Off the top of my head, I can think of 8 "megachurch…

“Off the top of my head, I can think of 8 "megachurch pastors" (dislike term) who turned down raises offered by elders so they could pay their staffs more.

You may say, "WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? I'VE NEVER HEARD OF THEM!"

That's my point. A huge publication isn't doing a #1 most downloaded podcast on them and Discovery+ isn't working on a "quietly faithful pastors" documentary.

But they're everywhere (not just megachurch pastors)

Don’t let sensationalistic clicks-and-views driven journalism convince you that negative outliers are the norm.”

@josh_howerton from a twitter thread about megachurch pastors

So, just to be transparent, I’m a member of a megachurch (a church with over 2000 people in weekly attendance.) My pastor doesn’t wear Yeezy’s, he’s not selling merch, and I can’t remember him ever promoting a book he wrote. His IG is full of pictures of his kids and the occasional bird photo. He's a caring man with a good heart and I learn a lot from him constantly.

Generally, I’m trying to be careful not to take an isolated incident or topic and apply it as the norm across a broad category. It always makes me bristle when you listen to a pundit, be it someone from the Daily Wire or the Young Turks, in reacting to a story say something “See, these republicans are all the same” or “See, this is the liberal playbook, they’re all the same.” Ugh, can we stop doing that?

I’m not saying we don’t call out abuse, far from it. If a church, or any organization really, has turned a blind eye to abuse or tried to cover it up we should expose and in some cases bolt the doors closed and leave. I’m just trying to do my best to look at things honestly and in this case, not rely on shocking outliers to tell the story of a thousand churches working in silence.