When a minister achieves popularity, fame and
success it can be a good thing in the sense that it can open doors to the
message the minister proclaims. It can mean the minister is enabled to reach
far more people. There is the potential for the popularity, fame and success to
be positive.
(By the way, popularity, fame and success are
tremendously appealing. If any minister tells you he/she has absolutely no
interest whatsoever in popularity, fame and success there is a 99.99999 percent
chance you are not being told the truth.)
However, popularity, fame and success can also be incredibly
troublesome for a minister because, at the end of the day, ministers are people.
We are human. (You’ve noticed that already, haven’t you?) This means we are
susceptible to human temptations, just like everyone else.
A powerful temptation for the popular minister is to
want to do and say things that will increase the popularity—or, at least, to
not diminish the popularity. The desire to increase or maintain the popularity
is a very dangerous reality because it is of primary importance that the
minister is obedient, first and foremost, to God. The most essential objective
for the minister is to do and say what is pleasing to God. But Christian
history, common sense and real life experience tells us that sometimes doing
and saying what is pleasing to God will not be what will maintain popularity.
When popularity, fame and success have been achieved
it is incredibly difficult for the minister to ever willingly do anything which
would jeopardize that status. This is likely to mean the minister may alter God’s
truth in order to make it culturally acceptable or just to make it “feel good”
for those who are listening. That is a perilous position for a person whose
primary goal is to do God’s bidding.
Lots of ministers all over the world will be speaking
today. My prayer is that all of us—myself included—will be concerned most of
all with pleasing God and accurately proclaiming the truth of His word.
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