Common Traits Of The Fallen Pastor, Part 1: Poor Father Relationship

Before I get to my epilogue (of sorts), I want to do this short series on common traits of the fallen pastor.

Since I started blogging, I've talked to and emailed a decent number of pastors who, like me, fell because of moral issues. I've read other online articles about how to avoid moral sin in the pastorate and warning signs, etc. However, most of these articles were written by men who hadn't fallen or didn't know a fallen pastor. That's not to say there wasn't any truth to those articles, but I hope I can offer a little more insight.

Just a preamble to this series - I'm listing things that seem to be common traits. Of course, that doesn't mean they exist in all fallen pastors. But they did seem to be a common thread in discussions. This isn't a scientific study, by any stretch of the imagination.

Also, none of these traits are an excuse for sin. If I've mentioned that once on this blog, I've said it a thousand times. There is no license for sin. Are there factors that lead us there? Yes. And it can be helpful to notice certain things that could lead to a fall.

I'd like to discuss the common trait of a poor relationship with the fallen pastor's father. Fathers have a huge influence on pastors.

I remember the first day of seminary orientation, they asked us a few questions about our background. One of the questions they asked was, "How many of you have fathers who were pastors?" Most of the hands in the room went up. The questioner said, "75% of pastors have a father who was also a pastor. I didn't raise my hand that day.

I had always had a rocky relationship with my dad. I think it's because we were too much alike. He had a great relationship with my sister. They stayed up late at night going over the Bible and studying together. He and I rarely had much to say to each other.

He took us to church, was a deacon once, and kept to himself a lot. He worked hard, traveled a lot, and gave us a nice place to live. But we never really bonded during my life.

I smarted off a lot to him. I wasn't a bad kid, just had a smart mouth. When I was 15, I suppose I had smarted off to him for the last time. He looked at my mother and said, "I'm done with him, you raise him. He's yours." He was serious. He shut me out after that.

My sister achieved academically better than I did and I always felt (whether it was right or not, I'll never know, but it's how I felt) that Dad always preferred my sister over me. I suppose if I had to deal with me and my smart mouth, I would have preferred my sister too.

After I went away to college, my relationship with my father got a little better. We would talk on the phone and I'd ask for life advice. When I made the decision to go to seminary, he got critical of me again. I'll never understand that. It may not have been about seminary. Maybe he was dealing with his own life issues. He had dealt with a lifetime of anxiety himself.

I remember once, he came to visit Angelica and me at seminary. I jogged out to meet him and Mom at their car and the first thing he said to me was, "You're getting a little fat, aren't you?" This was coming from a man who was 150 pounds overweight himself. I rue that I rarely got praise from him. I never heard him tell me he was proud of me.

I had a counselor tell me once that he was subconsciously competing with me. Or whatever. I can see part of that being true. Whatever the problem was, it only got worse.

Even when I got ordained, or when he came to hear me preach, he'd unload on me. Not many kind words, but a lot of underhanded criticism.

He had a fall of his own. He and my mother divorced and I was angry. He basically kicked her out of the house. I judged him. Harshly. Something, I've learned, is wrong. I shut him out of my life completely for a period of about two years.

At the end of that two years, I started becoming convicted about it. I started talking to him a little, started trying to forge some sort of relationship. But it was too late. He died in an accident. I stood there, over his hospital bed while he was on life support realizing that I had done something horrible, but I didn't quite know what it was right then.

Later, I realized what it was. I had failed to love him for who he was instead of looking past what he had done.

Other fallen pastors seem to have a similar problem with their fathers. I don't know how much it adds to our sin later in life, but it has a significant impact upon who we are as adults.

There's a lot to be learned here, I think. First, if you're a father, make it work with your children. Lay aside any petty disagreements and humble yourself before them. Show them your vulnerability and just love them. Let them know you're proud of them regardless of what they've done. Just love them for who they are. Heck yes, parenting is hard. But it's worth it.

Secondly, if you have a parent who has caused you pain and still alive, don't let time expire before you do whatever you can to fix it. There are many of you who have parents who have done horrible things to you. I'm sorry. It may never be the same again with them. We can, however, still have a relationship with them where we draw boundaries and still have a salvageable relationship with them. We've only got this life. Tell them how you feel. Write them a letter and share your pain constructively. It's hard, I know. But don't let the later pain of regret and the "what ifs" get hold of you.

Thirdly, learn to love people as Christ did. He looked past what people did and loved them for who they were. Never shut the door completely on someone. Sometimes, you might be the only person in this world that someone will listen to. If you shut that door on them, it's dangerous.

Relationships with parents can be a great joy or a great pain. Those relationships form the people we are today whether we freely admit it or not. We cannot escape our generational past. But we can learn from it.

Apologizing To Whom?

Found an interesting article yesterday written by the former editor of Contemporary Christian Magazine. It had been three years after Amy Grant's divorce and the magazine wanted her to apologize for what she had done.

