Our Misguided Worship of The Pastor
Let's Go Crazy
The climax of the classic 1980”s film, Purple Rain, has a
jam-packed Minneapolis nightclub resolving into pseudo-worship
as The Kid, the enigmatic androgynous performer played by
Prince, the enigmatic androgynous superstar upon whose life the
film is allegedly based, warbles through the indecipherable
lyrics of the film’s title track. For most of Prince’s early
career, I assumed he was wise. I assumed I was the one behind
the curve and that his song lyrics merited study and scrutiny
and, yes, research in order to divine their truth and hidden
meaning. Thirty plus years later, I’ve decided Prince was just
winging it. That he had no real skill with lyrics beyond
crafting an interesting and memorable hook. Prince was strong
conceptually, If I Was Your Girlfriend bordered on profound, but
the lyrics to Purple Rain were, in the final analysis,
meaningless. I only want to see you laughing in the purple rain…
What the hell does that mean? What gave his lyrics weighty
significance was the smoke and mirrors Prince excelled at
projecting to his audience; so enthralled were we by his
performance that we just assumed the actual writing had depth it
never had. The brilliant staging of the final club scene in the
film, of crowds of partiers cooled to stoic resolve and swaying
to the guitar strums, told us, “this guy is a genius.” And, in
many ways, Prince is a genius. But, at the end of the day, we,
or at least I, imbued his work with meaning and substance it
never had. He was just winging it.
It’s no accident that this operatic moment of the film evokes an
atmosphere of worship. The scene only works because it resonates
with our very real nascent worship experiences in the African
American church. Experiences which, for many of us, seem
increasingly distant as our churches today seem increasingly
less relevant and less in touch with reality. Too many of us
find comfort in ritual, in the resonance of a worship experience
rather than in actual worship. Some of us have grown up, in
recent generations, having never known the actual worship
experience most of our churches are simply emulating without
actually experiencing it. We’re just cast members of Purple
Rain, swaying on cue because that’s what we saw someone do once.
That’s what we remembered growing up. And we continue to assume
the pastor is a kind of mystic, magical leprechaun—all-wise and
all-knowing—and if we don’t get his teaching, it’s somehow our
own fault.
I have long ago outgrown the capacity to see the church pastor
as anything more or less than a human man who, in the best case,
is doing his best to support and grow a local community. Too
often, we see the worst case, the ego, the greed and the
pandering to ignorance, our pastors allowing if not encouraging
us to worship them instead of God while making their investment
in 1965 because that’s where their own economic security lies.
Education and enlightenment works against a black pastor’s
economic interest because, ultimately, these things threaten his
job security. The more enlightened the congregation becomes, the
less magically delicious the pastor seems. Our pastors protect
themselves by projecting mystery and terror—the Wizard of Oz or
Prince with all that smoke. They rely on our ignorance and
laziness: so long as we do not study, do not read for ourselves,
we are reliant upon them to pierce for us the mysteries of faith
and truth. But, neither faith nor truth is actually a mystery at
all and we don’t need some shaman to decipher these things for
us. The bible says the God is a rewarded of those who diligently
seek Him [Hebrews 11:6].
Kingdom Of The Cult
In the run-up to the 2011 Christmas holiday, I was made aware of
a church pastor who, after browbeating his congregation to raise
$100,000 by December 15th—demanding they forego family travel
plans and gifts—instead used the money (less than $30k came in),
claimed to have been for a down payment on a building project,
to rent a local arena for a glittery Christmas show, complete
with the pastor himself dressed as Santa Claus (no, I am not
making this up) and tossing cheesy “gifts: to his adoring
faithful. The church, struggling with debt, paid the pastor a
five-figure Christmas bonus and green-lit a purposeless,
over-the-top extravaganza at the arena which starred, yes, the
pastor. The pageant opened with the pastor’s voice eking out of
the darkness as smoke billowed up from the stage, and the pastor
being lowered in from the rafters on one of those Michael
Jackson cherry pickers as the band struck up the music and the
choir began to sing. I remember hearing this account firsthand
from persons at this debacle and wondering, how stupid are the
people following this man? Thankfully, this pastor’s ridiculous
reputation has now been salvaged by “Bishop”
Eddie Long, who was actually crowned “King” last week to the
cheers of his adoring faithful. It is a real struggle, for me,
to actually believe this stuff is going on. It’s an even greater
struggle for me to believe people are gullible and ignorant
enough to sit there, cheering like monkeys, while it does. My
ire, usually directed at black pastors (after all, I’m not
hearing any prominent or even local black pastors denouncing
this behavior), is now targeting Ignorant Church Folk. Write
this down someplace: These People Are Not Christians. They do
not worship Christ. They worship their pastor. And he allows it,
making him a liar and a phony. If you’re in one of these
churches, if you see this kind of idolatry going on, and you
just sit and hold your peace, you’re just as big an idiot as
they are, and you deserve the certain condemnation you will most
certainly receive.
Too many of our churches are actually cults if personality. The
unfathomable egoist Eddie Long now borders on becoming a false
prophet by
allowing his congregation to proclaim him a “king.” This is antichrist behavior. The worship of the pastor
offends God [Exodus 20:3]. And the only way people like this
prosper is by our ignorance and submission. By our laziness. By
our refusal to seek God for ourselves but to rather sit around
on our fat behind allowing Balaam to tell us Who God is.
At the end of the day, when the music stops and the smoke
machines are turned off, Prince is just a short guy with a
woman’s haircut. That doesn’t make him a less brilliant
performer, but he is not magical or even mysterious. He’s a
human man named Prince Nelson Rogers who has made a fortune
convincing you he’s on the inside track to relevance and truth.
This is the kind of nonsense we absolutely must outgrow if the
black church in America is ever to have true meaning and
relevance. The pastor is to be respected, reasonably supported,
and trusted. But he is not a prophet. If he claims he is, he is
lying or lost and you need to hit the door fast as you can.
There is no biblical model for the pastor-as-prophet. He was a
guy. An overseer. A human man, flawed as Peter was, as Paul
admittedly was. Neither man levitated or performed magical
feats. They got some things right, some things wrong. They were,
in many ways, first among equals.
The church needs to find its way out of this heresy of
pastor-worship and our emulation of the bygone years and
reconnect to God in a meaningful and honest worship experience.
At the end of the day, the lyrics really do matter.
Christopher J. Priest
20 May 2012
editor@praisenet.org
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