 Big arenas, big trendy glasses, Yeezys, t-shirts that go down to your knees, skinny jeans, life lessons instead of sermons, pastors as Christian celebrities instead of servants. Talk about how God wants to bless you, but no mention of his judgment. Everyone gathers to be entertained, but there's no true fruit of real life change. A church more concerned with relevance than with God's revelation. A church more concerned with relatability than their accountability to God. This is celebrity church culture, and it needs to change. In this video, I'm going to share with you the problem with celebrity church culture and what we need to do to change it. Buffers, I want to give a huge shout out to our patrons on Patreon. Thank you to all our gospel partners on Patreon. Your support means that I can continue to make authentic, inspiring, and gospel-centered content. If you want to become a gospel partner, head on over to patreon.com slash daily underscore disciple, and you can become a gold, silver, or bronze tier gospel partner with us. Join their link in bio. Thanks so much. And back to the show. My name is Isaac, and this is the daily disciple where I help you follow Jesus daily. Okay, another video means another story time with Isaac story time. Okay, so we're talking all about celebrity church culture today. So I want to share a story about a time that I went to not only a big church because I'm not, you know, hidden on big churches just because they're big. That's not what we're talking about. But I went to what some would call, you know, a trendy hip, relevant church. Okay, I just want to let you know that I don't my intention of making this video is not for you to feel attacked in any way. If your church has any one of these qualities. What I want to really do is stir up a conversation about discernment and how we go about our, you know, living within a church, living within a community, how that looks, and how we can be Christ focused. So that's my intention here. Okay, so I went to this church with my younger brother. We weren't looking for a new church necessarily, but we were just kind of checking it out. We thought it would be interesting. So we walk in and immediately we notice in this massive room. There's what he called atmospheric mist. So you have this atmospheric mist and it's very, you know, it's a cool thing. You walk in, it's kind of like a theater, some kind of concerts about to go on. All of a sudden, the lights go dark back on. The light strobe lights are gone. You're blinded for a second. You regain your focus. And all of a sudden you see the people on the stage. All of a sudden they're doing covers of, you know, popular songs. They're just jamming out and you're just like, I just woke up. I'm not ready for this. After the opening rock set that opened it up, you have the trendy pastor that walks out, you know, skinny jeans, the cool glasses. He's got a v-neck tee. Hey, everyone, welcome to Thrive Church. Yeah, you know what? That was just a little set piece that we had that we love to have fun at Thrive Church. We're all about having a good time. Later on, they had a life lesson where they talked about, you know, some different life issues and then they talked a little bit about scripture. But overall, the sense when I left was, that was cool. That was cool. Yeah, that was pretty cool. But I thought a little bit more about it and I thought of what I wanted to get out of the church or what maybe we should be wanting to get out of the church. And I think it's less of, and this is what I'm just kind of, you know, digging through and figuring out, I think it's less of that was cool and more of I want to, like I'm looking to Jesus. I'm renewed in my faith and in my sense of trust in God or my repentance towards him or my convictions to stand on my convictions in this world. But was I built up in my faith? Was I actually given the meat? And I don't really think it was there. What is the goal of church? Is it to entertain or is it to point people to Jesus towards repentance, towards faith, towards, you know, reading God's word and being built up in his word and being able to help and encourage others? Like this is what I'm talking about. I want to bring some scripture for you today. Romans 12 to do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. My concern with all this entertainment focus is because not only do we shift our focus off of Jesus in order to just purely entertain in order to just purely focus on the numbers and bringing people in is that we're looking as a church, we're looking more and more like the world. That's something interesting is when you can go into a church and you can see it looks exactly like the world, the way people talk, the way people act. If that, if we're going to continue to be conformed to the world and I see it, I see it because we're more and more pulled towards the, the, you know, implementing these trends or, you know, being the most relevant church or being the most entertaining church, getting the best, you know, musical acts or just making it like a, you know, a light show. All that is making us look that