has sold out to make rock star pastors famous. Personally, I am not anti-multi-site. When partnered with church planting, it has great potential. Nevertheless, while I’m not “anti,” I do urge caution. At times, I’ve joked about “rock star celebrity pastors beaming their graven image all over the country.”If you are a rock star pastor, perhaps you believe that the church can simply not go on without you. You would be wrong.

Pride was inherent in the fall of Adam and it rears its head whenever one person deems the church’s future to ride on their shoulders or voice. Multi-site, or any program, as a necessity derived from the attention needed by a rock star pastor, is idolatry.

So, what can we do to counteract the superpastor tendencies? I think four simple ideas will help.

1. Focus on Equipping
A lot of churches talk a big game on this issue but few play it. 1 Peter 4:10 tells us, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” The lesson of 1 Corinthians 12 is even more extensive regarding the usefulness of all the parts of the body of Christ.  We deal with this in-depth in Transformational Church, and I recently shared a message on this subject at the Verge Conference at Austin Stone Community Church.  You can watch parts one and two here.

In a rock star pastor culture, only one is deemed capable for ministry. Maybe the rest of the staff can help, but they are secondary to the pastor. Only the pastor can proclaim God’s Word and shoulder the decisions of the church. It sounds exhausting. Worse than that, it sounds unbiblical.

By focusing on equipping the saints, we move back to the biblical position that every believer is called to the ministry and mission of the local church. When ego is removed, the refreshed pastor can help believers fulfill their role in God’s kingdom.

2. Take a Sabbath
Rock star pastors are notorious for pushing themselves to the breaking point. The stories of depression, adulterous affairs, or just drop-outs each month are heartbreaking. And they should be a wake-up call.

Not only should pastors take a permanent break from shouldering the entire weight of their church’s growth, they should periodically just take a break. Sure, a few pastors are lazy and spend too much time goofing off, but most rock star pastors take it to the other extreme of non-stop labor. Pushing themselves beyond acceptable boundaries, these Type-A personalities cannot stand to not be doing something. They won’t sit still.

Pastors: sit still!

On my own blog today, I have written on the importance of rest in pastoral ministry, and you can find the article here.

3. Adjust with the Economic Times
The recession has hit churches hard. Giving is down and, to adjust, churches are cutting back on programs and personnel. This is an opportunity for the church to abandon the “clergification” virus that plagues us. You can read more about the need for de-clergification here.  The mentality that only the professional clergy, especially the superpastors, can do ministry never shows up in Scripture. It is a hold-over from pre-Reformation times and is damaging our ability to fulfill God’s mission.

When the church relies on one or a few paid individuals to do all of the ministry, most is left unattended. Interestingly, the two-thirds world does not suffer from the malady of clergification. Not having the financial ability to pay superpastors, more believers do the work of the ministry.

Pastors can lead their churches toward a better stewardship of their resources. Rather than paying staff to shoulder the load, teach all believers to minister. Instead of employing people to speak for God in the community, lead all believers to be Christ’s ambassadors.

4. Preach the Glory of God
Most rock star pastors don’t mean to not preach God’s glory. But they are nevertheless unintentionally preaching their own. For a pastor, being “out front” is a necessity that can become a danger. Their winsomeness wins over seekers, their way with words woos the weekly attendees. Charisma is an intangible gift but deceives one’s own heart.

Once when preaching, cheering broke out for John Chrysostom. He responded:

“You praise what I have said, and receive my exhortation with tumults of applause; but show your approbation by obedience; that is the only praise I seek.”

The decline in the church, perhaps, is caused by our satisfaction with earthly appeal. We should endeavor to present the glory of God instead of the cleverness of our abilities to edit movie clips, mimic the local CCM station, or engage social issues. People can walk away from all of that unchanged. But nobody can encounter the glory of God and live the same as they did before.

The glory of God is a good place to end this article.  Pastors (of churches of any size) need to worry less about their status and be concerned more with God’s mission and His glory. The glory of God should be your recurring song, and with that in mind, it’s okay for rock stardom to fade out and the Morning Star to rise in your place.

12 Comments »

1. Great article- this is definately an issue in this age of attractional ministry models…beginning with youth ministries- students are attracted to a personality rather than the Gospel.  Same thing in “big church.”  Thanks Ed, for the great article.

