Why do some pastors embrace the role of celebrity, and does it hurt prospective believers interested in the church?

Allie Beth Stuckey sat down with Ben Kirby, the creator of the PreachersNSneakers Instagram account, to discuss the phenomenon of celebrity pastors who definitely dress the part.

“I just noticed that there was a whole subculture of pastors, preachers, [and] worship leaders that were wearing extremely expensive or rare or valuable sneakers, streetwear, belts, jackets, that kind of thing,” Kirby says.

On his Instagram account, Kirby posts pictures of the preachers in these expensive clothes, and he superimposes the price tag and brand of the clothing on the photo. The account has over 330,000 followers.

Pastors like Mike Todd are frequently featured on the account wearing sneakers that are worth thousands of dollars.

“This modern celebrity church culture/idea cares a lot about entertainment, aesthetics, being attractive and catchy. All things that just are not true components of what it means to be a Christian or what the calling is of being an actual pastor,” Kirby says.

“And so,” he continues, “the sneakers are a very surface level thing and come to find out there’s much deeper things there.”

Rather than show how much the pastors care about their religion by promoting themselves so shamelessly, Kirby says it shows how little they actually care.

“Do you actually care about shepherding the souls of the people that go to your church or are you just trying to build a brand for yourself? Are you trying to sell books? Sell tickets to conferences?” He asks.

Stuckey and Kirby both believe there’s an air of humility and modesty that a preacher should have surrounding him instead of Instagram likes.

“If the point of being a pastor is shepherding, pointing people to Christ, pointing people to God’s glory,” Stuckey says, “then we would want to do everything that we possibly can to don ourselves with humility.”

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