Superstar Preachers, Pastoral Moral Failure, and the State of the Evangelical Church

There has been a rash of moral failures in high profile pastors in the evangelical world in the past several years. I will not name any names, because I think that would be counterproductive, and not graceful to the families and men who are involved in these failures in ministry, envethough they had very public ministries and very public failures. In a quick count off the top of my head I counted more than ten pastors that I could think of off the top of my head in the last few years. What I would like to address is the current state of the American Pastor and church. What I do believe is that these failures in ministry are not about adultery, or pastoral abuse, or pornography, or alcoholism, although those things are very wrong with terrible consequences, but rather these are symptoms of much deeper issues that the church is facing and must face and come to terms with before we can move forward or ever be a righteous "city on a hill" once again. I want to first address personally what I faced in ministry, and secondly what the Church has taken on in leadership structures that I believe are unbiblical, and should change through the leadership and power of the Holy Spirit

The Current State of Pastoral Ministry

Pastoral ministry is challenging for many reasons, but most of all because you are seeking to lead people into a relationship with Christ. Because I want people to know Christ above all things, I will do whatever it takes unless it is plainly unbiblical, unethical, or immoral. But sometimes those lines can become a little blurred. This has been what I believe has happened to many pastors in my opinion over the last few years. The Slippery Slope starts with small decisions to not do the biblical, moral, or ethical thing. Let me explain.

Pastors do not decide one day that they are going to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from their churches. They decide that they will use their ministry credit card once and then twice for personal items. Pastors don't decide one day that they want to cheat on their wives with the secretary, they make one decision to have a "working lunch" with their personal assistant and then decide to have dinner with her a few months later. A pastor doesn't decide one day that he wants to topple a church with his power structure and have that church crumble under his failures. He decides to change the church bylaws to get "everyone on board with his leadership." A pastor doesn't want to be an alcoholic, but he gradually slides down that slippery slope because he comes home in the evening and wants to "take the edge off" when faced with the unbiblical model of a multi-site megachurch that he is the superstar of. These are the small compromises that I have seen and experienced in my years in ministry. Men In ministry must take measures to be "above reproach."

Let me give you a personal example of this. When we moved to California to become youth pastor we were required to register our car 90 days after the first day it was in California. Of course I waited a few days too long. When asked on the form when the first day the car was in California, I lied that it had been in California less than 90 days to avoid the penalty. I was so convicted that I returned to the DMV to tell them that I had lied and I was there to pay the penalty. The woman at the DMV was shocked that I would even want to return to make things right. She even said I should not worry about

it, but I insisted that lying is not acceptable for me as a Christian and if you let me get away with it now then on another occasion I might also lie. I had to pay a hefty fine, but that was a powerful lesson for me and through that and other lessons I was able to build honesty into my life and ministry. Later on I accidentally used my Church credit card for personal use. I realized it later, and immediately went to our church administrator to pay back what I had spent. Integrity means that what you say, do, and think are all consistent with each other. The slippery slope that we find ourselves on is sometimes very hard to discern in pastoral ministry. The word of God gives us clear parameters, and the Holy Spirit will convict us of sin and righteousness.

Pastor, some questions that might help you avoid these pitfalls are, do you have a living, humble, needy, celebratory, affectionate, meditative, worshipful, loving, and tender, communion with Christ? If not why not? Has the ministry become your identity in Christ? or is Christ alone still your identity? Or do you, as I did often say, "I am not an emotional person." Maybe you need to open your personality up to godly changes. Ask the Lord to make you a tender, emotionally connected person, like Jesus our master. Lord remove our hearts of stone and replace them with hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26)!

The Current State of the Evangelical Church
I would like to address what I also see as systematic problems within the evangelical church in America. There is such a thing as an ungodly unbiblical model of church governance and I believe the evangelical church is flirting with those unbiblical models. Here are the problems we face...

