I've said it before and I will, no doubt, say it again... The Celebrity Church must die.
Here's exhibit, oh... #3,465
"TAMPA - Randy and Paula White, the founders and co-pastors of what has been one of the nation's biggest and fastest-growing churches, plan to divorce.
...
They blame two lives going in different directions...
Randy will stay at Without Walls as senior pastor while Paula concentrates on her ministry, which includes a TV show broadcast on several national networks including Black Entertainment Television, conferences, and book and video sales.
She'll remain based in Tampa, with satellite operations in California, New York City and San Antonio.
Church attendance "will take a hit" from the news, Randy predicted. Without Walls reports having 23,000 members.
Its finances also will be affected: Paula's ministry brings in about $50,000 to $80,000 a week, he said. An audit put total church revenues at nearly $40 million last year.
...
Paula, 41, is frequently on the road for her for-profit and nonprofit ventures. One of those, Paula White Enterprises, changed earlier this year when Randy's name was removed as a director, according to Department of State records. In February, she created a new nonprofit, PWM Lifecenter, listing as directors herself, church CFO Norva Carrington, and Rick Hawkins, founding pastor of the Family Praise Center in San Antonio, Texas.
She has made many speaking trips recently to San Antonio and this month purchased a $681,000 home there. She serves as "oversight pastor" to Hawkins' son Dustin, who now leads the church.
Paula also frequently travels to New York City, where she has a Trump Tower condo and leads monthly services at her new Life by Design Empowerment Center.
Randy, 49, has spent several months commuting to Malibu, Calif., where he signed a one-year lease on a beachfront dwelling. He had told his congregation he planned to start another church there, but now says those plans are on hold.
...
The Whites have declined to say what the church pays them.
Michael Chitwood, whose financial services company devised their compensation package, said he recalled they have taken an annual salary as high as $1.5 million collectively, though most years it's closer to $600,000.
They were approved to take up to $3 million collectively, said the president of Chitwood & Chitwood of Tennessee.
Perhaps the most complex part of their divorce, being handled by Holland & Knight law firm, will be dividing up the assets, debts and business interests.
The couple's home on Bayshore Boulevard has an assessed value of $2.22 million. They have a land trust that includes two Tampa houses with assessed values of $144,800 and $257,835. The New York condo is valued at about $3.5 million.
Their multimillion-dollar ministry includes a private jet."
There's too much there to even begin commenting on. But I will say this- we're getting the church we want here in America. These guys aren't stealing anything. We're giving them every cent. There's a certain percentage of us that want to be affiliated with a church whose pastors fly around on a private jet and become household names and live opulent life-styles. Not all of us, but enough to allow folks like the Whites (and literally hundreds of others) to live like Croesus.
And even if some of our megachurch pastors live pretty normal middle-class lifestyles, there's still something crazily outsized about churches not just expanding to other neighborhoods via Video Venues, but actually to whole other states.
At a certain point, I think it's a sign of maturity for a church community to say "that's enough."
I'm not going to put a number on it, because that gets us into the whole mega church vs church planting debate and that's not (exactly) what this is about.
But I will say, if you have no upper limit at all on what you can handle as a pastor, you're in trouble. And if you do have an upper limit, but it's in the same neighborhood as "Bono", you're still in trouble.
Which is why, in some ways, Rob Bell is such a breath of fresh air.
(Say what?)
I know, I know... to some, he's kind of the epitome of the Celebrity Pastor, with his cool "tours" and Nooma vids and all...
But have you ever listened to his podcast?
It kind of sucks...
He explained this once, in one of those sucky podcasts- they put ZERO effort into production value. No musical lead-in or fade out. No silky-tongued announcer tickling your ears. The thing is recorded at about 20kb and often sounds like an AM radio in a lightening storm...
And why?
Because Rob doesn't want you to think that by listening to him preach to his community, you've somehow accomplished something and can take a pass on participating in or learning from your own.
He knows he's a great speaker. But he also knows he's not your pastor. And he's not going to dress it up and make it fancy or even advertise it (for a couple years, it was pretty hard to even find MHBC messages. It came as a surprise to most people that they were podcasting) because he's simply not interested in being the number one podcast on iTunes (ahem...) and in tempting you to think that you might not have anything to learn from those in your own church community who have been called to teach (even if they're not quite as cool as Rob).
And because he explicitly doesn't want you to think that he's your teacher or your pastor, he embodies that by making it so that if you really want to listen to him teach, you kind of have to work at it.
I love that.
It's humble in the best sense of knowing that yes, he's a captivating speaker, but no, he's not interested in taking away anything at all from you learning from your community. That tells me at a base level whose Kingdom Rob is really interested in building.
Books, big church, whatever... That kind of celebrity I can live with.
The others? Well... I actually feel sorry for them. Their lifestyle costs all of us something... but I think ultimately it costs them the most.
