Big personalities have always played a big role in the American church. Some celebrity preachers (like George Whitefield and John Piper) encourage us with their faithfulness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Others (like Charles Finney and Joel Osteen) raise serious concerns. The latter make you wonder if there is any hope for an evangelical movement that fills their churches and buy their books.

Earlier this year I discussed these issues of celebrity evangelicalism and more with my friends and fellow writers Owen Strachan and Justin Taylor. We live in a time when God has evidently blessed the ministry of many godly teachers. For that we can give thanks! But we also know form history that movements dependent on personalities rises and fall with them. So we discuss the differences between speaking at conferences and leading in the local church according to biblical guidelines.

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Collin Hansen serves as vice president for content and editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition, as well as executive director of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He hosts the Gospelbound podcast and has written and contributed to many books, most recently Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation and Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential. He has published with the New York Times and the Washington Post and offered commentary for CNN, Fox News, NPR, BBC, ABC News, and PBS NewsHour. He edited Our Secular Age: Ten Years of Reading and Applying Charles Taylor and The New City Catechism Devotional, among other books. He is an adjunct professor at Beeson Divinity School, where he also co-chairs the advisory board.

Justin Taylor is executive vice president for book publishing and publisher for books at Crossway. He blogs at Between Two Worlds and Evangelical History. You can follow him on Twitter.

Owen Strachan is the author of Reenchanting Humanity: A Theology of Mankind. A systematic theology professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, he is the director of the Center for Public Theology, director of the Residency PhD program, and host of the City of God podcast. You can follow him on Twitter.