The Golden Age of the Lead Pastor

(This post might be a bit spicy for some readers. For context, I write this as a former Lead Pastor of a megachurch who currently has numerous Lead Pastor friends.)

A comparison dawned on me recently. There was a time (I'd suggest sometime after the Civil Rights era up until COVID) when being a Lead Pastor in the United States was a bit like being King Louis XIV at Versailles.

It was the golden age of the Lead Pastor.

Like Louis XIV, who ruled France with unchecked authority and divine justification, a number of Lead Pastors during this era functioned as benevolent monarchs of their own miniature kingdoms. The church revolved around their teaching, vision, and leadership. The sermon was the main event. The building was often a temple to their influence. And the staff structure was a hierarchy built to reinforce that singular voice.

In both cases (Versailles and the modern megachurch), immense power and prestige were possible only because the conditions allowed it. Louis XIV was king at the right time. A time when monarchs could fund wars, build palaces, and proclaim, “L’État, c’est moi” (the state is me) without anyone blinking too hard. While the idea that Louis XIV actually said that statement is likely apocryphal, it nonetheless symbolizes the idea of absolute monarchy. Louis XIV was able to do things that few monarchs before or after him ever could.

But that moment passed.

I had the chance to tour Versailles in person a few years ago, and I remember thinking that there would likely never be anything else created like this again. The palace and the surrounding areas are unlike anything I'd ever seen.

But history teaches us that Louis XVI (several kings later) was still playing king while the world was fundamentally shifting. And the French Revolution made sure he wouldn’t keep his head.

The golden age of the monarch ended not because monarchs became less ambitious, but because the people no longer accepted that kind of top-down power. The world changed. The system cracked. And once the spell was broken, there was no going back. There are still kings today, but far fewer of them (and most of them have checks and balances around them). In addition, there will always be tyrants who seek this level of power (comparable to that of Louis XIV), but they are the outliers.

A similar shift is happening in the Church.

For decades, Lead Pastors were seen as spiritual celebrities. Their authority was rarely questioned. Their theology shaped entire communities. But then came the wave of scandals, the fall of Christian celebrities, and the exposure of systems that protected the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable. Famed Pastor John MacArthur recently passed away, who was an example of all of this.

Not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted everyone's routine of attending church each week. The pandemic didn’t create the cracks; it just accelerated things. When church buildings closed and congregations scattered, many people realized their faith had been far more dependent on the charisma of one person than they were comfortable admitting.

All that to say, I believe the golden age of the Lead Pastor is over.

I'm not predicting the demise of the local church or the end of the role of pastor. I'm merely suggesting it would be inaccurate to assume the future of the church will be more of the same. Instead of mourning this, maybe we should breathe a sigh of relief. Because the model we’ve inherited of one person with a microphone standing above a room of passive listeners leans more toward Christendom (and I say that as the one who often has the microphone). It tends to have more in common with Louis XIV than with Jesus of Nazareth.

Rather than moving on to a new season, many Christians are trying to go back and restore what once was (I'm looking at you Mark Driscoll). But trying to rebuild the same model today is as naïve as Louis XVI thinking he could rule France like his great-grandfather. You’ll end up missing the signs of change and, quite possibly, lose your (metaphorical) head in the process.

This isn't intended to villainize the local church or its pastors. I know personally the ways in which many of them deeply love their congregation and desire to serve them. I regularly get invited to speak in local church settings, and I believe they can still be environments for growth, community, and beauty.

But I do think it's time to rethink our assumptions about spiritual authority. It’s time to flatten the stage and rediscover the priesthood of all believers. It's time to level the playing field and stop assuming the Church needs a king. The Spirit moves through the whole body, not just the one with the title.

It's time for some imagination.

Something remarkable is happening right now. It's something we haven’t seen in 1700 years. When Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the 4th century, the church transitioned from being a grassroots movement of people to an institution rooted in buildings and power structures. Prior to this, followers of Jesus gathered in homes, courtyards, or wherever they could find space. Church was the people, not a place. This is why you see many New Testament letters begin with something like this: "I am writing to God's church in Corinth and to all of his holy people throughout Greece" (2 Corinthians 1:1).

But for most of Christian history since Constantine, the physical church building has become synonymous with the church itself. We say things like "I'm going to church" (which would have made no sense to the early Christians).

But here's the crazy part... today, across the globe, there are now more followers of Jesus gathering without any formal church buildings (sometimes referred to as the "underground church") than there are people attending churches "above ground." For the first time in 1700 years, we've returned to pre-Christendom realities. The church is remembering itself as a people rather than a place.

The underground church isn’t a fringe movement. It's leading the way for the future of the church. And I suspect we will see more and more of this in the United States in the years to come.

It's time for us to embrace this new season and adjust accordingly. We don’t need to build new versions of Versailles. We need to reclaim the simplicity of a shared meal at a table.

The Apostle Peter writes that "You are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light" (1 Peter 2:9).