I had the misfortune of attending a G3 Conference in 2023 in Atlanta. My wife and I spent the money on the tickets, the hotel, and the travel, hoping for an experience we never actually had. We hoped we’d get there, be met with open arms by what would feel like a small glimpse of heaven, a large convention of the gathered body of Christ, and be edified by the preaching of godly men who desired nothing more than the glory of Christ in all things.

Instead, what we were confronted with was a highly commercialized circus: promotional materials, a massive bookstore—with many great books, don’t get me wrong—booths selling goods and products, and cliques.

People standing in line for hours just to get to shake the hand of their favorite celebrity speaker or to get them to autograph their book. What did not happen was real, serious fellowship, real corporate worship, or edification that lasted outside the doors.

Now, I’m not saying it was all bad, or that there was no edification at all. In spite of the overall experience, I still met some wonderful, godly people. And the majority of the preaching was still beneficial.

But in the end, what we felt like we were peons in the midst of an elite class who clearly believed they were above the rest of us—we had simply paid admission to observe evangelical royalty.

If you’ve been keeping up with the news, you’re probably aware of the latest scandal at G3. If not, you’re not missing much, so I wouldn’t concern myself with it too much. But it involves accusations that the leadership of G3, and the leadership of Prays Mill Church, which oversees the G3 Conference, essentially threw another G3 speaker, Tom Buck, under the bus over alleged plagiarism.

To make a long story short, Buck was charged with using phrases and wording from commentaries in his sermons without proper attribution. Buck’s church dealt with the issue internally and cleared him of any disqualifying wrongdoing.

But that wasn’t good enough for G3—and G3 allegedly participated in anonymously passing around accusations about Buck, demanding that he be held accountable publicly.

The scandal here isn’t that Buck plagiarized a few Puritans here and there, the scandal is that G3 dismissed its former leader, Josh Buice, over anonymously attacking other church leaders without any accountability for himself. And when he was caught, G3 threw him out for the dogs to rip apart.

Now, G3 has allegedly done exactly the same thing to Tom Buck that they dismissed Josh Buice for doing—and they allegedly did so under the notion that they did not want to have to deal with the aftermath tarnishing G3’s name.

But G3 isn’t really the problem. It’s just one manifestation of the real problem. The real problem is the monster we’ve built as evangelicals—the Evangelical Industrial Complex. The evangelical speaking circuit has become one of the most profitable ways for church leaders to line their pockets.

And it’s replete with recognizable brands, celebrity speakers, favored insiders, competing organizations, and paying spectators… peons.

It’s always the same people at every event. The same names, the same rotation. They promote one another, endorse each other’s books, and they share their credibility with each other across multiple stages. Just like in my article I wrote last week about John Piper, since MacArthur is gone, Piper is being passed around like a football as though he’s the anointed man to fill MacArthur’s shoes.

It doesn’t matter if it’s G3 and their mega-dollar sold-out gatherings with lucre booths lined up from wall to wall, the Southern Baptist Convention filling convention centers and fighting over how big the next city has to be to host their next annual meeting, or Allie Beth Stuckey selling preferred seats for five grand, it’s always the same song and dance.

Show me the money!

Now, many will argue that the $5,000.00 seats are there to make other seating more affordable for the rest. After all, big conferences cost a lot of money.

Okay, fine. But let’s be real, access to a Christian celebrity is clearly being sold as an exclusive luxury experience. The more money you spend, the closer you can be to your favorite celebrity Christian speaker, while the ones who spend less get pushed to the back, the tents outside, or even streamed online on their phones.

The Bible calls this partiality.

And we have a serious obsession with partiality in the conference circuit.

Again, I’m not saying that conferences in and of themselves are sinful or that asking for compensation for your hard work is wrong. It isn’t. But the reality is that we’ve put far too much emphasis on celebrity, and the entire system mimics the world rather than God’s design for the church.

Churches can cooperate. They can meet together for shared causes. They can pool their resources. They can even invite gifted speakers who are knowledgeable and influential and compensate them for their time.

The problem is when we turn all of this into a permanent ecosystem that relies on the regular, competitive nature of various ministries that are, apparently, willing to destroy one another for their own personal gain.

At the end of the day, Christ did not promise to build G3, Passion, Shepcon, the SBC, or any other Conference. Again, that’s not to say that they are inherently bad. But when we lose sight of what Christ did promise—that is, to build his church—then we’ve lost sight of the gospel altogether.

The ordinary Christian life is built around local, faithful fellowships. Conferences can certainly supplement that, but the Church can…and will… survive without the conference circuit. But the conference circuit cannot survive without convincing us otherwise.

Let that sink in.