There’s this celebrity pastor at this celebrity LA megachurch that I want to focus on in today’s newsletter. He’s indicative of a wider reality in the church, so I’m not going to name him. However, as a placeholder, let’s use this public domain picture to imagine what he looks like:
The first word the celebrity pastor uses to describe himself (in multiple locations online) is “iconoclast.” That word has theological roots but is now primarily known for definition #1 below:
In short, an iconoclast is someone who tears down a former—incorrect—institution to build up another. He takes pride in tearing down what wasn’t working or was false and building up something new, something he considers to be closer to the truth.
What he tore down
In 2008, the celebrity pastor gave an interview to a church magazine in which he described what the church was like before he took over in the 1990s. The church was founded in the 1940s and was, until he took over, a Baptist church of about three-hundred adults and primarily blue collar. However, according to him, it had dug in its heals towards the outside world, harboring antagonistic feelings toward Hollywood, people with AIDS, and the gay community.
His iconoclasm centered on moving the church away from its disapproving and cloistered stance to the world and toward an evangelization built around relationship.
In 2015, twenty-three years after he took over, The New York Times compared the music at his church to a set at Coachella, stating its brand was created for a social media culture, crediting it and others like it with reviving a hunger for church in heathen Hollywood.
Clearly, somewhere along the way the church departed from being a blue collar family church of three hundred adults. The former institution—simple, disapproving, stand-offish—had been replaced with something else, attracting a completely new group of people.
The famous pastor’s self-proclaimed iconoclasm was successful. The original institution was torn down, and in its place he built a new one.
What he built
The ministerial empire he built now has seven locations, one as far south as Ecuador. As The New York Times mentioned, its aesthetic is unrivaled and carefully cultivated for Instagram, and he’s cultivated for Instagram as well: for Easter this past year he was loaned a Sunday wardrobe by Jerry Lorenzo.
The church is no longer known for standing against Hollywood and has instead embraced much of Hollywood’s glamorous appeal. Rather than blue-collar families, it now serves the influential, the fashionable, and the trendy—many of whom also overlap with the wealthy.
And all of it—all of it—points back to him and funnels into his bank account. Below is my best summary of all of his revenue streams from cheapest to most expensive—each of them built on his ministerial success.
Thirteen books.
On September 28th, he posted a clip of one of his sermons on Instagram, and, in the caption, directed people to purchase a book he first published in 2014. His website’s home page is currently an advertisement for his most recent book, published a year ago.
$70 podcast t-shirt.
His church’s website has four main buttons in its navigation bar: ABOUT US — MESSAGES — SHOP — GIVE. The “SHOP” button actually takes you out of the church’s url and to a url under his name. For sale on that new website is merch from his podcast—titled “Collection 01.” You can get an “Off-White T-Shirt” for $70 or a “Black Hat” for $50.
$558 shorts.
In 2020, deep into the pandemic, he released a clothing line and another website built around his name. The about page used the Covid pandemic to explain the inspiration behind his clothing line, claiming that despite the challenges in the world, 2020 needed to become something greater. Invoking the difficulties of 2020, he sold $558 shorts, modeled by himself. He is featured across his church’s IG wearing his clothing line, advertising his pandemic wardrobe to his parishioners.
$1,500 premier admission conference ticket
His church recently finished its fifth annual conference last weekend. Both the main church’s IG page and his personal page have been promoting it for the past couple weeks. It was a three day conference, and a general admission ticket cost $150. However, for an additional $1,350, you could purchase a “Premier Admissions” ticket, which promised an “intimate leadership dinner” with him as well as reserved seating throughout the conference. Those who could pay got time with the pastor.
$3,400 masterclass
He writes that his inspiration for creating his own communication masterclass was due to his own successful journey, beginning in street evangelism in his twenties, expanding to arenas in his thirties, and eventually to powerful boardrooms in his forties. If you want to have the same level of influence that he does, you can purchase this course, with “over” six hours of pre-recorded material as well as a live Q&A with him. You can either make a one-time purchase of $2,995 or spread it out over four months for $3,400.
