Is It Ever OK to Be a Christian Celebrity?

Confessions of a Failed Pioneer

Photo by Bogomil Mihaylov on Unsplash

I follow a first-century rabbi who is inarguably the most famous person to have ever lived. If you subscribe to my newsletter, then odds are, you do, too. 

We live in a peculiar paradox when it comes to fame. The Bible instructs us to live quietly, not to seek ‘greatness’, that the meek shall inherit the earth, and that we ought to practise humility. So it’s no wonder that many Jesus followers are instinctively uncomfortable with seeing celebrity culture infiltrate the church.¹ We see it as a form of idolatry - a grotesque distraction from the glory and beauty of our king. 

Yet, if we really search ourselves, most of us have at least one favourite preacher or musician who gets a free pass. They’re not like the others, we tell ourselves. Maybe we feel they are more authentic than the other shiny people, so it must be a sign that their heart is right with God. Maybe their preaching just sounds better than your local pastor, or maybe their spontaneity in worship feels particularly holy in the moment. Maybe they wrote a book or preached a sermon that genuinely changed your life. 

These things are valid and important. 

But, as we become more disheartened by the church leadership scandals that keep coming to light, we begin to realise that some of our favourites were not so holy and authentic after all. It’s easy to then turn to the typical knee-jerk response, saying that the problem is fame itself. We shouldn’t have allowed ourselves to put so-and-so on a pedestal, etc. 

But is fame always bad, all of the time? 

This is an especially pertinent question for us budding writers, who, on the one hand, wish to glorify God with our gift, and on the other hand, don’t want to go too far in the way of self-promotion. For most of us, the goal is to be paid and published, since, ‘a labourer deserves their wages.’ Yet, it seems now that the only way to reach those goals is to build a following, strategically befriend other published authors, and play the self-promotion game. 

We feel stuck in a never-ending loop of wanting to be noticed, while not wanting to be seen to be wanting to be noticed. 

If you feel icky (and confused), you’re not alone. 

So, how do we resolve this?