I've been thinking a little bit about some of our modern Christian "celebrities". Most specifically about Rob Bell and the controversy over his new book. And about John Piper, and other big church leaders. Big churches lend themselves to celebrity, because there is one (or few) leaders, and in some cases, tens of thousands of followers. When you are a celebrity, you start to do things simply because it will get noticed. Everything you do is meant to impact others. I don't think that's bad necessarily, it just comes with the territory. These guys lead large congregations, speak at conferences and write books and such, so that all of us can be let in on what God has shown them. That's good, too. But sometimes I think it might be a bit much. John Piper tweeted something about Bell, and that was completely meant to be noticed by people. However this all shakes out, because there are "important" people that we should listen to, they are saying things they think we should listen to.
Where I'm going with all this is, wouldn't the church be better served to be small? The vast majority of us have little to no voice, because certain people get to do the speaking for us. In some cases they maybe have earned that right, and God has put them there. But in some cases they have not. It's natural for us to want to have a large sphere of influence, but when our lives become about "being seen" and "honoured", I think we'd be better off without that temptation, especially on the supersized scale we see nowadays.
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