And, finally, tithe
The other monetary option on the church’s website is “GIVE,” and the page opens with 1 Corinthians 16:2:
On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made.
The church also states it believes in giving above and beyond a monthly tithe: a calling in order to better spread God’s love. The church accepts checks, credit, cryptocurrency, or stocks. There is no indication of how much money the celebrity pastor gets from the tithe.
It’s a lot of money in his pocket; the passive income is impressive.
But what’s fascinating to me is that this celebrity pastor is not known as extreme or lavish. He is not categorized as a health and wealth preacher. He is not beseeching his congregation to donate for a private jet or purchasing his books with church dollars to get on the New York Times Bestseller List. He is still known as a preacher, despite the personal financial ecosystem he has built on Jesus.
Here is the thesis question: when the sheep you are called to shepherd become customers, does that inherently change your relationship with them?
Capitalistic ministry
After reading Katelyn Beaty’s Celebrities for Jesus, I became convinced that underneath the celebrity and prestige and fancy clothes rampant in the American church, the abuse of capitalism is propelling and providing the bedrock for how many do ministry.
In my conversation with Katelyn, we spoke about the realities of capitalism and ministry, about what it means for it to be a foundation to our concept of ministry. She said, “I don’t think most of us have the privilege of exiting capitalism, if that’s even a thing that can be done. We are embedded in a capitalistic society where so much of ministry takes place in the context of the free market and free market principles.”1
Celebrities for Jesus outlines that history—from the Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th Centuries to the Big Tents of Billy Graham and Billy Sunday. Evangelist Dwight L. Moody “borrowed proven business principles to ‘sell’ a down-to-earth, plain gospel to thousands gathered.”2 Mordecai Ham, a convert of Sunday's, wanted to work in sales as a young man, but "would later apply a salesman's charisma to saving souls."3
All of those men used what they had learned from capitalistic markets and applied it to ministry. And, to an extent, it makes sense. If you have something you love and want to share (Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross and resurrection), it makes sense that you would want to share it with as many people as possible. Evangelism can be, naturally, another form of selling. In that sense, it’s not evil to learn from the business world.
But what happens when influence flows the other direction—when ministry is what boosts capitalism, when pockets are lined with both tithe and free market principles, when the clothes you are wearing while you give your sermon are available to be purchased by your parishioners?
The Rich Man and Lazarus
As I was writing this piece, the Gospel text for the week in church was the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31, ESV). Here’s 19-26, the verses I want to focus on:
“There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’”
According to Dr. Klyne Snodgrass, who wrote my all-time favorite parable commentary Stories with Intent, the original hearers of this parable would assume the rich man was blessed by God and the poor man was cursed. Snodgrass writes,
Burial was extremely important in the ancient world, and not being buried was viewed as a sign of God’s curse. Lazarus’s burial is not mentioned, but his reception in Abraham’s bosom subverts any thought that he is cursed. His name, which means ‘God helps,’ would as well.”4
So perhaps Jesus’s intention in sharing this parable was to evoke the inverse realities of the kingdom of God, that it was not those striving for worldly success who defined spiritual faithfulness. That wealth was not an indication of faithfulness.
I do not know this celebrity pastor. I only know him by his websites and public persona, and I have not been able to find anything on his websites or within his public persona to suggest a recognition of the Lazaruses of this world.
His Instagram, however, shows “a rich man…clothed in purple and fine linen.” That $1,500 premier admission ticket promised an “intimate leadership dinner,” which assumes a man “who feasted sumptuously every day.” One reading of the church’s media coverage or its own website and social media shows a church groping towards the beauty of the rich man, making promises to become better communicators and more successful humans. And inferred in all of it is wealth. Capitalism is the bedrock of this pastor’s success.
There are houses built on stone and houses built on sand, and tearing down one house on sand doesn’t guarantee the new one will be built on stone. I fully believe this celebrity pastor had the best of intentions, but in creating a new house built on capitalism, he just traded sand for sand, convincing himself and the world it was stone.
Beyond one celebrity pastor
Celebrities for Jesus has story after story of iconoclastic men with fallen empires.
