Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing this to secure any such provision. For I would rather die than have any one deprive me of my ground for boasting. For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. What then is my reward? Just this: that in my preaching I may make the gospel free of charge, not making full use of my right in the gospel.
—1 Corinthians 9:13-19
If a layman insisted that he be paid for running an eight-week, Sunday-evening study series, his church would consider him a crook. On the other hand, if a pastor abandons his salaried job, several times a year, to be paid a handsome sum for an hour-long speech and a meet-and-greet at a $250 per head, two-day “conference” put on by another church (which he spent his salaried hours preparing for), American evangelical culture considers it normal.
If someone working in the secular sphere spent half of his work hours prepping for and recording a podcast—recruiting guests, researching subjects, finding sponsors—going as far as to turn the empty office down the hall into a makeshift recording studio, his employer would be none too pleased when he found out. In American evangelicalism, though, a pastor treating his commission as a financial safety-net, while turning himself into a media brand, is “reaching the culture.”
If the social media manager at a secular company used the official Facebook account to draw eyeballs to his personal blog, from which he linked people to his online store, where one could buy all manner of print-on-demand products, he wouldn’t make it to the end of the week. Yet, in American evangelical culture, the members of the church, who pay the pastor’s salary, are often expected to condone, and even act as brand ambassadors for, whatever side-hustle he’s involved in.
Thankfully, this is not the modus operandi of the average American Protestant pastor, but it’s the public evangelical culture that he, and we, are steeped in. We have become accustomed to drawing our theology and doctrine, especially our teaching materials, from a system of “Christianity” that has normalized going far beyond what Scripture allots for preachers and teachers, to turn Jesus into a billion-dollar industry that takes much of its cues from the world. Though this system is far from historic practice, is mostly limited to the American market, and has been dominant for barely half a century, it has become so normalized that to be an evangelical Christian who openly rejects all its forms is to risk being labeled an extremist among your own peers.
I’m a guy who was born and raised in Los Angeles, the home of the sketchy, media-driven side-hustle, and I refuse to take part in any flavor of that grift at all, let alone when it’s being done in the name of God. The American Christian media industry exists to turn a buck on convincing you that you need to continually pay for an ever-rotating selection of content that, more often than not, is nowhere near as good as the two millennia of Christian teaching that you can get for free. Though we have normalized it, it is not normal, and it is contra to the instructions of Scripture.
Many years ago I saw a staging of Jesus Christ Superstar in which the merchants in the Temple cleansing scene slowly changed from selling doves and whatnot to Jesus-branded things - frisbees and tshirts thrown to the audience, that sort of thing, including a giant inflatable Jesus. Jesus, of course, destroys the whole thing and then sang the "My temple should be..." to the audience, not the merchants.
I think about that a lot.