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Beth Moore Denounces Her Generation's Role in 'Christian Celebrity Culture'

Michael Foust

Author and speaker Beth Moore says in a new social media post that she regrets her generation's introduction of "Christian celebrity culture" and wants younger believers to "be filled with his Spirit," not with their own ego.

Traveling and writing, she says, was difficult.

"I want to say to you if some of us made it look easy, forgive us. It never was," she wrote in a lengthy Twitter thread. "We had struggles at home, struggles abroad. We have failed as often as we could have succeeded."

Her generation, she wrote, "did the younger generation(s) a disservice."

"By and large, I think my generation was the introduction to the platform culture. Definitely to the Christian celebrity culture, even if the last thing many of us were after was celebrity. Throngs of us really did just want people to know Jesus & how to get to know him through Bible study & prayer," Moore wrote. "This thread is not to get into all that's gone wrong in platforming and branding. Ain't got that much time this morning. I want to zero in on a specific part of it. I think we made speaking and teaching and traveling, and certainly, book publishing looks glamorous."

Her message in the Twitter thread, she wrote, was for "younger Christian servants, speakers, teachers or authors."

"Publishing a book is terrifying. The anxiety can eat up your intestines," she wrote. "The criticism has been ever with us like a codependent frenemy that would never take a cigarette break. We have had no-shows. Then big shows. Been no-shows again. Then few-shows. We put our whole heart into books/articles/works that got little notice or maybe just criticism. We've said and written things that now sound so stupid to us, we shake our own heads.

"And here is what I'd like to quote to you. A little phrase that Paul uses in Philippians about opposition & co-struggling. 'and this is from God' (see Phil 1:27-30). I believe his way of working, of appointing or allowing us to continually face difficulties and disappointments and opposition, in no small part for our deliverance. It is a gift. And unwanted gift often. But a gift nevertheless.

"... What God wants for Jesus' followers is for us to be filled with his Spirit, not with ourselves. God is so kind & generous to appoint a good many celebrations, and even some dreams that seem to come true. But his objective with us is not to make us successful but to make us reliant. He wants observers to see that a big God has been at work in us, not a big ego."

Moore said she has "lived such an adventure with the Lord" and believes more adventures lie ahead.

"But it will always be a struggle. It will always be a battle with the unseen as well as seen," she wrote. "And it will always be a battle with our own flesh and our own egos. There will always be criticism. There will always be offerings we make that will be rejected. Hang in there, you servants of the Lord. 'this is from God': our humility. You are in good company, baffled saints, disappointed saints, struggling saints, saints on the mountaintop, saints in the depths. God is for you. And sometimes we don't know what that disappointment did for us until years [after]. Ride it out. Keep going. Every single one of our stories, if we are in Jesus, ends magnificently. And this is from God."

Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Terry Wyatt/Stringer

Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.