A parallel world of preaching stars?

It's great that Mark Oppenheimer wrote about the Festival of Homiletics for the New York Times recently.

It's a little odd that he never really follows up on his lead—the fact that far more Americans have heard of Joel Osteen and T. D. Jakes than Barbara Brown Taylor and Will Willimon.

Oppenheimer presents mainline preaching as a "parallel world of preaching stars" to its evangelical counterpart, and he gives a useful introduction to some basic divides both theological and methodological (narrative preaching gets a shout-out). But he never really addresses the question of why evangelical preachers become household names while mainliner fame remains a good bit nichier. Yes, the evangelical world is bigger, but not massively so. There are also crucial differences in the nature of church leadership.