Leith Anderson's Cult of Personality

I read from page 150 to 200 today in Jesus--and had occasion to swing by Wooddale.  The three gigantic parking lots were mostly deserted; the bookstore was open.  A rosy grandmotherly woman in appliquéd sweater assists me.  Answering my questions, she explains that while [millionaire, multi-residenced, globetrotting] Leith Anderson is now Pastor Emeritus and no longer preachers, a committee continues its 2-3 year project of finding his permanent replacement.

Anderson is intensely status-conscious, luxuriating in his national political role.  The day after Pres. Obama revealed his new position on marriage equality, Wooddale's pastor-in-dotage issued his first tweet in a week:  1M + 1W = 1marriage.  There will be no further discussion, the great one decrees.

Anderson is treated like a US senator at Wooddale, traveling within a two-yard force-field.  To be approached by him, in the presence of others, is to have one's own status elevated.

In Jesus--he devotes considerable attention to the hypocrisy prevailing within first century religious institutions, where the rich purchased status-acknowledgement.  The messiah came to overturn all of that--and to set a standard for just and equal social treatment, supposedly.

The bookstore woman mentions Pastor Anderson did preach at a recent funeral here.  A high-status, longtime member of the church died.  Wooddale employs 15 full-time ministers not including Anderson.  To have Anderson officiate at one's funeral is perceived, within the flock, as the culminating endorsement of a life well lived.  (Accountability isn't needed, mind you, as Anderson is morally pure.) In a pamphlet:

...Woodale is associated with several ministry organizations, including the Baptist General Conference, Bethel University, the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference (CCCC), the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and Transform Minnesota.

Anderson spearheads Wooddale's aggressive cultural assertion, as if from a position of self-confidence:  A place this righteous, learned, pious and well-dressed insists upon its interpretive monopoly.  Preaching happens at Wooddale, but the church also spends a lot of time telling you how to understand the experience.

The bookstore gives out a professionally-printed, multi-color study guide, to accompany Jesus.  The guide assumes the reader lacks any critical faculty--one can only respond to the words of Wooddale's Dear Leader with submission and supplication.  If you consider the book rubbish-laden, its lofty author can't be reached by people of your status:  good day!