   Comment by Steve L. - Aug 03, 2010 @ 08:48 AM

2. Fantastic article!  Unfortunately I have seen this time and time again in churches.  And sadly, it’s hard to find good examples, not matter what the church size, of pastors who aren’t concerned about being rockstars.  Many of today’s influential church leaders and pastors are blogging and tweeting all over the place and talking a big game and even condemning the consumeristic and materialistic ways of church, yet are playing that very same game. 
   Thankfully God works through us and many times in spite of us, but still the same, God is at work in our world.
   AT

   Comment by Aaron Tiffany - Aug 03, 2010 @ 09:25 PM

3. Great article!! Any time ministry becomes about one person, something has gone wrong. The best pastors lead by their humility. A ‘rock star’ leader is a recipe for failure, no man can maintain that illusion. A man is just a man… frail and broken and in need of God. I am concerned about the message that is conveyed by super pastors. If we do not walk in humility then we do not display humility. Rock Star pastors are usually gifted speakers and they can bring seekers into the fold but the hard work of maturity is not fully encouraged.. Thankfully God continues his good work, many times in spite of the directions in which we are going.
   JW

   Comment by James W - Aug 17, 2010 @ 08:20 AM

4. Thanks for the article.  God keeps hitting me in the head lately with 1 Peter 4:10.  It has been my life verse for ministry.  I believe He is changing the application of it in my life.  God is on the move!

   Comment by Greg H - Aug 17, 2010 @ 09:44 AM

5. The Glory is the best place to start.  There is no substitution for His Glory:  No Program, No Praise Band, No Pastor..period.

   Comment by Bobby B. - Aug 17, 2010 @ 10:56 AM

6. In our staff meeting today there was a comment that “jumped out” at me as we were talking about the necessity of all who share from the platform being there for the right reasons and with Godly heart preparation and attitude.  The simple, single line was:
   “In us ... before ... through us.”

   May we not be instruments that are just there and that’s why things happen, but may we rather be those who are sensitive and pliable to God and what He is wanting for both those who observe us as we serve—and for ourselves according to His desires.

   Comment by George Bieri - Aug 17, 2010 @ 04:25 PM

7. When does all this come to church late, drink coffee, talk, and dress like a bum end? The pastors and elders should be furious it seems to me. So many people get up early and put a lot of effort into the service and then they seem to encourage casual behavior. Let’s remember, this Guy died for us and He didn’t have to.

   Comment by Don - Aug 18, 2010 @ 01:54 PM

8. Good post Ed.

   Seems to me like the publishing/conference/Christian resource industry kinda perpetuates the “rockstar pastor” problem, no?

   And more importantly, how can those industries still share the insights of amazing leaders on a stage without putting them on a pedestal?

   Comment by Jay Brock - Aug 19, 2010 @ 12:05 PM

9. Great post. I thoroughly agree.

   Comment by adam - Aug 19, 2010 @ 01:27 PM

10. Thank you, Ed. I’ve been concerned about the rising thirty-something ‘dude’ pastors for a while but haven’t been able to articulate my concerns very well without sounding like a sour middle-aged guy. My concerns have nothing to do with style: musical preferences, goatees, dress, etc. I’m not bemoaning the fact that some of these guys possess rock start quality. Good for them! My concerns are with the priorities I see reflected in their churches. I’m noting that Bible-based discipleship, spiritual formation, and pastoral ministry are being scaled back in favor of personality-driven activism, similar to the kind we’ve seen coming out of Hollywood for years. The activism is not bad in and of itself. Yet this project-focused social ministry, designed to enhance the church’s (or the Gospel’s) reputation in a community, does not alone meet the challenge of equipping believers to live in the 24/7 world. The Boomers neglected communal activism. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that reactive Gen-X’ers would run with it. Yet X’ers seem suspicious of middle-aged adults who call for balance, as if calls for more discipleship are attempts to bring back the classroom style churches of the ‘70s. I’m glad for an era of unprecedented prosperity in the US that has afforded young people rich ministry experiences and opportunities to go on mission trips around the globe. Yet I’m sad when young adults marginalize older adults whose experiences aren’t so colorful, the very older adults who have been writing the checks! It would excite me to see young adults who tell amazing stories about what God did in Kenya showing up at their jobs on time, returning phone calls, and keeping their promises to their wives and children. Discipleship is more than providing experiences, it’s showing people how to manifest Christian character and to articulate an intelligible gospel witness in the daily grind.

    Comment by John Walace - Aug 19, 2010 @ 02:09 PM

11. Awesome Post!!!  I think we as the church and the bride of Christ need to get back to our first love. As ministers of the word and first and foremost focus on BEING chistians not DOING. I think eh showmanship promoted in America has relegated our faith to what the bible says…“they have a form of religiosness but lack the power thereof…”

    Comment by Lil Proph - Aug 19, 2010 @ 02:25 PM

12. Excellent article.  I’m in a rock star pastor church right now.  I just didn’t know what to call it.  Thanks for the insight

    Comment by Tim - Sep 01, 2010 @ 09:36 PM

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