Priest Idol

Just came across this interview. Here's the introduction to orient you to it.

How many American priests end up in their own reality show on British television? James McCaskill did just that when he moved last year from Pittsburgh to the town of Lundwood in England's South Yorkshire district. He was brought in to revitalize a church whose congregation had dropped below ten, and his turnaround efforts were filmed for one year by a camera crew. The results will air—under the name Priest Idol—in a three-part series in November on the UK's Channel 4. Nate Anderson sat down with McCaskill on a recent visit to the U.S. to talk about ministry and media.

I have quite a mixture of feelings regarding this idea. Number 1 is the intrusion of a camera crew into the work of a pastor. How on earth could people open up with the minister and really share their lives with a camera crew present?

And talk about being in a fishbowl:

The worst aspect of it was that I did feel a lot of pressure from the film crew to "film this tomorrow," and I was trying to earn the trust of people in the congregation who didn't want things to happen so fast, and I had the archdeacon tell me, "You need to make this happen and that happen," and all this is being filmed, and they're all watching me, and I'm supposed to perform and produce and succeed—which really overwhelmed me at times. There was a point, after I'd been there about three months, I started having a panic, thinking, "We're not going to have anything to show; we're not going to have anything to make good TV." Which sounds terrible—a minister of the church saying that he's worried about making good TV.

This sounds like such a bizarre experiment! What are your thoughts?
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