1. We are attracted to the superstar preacher. If he is charismatic and funny and a great preacher we listen and good preachers gain a following quickly in our information rich culture.
2. We are not self feeders anymore. Christians have a hard time because of superstar evangelical preachers. We don't feed ourselves spiritually we look first to those leaders/pastors.
3. We have innovated ourselves to death. Megachurch structures, multi-site campus churches, and entertainment/superstar preacher driven ministries are the byproduct of our over-engineering of church ministry, and I believe are not biblical models and should die with the pastors who plant them.
4. We overlook serious moral character flaws or outright sin (i.e. the "cussing preacher") in pastoral leadership if they are charismatic and entertaining preachers
5. We have forgotten the mandate of leadership in 2 Timothy 2:2 especially in regards to empowering and multiplying new preachers and teachers. Instead those preachers hold on to their pulpits with Kung-Fu grip.
6. The entertainment mode of ministry has so enamored the church in America it is hard to imagine any other way for the average Joe who is not gifted so charismatically to be seen and understood as successful. The average Joe minister may be very successful at making disciples, multiplying leadership, and planting new churches, but he doesn't have 5,000 sermon views a week and so we discount him as unsuccessful. We need a new ministry scorecard.
7. We have forsaken personal holiness for a consumer driven brand of church. Look at the numbers on divorce, pornography usage, alcohol abuse, etc. and it becomes clear the church of Jesus Christ looks exactly like the world. How can we be a mirror of the gospel if in reality we only mirror the world. My brothers and sisters this should not be. Ephesians 5 describes how we should walk in holiness as the church...
“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret.” (Eph.‬ ‭5:1-12‬)

I am so sad about this current trend in pastoral failure and so that is why I am writing to at least bring the topic up and investigate some solutions to systemic problems that I see. Most of all we can pray that God would bring us back to sole devotion to him, his word, and his glorious church and the proper government of that church. The hope that we always have even as fallen pastors is that the immense Grace of God extends even to us who have fallen in ministry. God is sovereign and even when we walk through the fire, even in our brokenness, and our failures, he is there and he will and can restore us. He may not restore us to ministry, but he will forgive and his grace knows no bounds. This however does not mean that we can treat his grace cheaply or take advantage of it. Thank God! That is the good news that is available to every man woman and child. It is also available to those of us who serve the Lord in professional ministry. He has taken our punishment and wrath upon himself that we might be credited with his perfect record of righteousness! Hallelujah!

Recovering from Pornography, Masturbation, and Sexual Sins

Ok, yep we gotta deal with this one...Let's just get it over with...

Pornography
Mastubation
Sexual Sin
Adultery
Lust
Fornication
Homosexuality
Bi-Sexuality

There I said it. The cat is out of the bag. Everyone was thinking it up to this point, and wasn't saying anything. I just had the guts to say it out loud, or at least type it out loud. Pornography, Masturbation and sexual sins are a problem for youth pastors, not just pastors. I had a ministry colleague who was put in charge of the entire youth ministry program of about 400 children and teenagers over the course of a weekend, because it was found out that the lead youth pastor had run off with one of the girl interns. He had been having an affair with her for about a year. The youth pastor had three kids, and ran off with the youth intern! Sadly I was not as shocked as I should have been when I heard this, because I have heard of these type of things so often with pastors and youth pastors. Unfortunately these stories are more common than they should. I maybe a little jaded, that is why it did not surprise me. I am not sure why, but I kind of expect youth pastors and pastors to mess up in this area. That Is why I write this to empower you to come out of the shadows and live in freedom and victory. I want men of God to act like men, and stop this madness. About five years ago I found out about a Bible college friend that was exposed as he was a youth pastor at a large church for having tons of Pornography on his Church computer. He had a computer technician check it out for viruses, and the computer tech told Him, "I know why you have a lot of viruses on your computer, it's because

you look at a lot of Porn." In Bible college several of my hall-mates and I met together every week for accountability in the area of Masturbation, and pornography. At that time the internet was in its infancy stages, and yet we all had trouble with this issue. Years ago I was on a men's retreat and of course this was the theme of the weekend. The speaker asked all the ment to go around and tell the group when they were first exposed to pornography. I thought first of all that is a bold question! Shocking, and personal. I thought,"How could he imagine that every guy has looked at Porn?" We went around the room and every guy from about 80 men shared that they had been exposed to Porn, and the guy who was exposed to Porn latest in life was 18 years old. The average age of first exposure to Porn was around 11 or 12. Not one guy had never been exposed to Pornography, and most had regular contact.

What I want to accomplish in this post is to expose the "secret" sin that we don't talk about and have kept in the dark shadows for far too long. I want to let you know that you are not alone and this is not an issue that we can keep on ignoring and keep quiet anymore. Lets get it out into the open and talk about it! If we keep it in the secret dark corners then that is where it will stay.

