It seems that celebrities are all around us, you can’t even flick through the BBC front page without numorous stories of celebrities. And we seem to be obsessed with these famousish people. We are happy to follow people for the most obscure of rationals also. We very much live in the age of the celebrity. A big celebrity now thanks to social media had more swing than the prime minister.

Young children now want to be rich and famous when you ask them what they want for their life. And so you have a generation that seem happy to live their life out on social media and YouTube in the hope of getting followed and the allusion of success. So we have a huge majority in the West of young women posing and giving themselves away on the internet and a generation of young men chasing them and doing any daft craze to get liked.

You may be a parent, encouraging your child to have a YouTube channel and build an insta following. I would just cautiously ask why? Is it for temporal gains or for eternal gains? Will it lead to their long term growth and development of character? Would they be better off investing that time and energy in to further study or a skill or a sport they are passionate about? Rather than the short term validation of likes?

Even now we get such a thing as Christian celebrities! We seem to be happy to encourage this craze. We should remember that this celebrity fascination and proliferation only occured in the 60’s when so many social structures broke down in the West. And I believe with the break down then of religion and the huge falling away in the my own country UK from the traditional Christian faith, people went in search of people to worship and idolise.

So we live in an age where people have replaced Jesus with a pop star or a footballer. The sport I love is in so many ways idolatrous imatations of the Church. The modern stadium a modern day cathedral, the communal singing of old on Sunday mornings across this nation, is now reserved amongst most men for the terraces. The heroes of their week are not the Christian leaders and elders that are showing them a better way, but the heroes on the pitch.

We very much live in a post Christian age in the West and it is time that the Christian realise that the enemy of our faith likes to raise people up in this idolatrous way for us to worship and idolise and want to be like and measure ourselves against – and none of this is Biblical all of it is pulling us away from the standards of Christ and the joy that he wants us to live in, in him. Christian only measure yourself against Christ and where you’ve come from.

Where John and Charles Wesley Christian celebrities of their time? Or where they the radical nation changing leaders of their time?

These brothers changed the UK for generations and then the UK impacted the world. Even Peter Hitchens in his most recent talk to former Australian Prime Minister John Anderson states the need for this hour is a radical reawakening of the Gospel in the west like in the 18th century and he asks where are the John Wesley’s of today as he doesn’t see any – though we have so many Christian celebs and influencers.

They may be influencing the Christian to the things or the theology they are trying to endorse, though they are not taking a nation in the direction of God.

We don’t need an age of celebrity we are desperately in need of leadership. Most young Christian men are crying out for leadership but there is such a void of father’s and mentors in the older generations. They need to wake up to the fact that they are it, that they have to pass on the Godliness they have learnt. That is their purpose, stop believing the lie you have nothing to give or no one wants to listen – older men …. just get out there and boldly serve younger men and you will quickly find the hunger to be mentored.

Many of these men are the children and youth of the 60’s who were the first to be infatuated with colour TV with mass media with the age of revolution in Britain. For many millennials there is a realisation that these counterfeits have to be pulled down and the real established. It is my prayer for the older generations also, to realise that so much of the cultural norms they embraced as youth were actually distractions to take your worship away from the Messiah.

I can see 0 need for celebrities but complete need for Christian leaders.