Elvis as preacher/Preacher as Elvis

Elvis Presley would have turned 75 on January 8.  His former wife said that if he were alive today he might be a preacher:

<blockquote>“I think Elvis would always be a part of music, no matter what,” Priscilla Presley told TODAY’s Matt Lauer Friday from the King’s Graceland home in Memphis. “It was in his blood. I don’t know if he’d be doing rock ’n’ roll right now; I think that maybe he’d be going into gospel. Maybe even preaching a little bit. He loved to teach and loved the Bible. He always would have been dedicated to his music, that’s for sure.</blockquote>

This tells us something not just about Elvis–of whom I count myself as a fan–but of at least a certain type of preacher. There is something of Elvis in a lot of celebrity, television, and megachurch preachers, is there not? A big element of performance, getting up before all those people and trying to connect with them by the force of his expressive personality. Do you regular pastors feel this, or feel you need to resist this? I suppose getting up in a pulpit is sort of like putting on an act, putting on an office that you as a mere mortal are privileged to fill. I would think, though, that you are not expressing yourself, as Elvis did so well, but rather expressing Christ, whose Word you are proclaiming.

What can we learn about vocation from the thought of Elvis as preacher?

via Priscilla Presley: Elvis would be preaching now – TODAY Entertainment.