Jeremy L. Berg

Richard Halverson, the former chaplain of the United States Senate, summarized church history this way:

“In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centered on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise.”

Halverson recognized that a significant portion of American Christianity is shaped by business forces which reward ministries for operating more like corporations than churches, and too often they elevate leaders for their marketplace acumen rather than their spiritual maturity.

In earlier church traditions, and some still today, there were ecclesiastical authorities that served as gatekeepers. They guarded pulpits and platforms to ensure only leaders who have been tested and approved are granted access to positions of wide influence. They took seriously the Apostle Paul’s instruction to appoint only mature leaders, not recent converts, with good character and a gentle spirit (1 Timothy 3:1-7).

Within the American church, however, there are few overseers to guard the flock against the influence and abuse of ungodly leaders filling our media, bookshelves, and conferences. In the place of a church hierarchy, we’ve built the Evangelical Industrial Complex where we expect publishers, conference directors, and radio producers to protect the flock from wolves. When facing an existential threat to their organizations, however, managers within the Evangelical Industrial Complex will quickly remember that they were not appointed to shepherd us but to sell to us. And a very large ministry can survive if its leader is an ungodly tyrant. It can survive if people don’t meet or serve Jesus through the ministry’s work. But it cannot survive if customers don’t buy its products or fund its leaders.

The rise and fall of any celebrity pastor is merely a symptom of an underlying malady within much of American Christianity. Why are there now so many celebrity pastors? Because they generate a lot of revenue for the Evangelical Industrial Complex. Why do these pastors fall with such regularity? Because the Evangelical Industrial Complex often uses a business standard rather than a biblical standard when deciding which leaders to promote.

From Skye Jethani’s daily devotional “With God Daily.”