much more like the world and I'm not saying that we can't do that in appropriate the right context kind of way in order to bring glory to God in the right context. But oftentimes it is the focus. It is the focus of the mission of the church and the church is not here to entertain. It is to make disciples. We're looking more and more like the world and the Bible talks about being salt and light. We're actually losing a lot of our saltiness and light. We're becoming dim because we're looking like everything else in the world. When a church can look distinctly different from the world, that gives a great opening and opportunity to really show the people that are coming in. Hey, this is why we're different. It's about Jesus here. It's not about entertainment or trends or being relevant. It's about Jesus. Okay. I'm getting word that we actually have a sponsor for today's episode. So we're going to roll that clip now. Hey, what's up guys? My name is Greg and I'm from Relevant Church. I just want to share with you a little bit about Relevant Church today. Here at Relevant Church, we put the lit into liturgy. When people come to our services, they're surprised at how dope they are. So many of our teens have testified that Jesus used to be famed to them, but now he's Bae. Last week's sermon by our youth pastor, Fanden, definitely passed the vibe check. Yo, last week at our potluck, we had gluten-free vegetarian and vegan options for all the people that actually care about the planet. Our senior pastor, Daryl, just launched a new sermon series called Spilling the Tea About Jesus. Yo, and if you ever get shook, no worries, homie, because we got boomer-free zones on each end of the campus. Yo, we look forward to chilling with you this Sunday at Relevant Church. Okay, I don't know if I approve of that ad, but you know what, whatever. Okay, so my point number two is that Christian leaders are being put on pedestals like celebrities. I want to bring some relevant scripture to this issue of putting Christian leaders on pedestals here from 1 Corinthians 3, 4 to 5. For when one says, I follow Paul and another, I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants, though, from whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each. So in this passage, just talking about the fact that people in that day were putting these different leaders. So, you know, Paul or Apollos or, you know, Peter, putting these Christian leaders on pedestals and I follow this person, what this person said, that's gospel to me and they're my favorite, this kind of thing. When we're doing that, we're actually taking the authority away from the scripture and from God and we're putting it on another person to guide us to where we need to go. It's like if you're walking down the road with a map and all of a sudden, you know, you're kind of looking and you're like, okay, this is good. I know where I'm going. I'm like, I got to get to my destination days and I'm just kind of following the little direction and all of a sudden, oh, hello, that we fellow. I noticed you had a map. I would love that map. I can take you to the destination. No problem whatsoever. I'm okay. I guess that's okay. If you can get me to the destination. I've been down this road many a time, you know, just give me the map and it's a wonderful thing. Just follow me and you'll be getting to where you need. When you give that stranger your map and you decide to follow him, what in fact you're doing is you're placing your trust in him. You're not placing your trust in the map anymore because you don't have the map. You gave the map to him and you're trusting in him to make sure he reads the map and gets you to where you need to go. This is kind of an analogy for us putting our trust in specific Christian leaders and there needs to be a certain level of trust obviously just for some people in order to learn and grow and that kind of thing. But like I said before, when you put your total trust in them to guide you where you need to go when you give them in a sense your Bible and you expect them to, you know, teach you what it means, you're really taking the authority away from the Bible and giving it to the other person and you're putting your trust totally in them instead of Jesus. And so I'm not advocating for some kind of nomadic. Oh, everyone just needs a Bible and you don't listen to anybody else and you just only pray and all this kind of thing. No, obviously we need other people in our lives, shepherds, pastors, mentors that can help us. But the difference is in this case I'm actually keeping my own map and I'm actually following along somebody else that has a map too. And maybe at points they're like, oh yeah, go this way. This is what the map means and that can be helpful. I'm not giving the map or my Bible to this person expecting them to tell me where I need to go by keeping the map in your hand, by keeping your Bible in your hand. You're in fact keeping the power to where it belongs with God. Oh my goodness, there's an announcement. But what could it be? I love announcements, announcements for you and me. