Recently another scandal has rocked the Body of Christ. A high-profile mega church pastor has resigned after the exposure of his behavior. It does seem that mega pastors are falling like dominoes. I don’t know the man, so I can’t comment on him, and I won’t even mention his name, because it’s not just an issue about that man and his sin but rather it is symptomatic of the much bigger problem inherent within the church and especially with mega churches.
We Christians readily discern that the world is about to explode, but we can’t readily discern that the market-driven, personality-driven American church is about to explode (or rather implode). Maybe non-Christian critics are right. Maybe we are as dumb as rocks.
The world goes madly after its celebrities––ever approving their drug addictions, their torrid lives, their flaunting of perversions, and all their other excesses. Isn’t it true, however, that many Christians are equally as madly and mindlessly following their rock-star pastors and celebrity leaders? How many mega pastors have been exposed for their adulteries and other corruptions? Like Dylan’s song (pardon my age), How many times must we go through this until we confess that too many pastors have fallen? The answer, however, isn’t blowing in the wind …unless by wind we mean the Holy Spirit.
From reading comments of some of the church members and other Christians, there is an outpouring of love and support for the pastor––Sympathy and trust abounding (quoting another song from the hippie era.)
In a previous blog I talked about fallen pastors and how we should show love and support them. But I don’t know. Anymore it seems we are being way too willing to hide our heads in the sand and pretend this is an obscure and rare occurrence. Temptations abound for all of us, and mega pastors have mega temptations. The problem is, though, that in many cases these pastors are more concerned to protect their reputations (and their incomes) than they are to protect the sheep. Have any of them self-confessed without being forced to? Have any of them willingly come forward and in self-disclosure confessed they are not fit to be pastors and resigned out of concern for God’s honor and for the protection of the flock?
Woe to the false shepherds
How many times in the Bible are those words repeated? Whether this man is a false shepherd or not is for others who know him to decide. I rather believe he is like so many of us who have struggled with, or who are struggling with, the temptations and sins that so easily beset us. Nevertheless, the mega system itself breeds this on a scale that is out of control. When there is so much money at stake, when there is so much debt, so much overhead and bureaucracy to maintain–so many jobs at stake–the temptation for pastors and church boards is to overlook or to minimize so-called “indiscretions”. For a leader to have an affair with a church member is not an indiscretion; it is a cancer that, no matter how prosperous the church is as an organization, if not dealt with will destroy the church as a spiritually relevant body.
Doesn’t the sin of Achan (Joshua 7:1) tell us this? It was just a little gold …just a few trifles. Yet it cost the Israelites a serious defeat. So serious was the sin in God’s sight that it called for––not the dismissal of a leader (with a severance package)––but the stoning of the man and of his entire family.
The Lord may have changed the sentence after Calvary, but I don’t think He has changed his mind. And where are the women? Have they been dis-fellowshipped or otherwise disciplined? I haven’t read about it, but I imagine they have been to some extent. Or are they merely victims of the pastor’s overwhelming personality and charm? We cannot presume that Bathsheba was an innocent party to the deal with David. Yet God is in the restoration business …so much so that He didn’t kill David. Plus the fact that Bathsheba is among the lineage (along with Rahab) that brought us the Son of God.
The Muslims have one thing right. God is great.
His Biz 