I also want in this post to let you know that you can live in victory! I have also like every other guy been exposed to Porn at a very young age, and from that time on until about a year before I got married struggled with addiction in the area of pornography and masturbation. I want you to know that there is VICTORY! I have, by the grace of God, for the last 12 years lived in victory over Pornography, and only on a handful of occasions have I let myself be exposed to it in those last 12 years. IT IS POSSIBLE TO OVERCOME! Looking at pornography and the guilt associated with it do not disqualify you from ministry. If Porn would be a disqualification, then every man would be disqualified. But that does not give us an excuse or license to do it. That would be what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls "Cheap Grace". We can't just throw our hands up in the air and say, "Oh well, I can't control it, I can't live in victory." That is not true! I am a living witness and testimony that it is possible. Also our scriptures are pretty clear that we can and shoud live in consistent victory over sin (Romans 8).

These are by no means an exhaustive list of help for these sexual sins, but I wanted to lay out several ways that we can overcome these pitfalls in the area of sexual temptation. First of all...

1. Talk about it: Talk about it first of all with your wife. For me it was before we were married. I told My future wife that this was a problem for me, but that I had lived in victory over it for about a year. I told her that if she decided to marry me that she would have to be my main accountability.  For me that meant that she had EVERY password and account number that we/I had. Bank accounts, Internet accounts, facebook, twitter, etc. and that all our computers were always set up in a public places, and that I reminded my wife periodically that she needed to check up on what had been viewed on all our computers. This may be a very embarrassing conversation, but it has to happen. Freedom will not happen without honesty, and dialogue with your spouse or a good friend, mentor, discipler, accountability partner, etc. If holiness is such a big issue as God makes it, then do whatever it takes. Drastic sins deserve drastic measures ("If your right eye causes you to sin gauge it out").

2. Be honest with your sexuality: This applies to you and communication with your spouse, but you also have to have someone in your life that you can talk about this with. If you do not then you are only on a destructive pattern. It is a lie to say that we are not sexual beings and that we do not or should not have sex drives. God made sex for our pleasure, and for us to reflect Christ's love for the Church. Please be honest about this and talk with your partner about it. My wife and I recently are talking more and more about what we appreciate and do not appreciate in our sexual lives. We are being honest with each other, and we are growing in great ways in this area. Because of it we are growing to love each other more deeply. You also need to be able to talk honestly with outside people. There are things that guys can share that are just not appropriate in the marriage relationship. Sometimes you need to gripe, sometimes you just need to dump what is in your heart, and sometimes the dark stuff in a man's heart might be too much for your wife. I know that it is sometimes too much for my wife, so I encourage that mentor, discipler, friend, accountability partner, or someone who pushes you on to holiness. Please do just that with each other...Push each other on to holiness...If God does then we should too.

3. Pray and worship often: If you do not have a deep and emotionally connected personal prayer and worship life you will never change in this area. Guys have a problem with emotions. We deny, stuff, or otherwise ignore our emotions. That is a dangerous and problematic cycle that we get ourselves into. If we are not developing and growing a loving, humble, needy, celebratory, affectionate, meditative, worshipful, loving, and tender, communion with Christ then you might struggle in this area. If you can say that you do not have this type of multi-faceted relationship with Christ, and you say its because, "I am not an emotional person" you are wrong...if you believe you are genuinely not an emotional person in your personality, your personality needs to change! You need to pray for The Lord to make you a tender, emotionally connected person, like Jesus was! It is obvious that He was emotionally engaged. It is hard to read the passages where it says that Jesus was, "moved with compassion" without thinking that he was an emotionally engaged saviour. So open your heart and let God work on your compassion quotient. 

If we want to change in this area we have to work hard at it. For me it was not an easy process, but a most awesome, humbling, and holy process,  and I am so excited to be able to say to you today that by the power and grace of God I live in consistent victory over Pornography and sexual sins!!! You can do it! Lean on Christ and the ministry of the Spirit and His Church to give you freedom and victory. 

This article below is about sexual sins and missions, but youth ministry and missions are the same thing. So here is a link to a great article about why people don't enter missions and or ministry because they feel disqualified. Thanks for reading. God bless you as you tackle this difficult and very important area of purity. 