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Where did this go? Oh, it's upside down. You can get my new book for free. I want to give it to you. You just got to sign up and become a gold or silver gospel partner on Patreon. If you sign up there, I will send you a book as a gift and I'm excited for you to read this book. I tell a lot of personal stories that I think you'll enjoy as well as verbalizing a lot of the doubts, struggles and questions that young men have and really giving fathers and just parents in general a real understanding of what their child is going through and biblical principles that help guide and really help develop an authentic relationship between parents and kids. So get your free book today. Okay, my third point here is discernment is key. The question to ask ourselves is this, what does it mean to make church about God and not about us? That may seem counterintuitive to some of you. Like, wait, I thought church was about me. I thought it was about getting me what I wanted and myself fulfilled. No, it's actually to worship God and we do that through community. Yeah, there's different benefits of that. You know, we're getting built up. We're getting encouraged. We're growing in our faith. But ultimately all of that is for God and it's directed at God. We trust God. We have faith in God. We worship God. We repent towards God. We have a new vigor and courage that we're going to go out and serve God. It's all about God. So the question that we're asking is, how do we make church and how do we approach church with that attitude of making it about God? Not about entertainment. Not about putting, you know, great communicators on pedestals and pastors because, you know, I really like this guy. This guy's my favorite art. I really like their entertainment. It really makes me feel good. Instead, how can we glorify God the most? How can we worship God the best? How can we teach God's word and receive it, you know, humbly and preach it boldly and having good solid truth but also preaching in love and receiving and loving honor to people? All these questions, it all comes down to at the end of the day, we're reading God's word. We're discerning what it says to us and we're continuing to conform our lives and our communities into the image of Christ. The church is Christ's bride and what God is doing is he's continuing to move the church, His true church to look more and more like Jesus. The church is made up of individuals. So yes, there's never going to be a perfect church. Churches always are going to be struggling and changing because there's always going to be sin presence because there's always going to be people present. But as somebody once said about repentance, this idea of a lifestyle of repentance towards God and worship towards Him, it's not about perfection. It's about direction. So as we're seeing this problem of celebrity church culture, we're seeing this, yeah, the entertainment is, yeah, we're too focused on entertainment. We're too focused on, you know, specific people that are celebrities. Yeah, we need to cut that out and focus more about Jesus, His word, worshiping Him. This is what it's all about. A verse for you here from Psalm 29-2. Ascribe to the Lord the glory He is due to His name. Worship the Lord in holy array. And Psalm 34-3 says, Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name forever. My encouragement for you is this. Look, you're only one person. You're not, you're watching this video now about the problem with, you know, celebrity church culture. Like, how can I fix anything? What's going on? Well, we started ourselves. You know, we start at our hearts. And so if you've been feeling like you've been swayed towards this, oh man, I really like this kind of person and I've been kind of putting my faith in their teaching only and maybe that I've been putting them on a pedestal or maybe I've been too attracted to just pure entertainment and I've grown bored with God's word. Those are some things that we should go towards God with. Hey, God, this is what I'm feeling. This is where my heart is strayed from you. I've lost focus of you and I really want to focus on you in this. And look, we're all growing. So this isn't just a call out to all these people and say, you're a terrible people. You need to, you suck so bad. No, what this, I want this to be is just kind of a loving correction just to say, hey, admonition to say, hey, look, this is where we've strayed. Let's go back to where we once were. Let's go back to our first love. Thanks so much for watching, guys. If you enjoyed this video, give it a like down below. Please share this video with your friends and family if you think they need to see it because I think this is a message that should get out there. I leave a comment down below with some of your thoughts. Once again, this is not attack on any specific person necessarily. I want you to be discerning. And if you want to follow me on Instagram, you can do that at Daily Disciple Ministry. I post there pretty much every day. So you probably want to check it out. Thanks so much for watching, guys. And I'll see you next time. See ya.