Jesus Cropped from the Picture

Jesus Cropped from the Picture

The Pragmatic Method altered these expectations. The pastor went from being a trusted shepherd to a celebrity communicator .

Frontier Revivalism (see Chapter 13) had propagated the idea that effective communication was necessary to yield the most converts, and by the 1970s, five decades of Hollywood’s star-making industry had made the celebrity a central fixture of American life. The proliferation of television and other media advertising, along with the Marketing Concept , made it natural to assume that a church needed an attractive, articulate, and charismatic leader if their church was going to be healthy (as measured by attendance). A few years ago, I witnessed the manifestation of this misguided thinking during a congregational meeting to consider a pastoral candidate. One man asked for the microphone and quoted Barna’s research on the need to have a world-class communicator . Apparently having no need to spare the feelings of the highly-qualified candidate standing in front of the congregation, the man proceeded to lament why a more charismatic speaker could not be found. He said, “After all, we live in Burbank, the media capital of the world. Couldn’t we find someone better to speak to this culture?” As many people nodded their heads in agreement, his ridiculous assumptions went unchallenged. Nostalgic Era Because the Pragmatic Method values “what works for me,” it is difficult to define a specific nostalgic era. History holds little interest to Pragmatics unless it has some direct relevance to their personal lives, so very few will make reference to the Reformation or other periods of

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