Bill Hybels.
Mark Driscoll.
Carl Lentz.
Etc.
Beaty tracks the common beats to their stories: the zealous and idealistic beginning and the charismatic personality, the quick rise, the growth of ego, the isolation from the congregation, the decline in accountability, and—for some—the dissolution of their ministry due to scandal and infidelity.
These pastors are the extreme abusers of a system built on capitalism and competition; their indiscretions went public and they were held accountable to varying degrees. But I’m not as afraid of them because they are simply that: extreme. What I’m afraid of is pastors like the celebrity pastor from today, those who have not done anything extravagant or extreme to be kicked out but have, slowly, over time, adopted a capitalistic Gospel, one built around serving the 1% so much that they become the 1%.
Beaty writes about this, too. She writes about Carl Lentz justifying his luxury clothing “by noting that it’s simply what other New Yorkers wear. ‘I want to look like the people we’re trying to lead,’ he is quoted as saying. The rationale is that rich people need Jesus too, and to gain credibility in wealthy circles, one needs to dress and act the part.”5
Beaty continues, (emphasis below is mine):
Jesus loved and befriended wealthy people, such as Zacchaeus and Joseph of Arimathea. But Jesus did not become wealthy in order to minister to them. He also loved and befriended many poor people. In fact, he had a special regard for people of lowly, humble means—people left out of the VIP rooms of their day.
Ministers of the gospel should, like Jesus, be free to minister to anyone regardless of their income. The problem with ministering to the 1 percent is that, once you’re among the 1 percent, it can be hard to stay in touch with the 99. Wealth isolates. And when you yourself are wealthy, it’s easy to spend most of your time with other people who are wealthy. In that bubble, you start to think that fancy things—private jets, multiple homes, a closet full of designer clothing, in-home chefs and housekeepers, and $1,980 man purses—are both normal and totally what you need.
For ministry leaders, wealth can create its own rationales.6 (82-83)
Just because a pastor isn’t abusing his congregants doesn’t mean he isn’t selling them a false Gospel. I don’t have answers to fix this, to fix a capitalistic system that rewards financial success, but in my conversation with Katelyn, she argued that “burning down the system” is both naïve and overly idealistic, something I agree with.7 Every economic system is problematic, but to adopt capitalism wholesale can't be the solution.
“I do think that we can resist ways that capitalistic principles warp central Christian ideas,” Katelyn said, “If there is to be success in a church it’s going to be God changing hearts and minds, and that can happen at a large scale, but I tend to think that the work of discipleship is better suited for smaller context, where people can actually know one another. [Discipleship] is something that everybody in the church is equipped and called to participate in.”8
We don’t have solutions, but the conversation needs to happen. How do we detangle the corruption?
A final irony
Remember the church’s website, the one with four buttons, two of which make the celebrity pastor more money? ABOUT US — MESSAGES — SHOP — GIVE. Well, they do have a button you can click if you want to be baptized. I clicked that button, and this is what I got:
The links that led to credit card collection aren’t expired though.
Beaty, Katelyn. Interview. Conducted by Drew Brown, 15 Sep. 2022.
Beaty, Katelyn. Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church. Grand Rapids, Brazos Press, 2022. 27.
Celebrities for Jesus, 28.
Snodgrass, Klyne. Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2018, 425.
Celebrities for Jesus, 82.
Celebrities for Jesus, 82-83.
Beaty, Katelyn. Interview. Conducted by Drew Brown, 15 Sep. 2022.
Beaty, Katelyn. Interview. Conducted by Drew Brown, 15 Sep. 2022.
I have been chewing on similar thoughts lately...though not as organized and eloquently spoke as in your essay.
My conclusion is that I think a lot of us have confused “influence” for “impact” especially with modern day sosh (what I call social media!).
Thanks for this piece.
I’ve been thinking about this for the past year or two. Being in South Korea now, another country influenced and rooted in capitalism, I’m learning more and more about the enmeshment of this economic theory and Christianity and trying to understand how to live counter to my culture while not forsaking it altogether. I want to love my culture and the people in it, but I also want to call them to a better way.