I am grateful to Kevin DeYoung for the timely reminder that we must all examine our hearts when offering criticism of others. That is a convicting point.  I would submit, however, that the YRR does not at this point look sleazy to outsiders because of the sinful motives of the critics of celebrity pastors but because of the sinful behavior of celebrity pastors.  Until the movement accepts that and does something to change its own culture, more and more scandals are likely to follow.

Kevin DeYoung has an interesting post over at the Gospel Coalition, addressing the issue of celebrity pastors.  By and large, most of the points are incontestable and certainly the first half dozen helpful.  Even so, as he addresses a large number of the issues I raised over atFirst Thoughts last week, it seems appropriate for me to offer a couple of points of clarification.

First, Kevin seems to be operating with the simple identification of ‘celebrity’ with ‘fame’ or ‘being well known.’  On that level, his claim that one can become a celebrity by criticizing celebrities is true. Perhaps I myself have become such. But the problem in the YRR movement is not that its leaders are well-known.  ‘Celebrity’ applied in that context is a far more complicated issue.  It involves fame, certainly.

But it also involves cultivating, via twitter and other social media, that false friendliness, that intimacy of strangers, which one finds in Hollywood culture, where the consumer thinks that they know ‘Brad’ or ‘Anjelina’ without having any real relationship with them.  It involves a careful system of branding and marketing, supported by formal and informal mechanisms, from literary agents to PR departments to promotional agencies, all geared towards the marketing, promotion, and protection of the brand.

The result is that a pastor’s power and influence are intentionally enhanced and expanded while accountability is in practice detached from a proper ecclesiastical body.   In this sense, I appreciate Kevin’s concern about the term but I think ‘celebrity pastor’ remains a very useful concept because it highlights a particular category of person who currently holds influence in sectors of the evangelical church.

Second, the criticism of the silence of the leadership of the YRR (certainly in the form I have made it) is not a claim that nobody in the YRR has spoken up.  Nor is it merely a claim that none seem to speak up in a timely fashion, though I believe that claim, if made, would be fairly easy to defend.  It is a claim that none of the very top leaders, the really big movers and shakers in the Reformed evangelical world, the men who are known for their strong opinions and who are typically very quick to speak, have spoken up in a clear, transparent, timely, specific, and decisive manner on the big issues and the big personalities that have challenged the movement internally, from the Jakes fiasco to more recent events.   That claim seems to me to be perfectly reasonable and, indeed, incontestable.

I am grateful to Kevin DeYoung for the timely reminder that we must all examine our hearts when offering criticism of others. That is a convicting point.  I would submit, however, that the YRR does not at this point look sleazy to outsiders because of the sinful motives of the critics of celebrity pastors but because of the sinful behavior of celebrity pastors.  Until the movement accepts that and does something to change its own culture, more and more scandals are likely to follow.

Carl Trueman is professor of historical theology and Paul Woolley chair of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is a frequent contributor to the online magazine Reformation21, where this article first appeared and is used with permission.