The editor, who was being asked by the publisher to write the article and ask for her apology, questioned the move.

An exchange from the article between him and the publisher:

“Who does she need to apologize to, Gerald?”

“Her fans. Us at CCM. And everybody she failed.”

The article is worth your time. But the topic behind it is also worth careful thought.

When one falls, to whom are they apologizing? David clearly stated after his sin with Bathsheba that he had sinned against God and God alone. However, it would seem that genuine sorrow and offering of a sincere sign of that sorrow to those directly offended would be appropriate.

I can't begin to tell you how many times I apologized to Cynthia for what I had done. I apologized to my daughters. I even wrote a letter to individual members of my church and told them I was sorry I let them down.

Was apologizing to the church for my adultery necessary? I did not commit adultery against them. I did lie to them, yes, and I apologized for that. But I had many tell me I needed to apologize to them for my adultery.

My sin was made public very quickly. By Cynthia, her family, and by the church. I don't know if there's a way around that. Pastors are public figures and when they lie and cheat, sin like that tends to get made public. However, there has to be a time when it stops being discussed by those who were not directly involved in the sin. When the sin itself and the discussion of it turns into gossip and unhealthy talk.

One could argue that my blog is the furtherance of this discussion. A fair point. But I don't view it that way. I've tried to handle my story in a way that is from my viewpoint and how I perceived them. I've kept everything anonymous so that those involved wouldn't be further effected.

There's a time to discuss sin and situations when it can help others understand seriousness of sin. And there's a time when it's simply unhealthy, destructive gossip that seeks to tear down others.

For Amy Grant, I think the editor had a good point. Did she owe her fans an apology for divorcing? Was her private life the business of her fans? Probably not.

My situation was different in many ways. My personal holiness affected my public ministry. I did owe the church an apology for my failing in that way. Many were hurt. An article by Christianity Today states, "When a pastor falls sexually, his church responds like a wife betrayed by her husband, experts say.'"

I am still in the process of asking myself the same questions I am presenting to you in this blog. Hopefully, someone will read this post and give me some interesting viewpoints on the matter.

Maybe I'm wrong. But that's what this blog has been about since day one. The exchange of ideas. Whether it's about Amy Grant or me, I'd be happy to hear it.

Seminary, Being Judgmental, Self-Righteousness, and Other Thoughts, Part 2

Long before seminary, the seeds of self-righteousness had been sown.

Now, I have really got to be careful with this next part of my story because it will definitely offend some people. I don't mean for it to. Just make sure you read it through before you react, please.

When I was about 13, I ran across a stash of cassette tapes my parents had. They listened to a lot of sermons. Charles Stanley, Chuck Swindoll, and our own pastor at the time. But the pastor who caught my attention at the time was John MacArthur.

I had never heard anything like his preaching in my entire life. I had never experienced expository preaching. I fell in love with it. The Bible came alive for me and I soaked it all in.

I don't know how familiar you are with MacArthur's preaching. It's very good. At the same time, you have to know that it's also very black and white. All the answers for all of life are to be found in the Word of God. Don't hear me saying I disagree, but I went to an extreme.

I took MacArthur's style, black and white belief system, and tough stance on sin and made it my own. I went even further with it as seminary came along. When I got past seminary and got my own church, the hard-line black and white view of life came to bear. And it infiltrated the way I did everything - especially the way I viewed sin in the congregation.

After a seminary education where church discipline was king, I was ready to wipe out sin in the church. I think my heart was in the right place, but my practice and attitude was not.

I remember the first couple of times I found out church members were sinning. Publicly. I didn't handle it well. Or with compassion. I came down hard and quickly on them. Were they sinning? Yes. Was it wrong in accordance to the black and white of Scripture? Yes.

But I was wrong. I lacked compassion, love and understanding. I approached them with the attitude of, "You need to stop now or we're bringing this in front of the church in [X] amount of days."

I gave no time for God to do His work in their hearts. I gave no compassion to their circumstance. I didn't care about their situation. None. No Christlikeness at all.

All I knew is that I saw sin. And I was the heat-seeking missile that wanted it out of the church.

What I never considered was that I was dealing with people. I knew the old saying, "Hate the sin, love the sinner." But I had trouble separating the two. In my eyes, if the sinner couldn't separate from the sin, they needed to get serious help or be asked to leave until they could.

Of course, I was an idiot. That's not how discipline works. That's not how the church works. That's not how forgiveness works. That's not how we're supposed to act at all. And I learned the hard way.

How could I sit through church as a youth, seminary as an adult, and pastor for almost ten years and miss it?

Worse, I taught the people at Angel Falls Baptist to judge harshly and without love or compassion. And they did that very thing to me when I fell.

Well, I did. Is it possible thousands of Christians are missing the same thing now? That they're learning that sin is a horrible thing (which is true) but at the same time they're missing out on how to show compassion?

I forgot that I was a sinner like those in the church were. I forgot that I had been saved by grace and that I wasn't any better than anyone else. That is the heart of self-righteousness. I thought my education, my position, and my ability to judge made me better.