Missions and Masturbation Article

Lord deliver us!!!

Recovering from a battered Ecclesiology: Part 2

In My Previous Post I began to deal with what I call a "Battered Ecclesiology." Many times in ministry I believe many youth pastors, and even pastors/Church staff can have their view of the Church shaken, and even shaken to it's core. I dealt with a few ways our views of Church can be shaken and in that post promised to deal with several other things that can affect someone's view of Church. My desire in this post it twofold. I would like youth pastors to know and understand that they are not alone in feeling that their Ecclesiology (Theology of the Church) has come under attack by being on a church staff. My other purpose here is to challenge the Church at large to become more biblical in practice. Learning to take care of it's pastors, and to encourage them by having great things in place to keep them healthy by growing their high view of Jesus Church. So here we go...

4. Many Youth pastors do not have "real" spiritual authority in the Church only responsibility. A colleague made this statement a while ago to me. It really stuck with me. I have also noticed this. I think this is where the church needs to really change some things. If a youth pastor is a pastor then biblically they are also an "elder/overseer" as the Bible defines it and have real spiritual authority not just a position and responsibility in the Church. We have made professional ministry just that professional. And so the errors we have made lend to a youth pastor becoming jaded because no one really sees him as having real spiritual authority. If he fits the job description of a pastor in your church, that job description should also have built into it the qualifications of an elder found in Titus 1:5-9 and 1 Timothy 3:1-7. If he is a pastor he is an elder also. So make him one. The congregation usually votes a youth pastor into his office when he is hired, so when a youth pastor is voted in then he should also be voted onto the elder board. Let's change this practice and not only grow leaders but empower youth pastors to mature quickly, and be those with real spiritual authority.

5. The hierarchical model of ministry dis-empowers the students that these youth pastors are pouring into to lead the Church. This can also grate on your view of Church as a youth pastor. If over the years you see the students that you pour into not being given greater church spiritual leadership then this can discourage pastors. I have asked many times, "what am I doing this for if my students have no way to become spiritual leaders in the church?" My thought is two fold here. Youth pastor, you can create opportunities where your students can lead. Let mature students lead often and early. It will grow them into mature disciples. Then, Church, please also create opportunities early and often where they can lead not just in the children's and student ministry but with the greater church even letting them preach when possible.  Don't let the hard work of investment that youth pastors are making go without plugging students into substantial spiritual roles in the church.

6. Most Church Staff/Parishioners mistakenly believe that the building that they meet in is the Church. The problem that we face in the modern church is that we kind of need buildings to meet in. That was not how it was in the early church. They met from home to home and so they realized and held to the community, the Ekklesia of God, that met in a particular house. They would greet Ekklesia of God that met in Jerusalem, or in Lydia's home in Phillipi, etc, etc. They understood the most high God as they worshipped Him in the temple courts, and they understood the most nigh God as they assembled in the home where they met. This is difficult today in the modern church to separate the building from the assembly or to understand them separately. But we must, and we must communicate it often! The church is not anyplace we meet or anything we do! If we have preaching or worship or prayer. That does not make us the church! The Ekklesia is people! I had a parishioner approach me many years ago and alerted me that a student was chewing gum in the church, and that I ought to go correct him. I looked around to locate the perpetrator. When I found the the student in question, and saw that it was a student that had professed faith in Christ, I said, "It looks like to me the Church is chewing the gum." This is how we have to continually communicate to people that WE are the church, this will empower and lift up your view of the Church. The Church is and always will be the PEOPLE worldwide from all time that Jesus has "called out" unto Himself by shedding his blood. Keeping this ever before us will always sharpen out Ecclesiology.

This is all for now. Like a good preacher, I will address these other three points in another final post.

7.  Most youth pastors are young when entering ministry and have an underdeveloped Ecclesiology.

8. Christ (not a person in leadership) is the head, cornerstone, and leader of the Church

9. Most youth pastors have the "fun" personality and so the Entertainment attractional church Ecclesiology lends to youth pastor burn out because they carry much of the burden for programming.

Recovery from a battered Ecclesiology

I have known so many former youth ministers (myself included) who have worked for years in ministry and continually had their view of the Church pounded on by working in the modern Church. Let me explain the a few ways most youth pastors (and maybe even many currently in ministry) have their view of the church (Ecclesiology) battered over the years.

