(If you read this and come away thinking I’m against big churches, then you missed the point. When I read this to my wife, she said, “You’re talking about yourself.” No doubt.) 

You’re walking down the street enjoying the day. Suddenly , you become aware that a celebrity car–one of those Lamborghinis, let’s say–is slowly cruising down the avenue.  It is a head-turner.  You’ve never seen anything like this.  What must it cost, you wonder.  A fortune.

And can you imagine the upkeep on such a thing?  To replace a part would mean importing something from Mars.

You cannot afford it, and don’t even want it.  You just look at it in fascination the way you would if the Space Challenger were passing overhead.  “Gol-lee.”

In the next block, you walk past exclusive shops–the kind with exotic names known mostly from Rodeo Drive–and notice the people coming in and out of them are somehow different from  you.  Take that woman, for instance.  She is the blondest of blonde, gorgeous by anyone’s definition, and wearing designer everything.  She is slim and svelte (the only word for it) and stunning.  You turn and stare, the same way everyone else is doing, as she strides by, which is the reaction she was working for when she went to all this trouble.

Believe me, mister,  you do not want to be married to that. The narcissism is enormous and the upkeep on her celebrity-hood (real or fantasy) would destroy your budget and consume your life.

A block or two later, you walk past mansions that cost millions.  They are huge and built of the same marble as the Taj Mahal, you feel.  How large is that one?  No idea, but it must be ten or fifteen thousand square feet.  Why, you wonder, would anyone need such a monstrous dwelling?  You can live out of only so much space and after that, it gets burdensome.  Your little house of 1700 sq. ft. is just right for you. The idea of having to clean and do the upkeep for a place ten times that is horrendous.

A half mile down the road is the Church of Celebrity, the house of worship attended by the celebrities and kingpins and ten thousand other people of every possible variety and identity.  You gawk at it in the same way your head was turned by the expensive car, the expensive woman, and the expensive mansion.

You can’t afford it, friend.

What kind of preacher, you wonder, would want to lead such a church?

You couldn’t do it.

Your first Sunday there you would probably preach the Lord’s counsel to the rich young ruler, “Sell your possessions. Give them to the poor. Then, come and follow me.”  (Mark 10, Luke 18, etc)

They’d run you off before you drew your first paycheck.

The monster has to be fed.

The Lamborghini has to be polished and serviced and maintained.  The starlet has to be coiffed and adorned (and adored too, no doubt).  The mansion’s light bill alone would break your budget.  And the Church of Celebrity has to be fed, its needs for a different kind of maintenance unlike anything you have ever known serving out here in Podunk as you do.

The pastor of the Church of Celebrity becomes an instant celebrity himself.  By virtue of his position as leader of that enormous “thing,” his name is known and the invitations to “honor us by being on our program” arrive almost daily.

He is expected to live in one of those mansions and given the salary to pull it off.  Why exactly he is expected to live there is worth our reflection for a moment.  If he is any kind of actual shepherd of God’s flock with any degree of spiritual maturity, he knows the foolishness of that.  He knows a few rooms are enough for anyone. Something inside him grieves at shelling out a small fortune to buy it or to make the monthly mortgage. The cost of this home has to be kept a secret known only to a select few, leaders who themselves live in similar surroundings and who “get it.” The hoi polloi do not understand the image he, the pastor, has to maintain if he is to have credibility with the other celebrities.

So, he feeds the monster.

And, if he, the pastor of C of C, still holds onto a modicum of his old spirituality and still remembers the essence of the Christian faith, he will still preach a somewhat conservative form of the Christian gospel.  He has to, if he’s to be able to sleep at night.

But he hates himself. He feels prostituted, like he is selling out to the other side and has sold his soul, has been bought out.

But he takes the money.

And he rationalizes.

I am, after all, able to minister to movie stars and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, something undreamed of when I was pastoring Second Podunk.  My books are selling in amazing numbers, and the media people point their cameras in my direction for pronouncements on world affairs.

I’m against alcohol, the pastor says to himself. But these people live on a higher plane than the rest of us, and drinking is as ubiquitous as breathing. We can’t get hung up on penny ante stuff. We preach the big themes, such as peace and justice, righteousness and mercy. And yes, we also leave out a few subjects in our preaching, but that’s to be expected.

Eventually, the pastor of C of C realizes he no longer gives thought to feeding the monster that is the church.  He himself has become the monster who requires daily feedings.

He needs to be known and recognized, to be admired and applauded for his achievements (the major one being that he pastors C of C).  He needs underlings to carry out his commands and anticipate his wishes. He needs the best suites in the finest hotels.

And here is what happens.

One day, the famous pastor of C of C meets the unknown preacher of the Third Baptist Church of rural Podunk, Alabama, and notices something.  The pastor of that small church is amazing.  He has great peace, loves everyone he meets, rejoices and enthuses over life, and knows his Bible.  He has served Third-Podunk for five years now and has seen attendance double to around 200.   No one outside his county knows his name and that’s fine by him.  Last year, he baptized twenty-eight people and that made him the happiest man alive.  His wife and he were high school sweethearts and their children are about to finish high school.  The pastor tries to attend the Friday night football games and frequently leads the invocations.  Right now, he’s halfway through a series of Sunday morning messages on the Gospel According to Luke.  It’s the most exciting thing he has ever seen and he can’t wait to get to his study each morning.

And the celebrity pastor of C of C realizes just how poor he himself is. He envies the shepherd of Third-Podunk.

Sometimes, the  ultra-blonde model-type lady of Rodeo Drive, she who turned your head and stops conversations when she enters the room, looks at the pastor’s wife of Third-Podunk in her ordinariness. Clearly, that wife does not spend hours each morning preparing herself to greet her public, and the extra pounds she carries indicates she enjoys a hearty meal with her family without guilt or purging afterwards.  She laughs freely and gives her husband a hug and greets the well-coiffed celebrity model-type lady easily and exudes self-confidence and joy.

And the model-type lady realizes just how lonely she is.  All bound up in herself, she has become a tiny package of narcissism and she is miserable.

The Podunk pastor gets in his new Honda Fit and drives his family to Cracker Barrel.  This is a big deal for them, as the total bill could hit a hundred dollars, particularly if they have dessert.  A hundred dollars?  That is the typical tip left by the pastor of C of C.

No, preacher. You do not want to pastor that church.  Third Podunk is the church every pastor dreams of in his heart of hearts. And you are there.  Serve the Lord. Squelch that something inside you, whatever it is, that wants to be known and catered to and celebrated.  The mind set on the flesh is death.