1. They live with the constant pressure to draw more students into their ministries. I met a children's minister/youth minister years ago who was responsible for 500 children in his ministry. He told me that his Sr. Pastor asked him every week about how many children they had that particular week. This led him to really question and always be skeptical of his own view of the Church. He said for a long time he only thought they could be a successful church if they were growing. Is this true? of course not, Jesus is Lord of His Church and He grows His church! He usually doesn't grow His Church by stealing the neighbors churches sheep. He grows His Church  usually through conversion growth. So how do we recover from this? First, I will acknowledge that throughout my years in ministry, I have felt the same pressure, and many others do too. Youth pastor, you are not alone, and you are not crazy that pressure truly exists. Secondly we need to call it wrong. It is a misplaced, hurtful and wrong view of Church that the church can only be successful if it is a huge "growing" church. It can be a healthy church if it is growing but not always. We have to be honest. Then we have to admit when we have fallen into that trap of numbers. I used to go to Youth Pastor meetings, seminars, and summits, etc and always 'fib' on my numbers to see the reaction from guys. I usually got a shrug off from guys from larger churches, and would have much in common from guys from smaller churches even though I was usually at larger churches, I had more Ecclesiological commonality with them than the mega-Youth Pastors. How can we recover a deeper more Christological Ecclesiology? By Seeing and savoring Christ. Focus on Christ the Author and perfecter of our faith, and not on numbers.

2. Most Churches are Attractional in Methodology. This seems to speak for itself. The Attractional model of youth ministry and overall Church ministry is failing. If churches can manage to keep the slick programs, and MTV service afloat for more than a few years they are doing good, but mostly they fold with the succession of new leadership. Needless to say we also create more consumer Christians than true disciples with this model. I have been in so many churches and church traditions, from Baptist, Presbyterian, Brethren, Methodist, Evangelical free, Charismatic, etc. and for the most part their ministries were built around the Sunday Morning services. This leads pastors and youth pastors to only value the meeting on Sunday and much of the other stuff, that really makes us church, falls by the wayside. I found that in my own life, I put so much into the Sunday morning activities, I usually had little time, resources, or energy left for anything else. Have you felt this way? If you have you might be a victim of the Attractional model. Admit it, Confess it, and ask for healing from the attraction of the attractional model of ministry. Dear Lord I am attracted to the allure of the attractional model of ministry, I confess this was not in your heart when you envisioned the Church, I ask that you reform my understanding of what your Church was, is, and is meant to be.

3. Most Churches and youth ministries build their methodology around the Preaching/Charisma of the senior pastor or youth pastor (i.e. attractional model). This has engulfed the Church over the past few decades. The Charisma of the lead pastor and the Church staff have kept many Churches afloat. From the inception of the Multi-site, and the superstar preachers of the evangelical world, most churches will not tolerate less than the best most entertaining, funny, and convincing preachers. Now don't get me wrong, I am for excellence in preaching, but there are average guys out there preaching the NOT SO average gospel in the NOT SO average power of the Holy Spirit. However there are many ABOVE average Communicators/Preachers preaching in the average power of the flesh. The superstar/Multi-site Church Ministry approach I believe is hurting the Church. This view that "Preaching makes us the Church" is wrong! We need to adhere to regular gospel centered preaching, but that does not make us the Church. Jesus makes us the Church. As Acts 20:28 says "The Church/Ekklesia which he purchased with his own blood" No preaching, music, small groups, AWANA, Midweek Youth programs, Men's Ministry, Women's Ministry, or any other thing we could "do" as the church makes us the Church. Jesus alone does that; He makes us the Church. The things we "do" as the church are only a response of worship to the faithful savior who has purchased us. In that great sacrificial act HE HAS MADE US the Ekklesia of God. If our view of Church is anything else we need to recover a biblical Ecclesiology.

I will cover these others aspects that batter our ecclesiology in part two of this series...

4. Many Youth pastors do not have "real" spiritual authority in the Church only responsibility

5. The hierarchical model of ministry dis-empowers the students that these youth pastors are pouring into to lead the Church.

6. Most Church Staff/Parishioners mistakenly believe that the building that they meet in is the Church.

7.  Most youth pastors are young when entering ministry and have an underdeveloped Ecclesiology.

8. Christ (not a person in leadership) is the head and leader of the Church