Didn't. It just made me more smug. And I paid for it all.

Seminary, Being Judgmental, Self-Righteousness, and Other Thoughts, Part I

My new friend from the Work In Progress blog who comments here frequently asked me an honest question recently, which reminded me of something I've been wanting to blog about for a while.

I think I've mentioned before that I was somewhat judgmental as a pastor before my fall. I also discovered that I was self-righteous. I think those two things go hand in hand. After talking to several other fallen pastors from across the country, I've discovered that these qualities are very common. Let me give you some back story before I explain that.

When I got the call to ministry, the logical step for me was to attend seminary. I attended a very conservative Southern Baptist seminary. I didn't have a strong religious educational background except for what I had learned in Sunday School and a few undergraduate religious classes.

I went to seminary with the expectation it would prepare me for a pastoral career. I hoped it would get me ready to minister as I learned practically how to care for people. That a Master of Divinity would transform me into the man of God who magically knew how to pastor a congregation.

Uh huh.

Let me give you a quick disclaimer. I don't have a problem with seminary. I loved my seminary and I'd do it all over again. I'll get to what went wrong in a minute.

I got a seminary education bereft of spiritual formation. Now, listen to what I'm saying first. It was ultimately my fault that I didn't get the spiritual benefit. There were about four to six practical classes in the whole mix. They urged us on several occasions to make sure we were part of a good church where we were getting fed. They told us that seminary education was no replacement for spiritual growth. They told us that sermon preparation was not the same as edification for our soul.

Got that part.

But during an 18 hour class schedule, most students don't take the time to do the spiritual work.

There were professors who made you do the spiritual work. I had several professors who forced us to do written quiet times and reflect on certain passages and hand them in on a daily basis. I'm still not sure what to think of that, but their hearts were in the right place.

Here was where I failed. And this is tough for me to write, but I write it hoping it will help someone else out there, because I know there are some out there who will benefit from it. So here goes.

The first day of seminary, they herded us into a room to do some preliminary testing to see if we needed some extra classes. One of the PhD students addressed all of us newbies: "50% of you will not graduate. Of those of you who do, 50% of you will not make it past the first two years of ministry."

Fantastic.

I pondered why 50% of seminary students didn't make it through. I found out in a hurry. Most of them said they couldn't afford it anymore. That wasn't the truth, though. I found out for myself.

Seminary is made up of a lot of factual information. Theology. History. Ecclesiology. Hermeneutics. So forth. A lot of stuff that I had never heard. It was stuff that challenged my own beliefs. My own system of thought. It challenged my faith.

Can you believe that? That in seminary they would challenge your beliefs? (That was sarcasm.)

In my early second year, it got so bad for me that I was questioning the existence of God. Honestly. We were learning so much, so fast that our heads were swimming. It was more than a lot of people could take. More than I could almost take.

When I talked to students who were leaving, I'd ask them, "Why are you really leaving?" When I got past the first five minutes of, "I can't afford this anymore," they'd finally say, "I just miss the old time religion. When things were simple."

Their faith had been challenged too severely.

I'd encourage them to stay and work it out. But they'd leave. It was tough. It was tough for me.

Obviously, I finally worked it out. But my faith had been shaken to the core. But I probably didn't work it out the way I should have. From the moment I "worked it out," I began to "study" God. No longer did I have the same reverence for God, but I looked at God like a thing to be studied and not a God to be worshipped.

It was an easy thing to do, too. Especially in an environment when all you do is study. When all you do is break down the atonement, theories of the fall, whether you're a trichotomist or dichotomist, argue over open membership vs. closed membership, study the history of church thought, examine document sources, read the Puritans, study and debate ethics, and fade away to sleep every night with a 20 pound book on your chest due for discussion the next day.

What's even worse is that hardly anyone at seminary is immune from "studying" God. There were super seminary students who kept it all together. They did. They kept their spiritual level high while grinding out the papers. I don't know how.

You know what happens when you study God like that? Even if you don't mean to? A horrible thing begins to happen to your soul. You begin to think you're a little better than people who aren't seminary trained. That's called self-righteousness.

Some of you who read this who went to seminary may disagree. That's fine. You may not have had the same experience. God love you. I'm glad you didn't. Seminary doesn't have the same effect on everyone. But it has this effect on a lot of people. And again, seminary doesn't necessarily do this to people. But if self-discipline isn't enacted, it'll happen.

Case in point, seminary students had a reputation at local churches. Especially in Sunday School classes. People from the town had the feeling and generalization that seminary students were arrogant know-it-alls. Now where would they get that idea?

From the handful of students who felt that a seminary education made them better than the general public. They showed up at these churches, sat in their Sunday School classes, told the layman teacher why they were wrong every Sunday and got cocky about it. A rotten apple spoils the whole bunch. That's why a lot of the churches had "Seminary Classes." Not to cater to the seminary students, but to get them out of general population.

Heck, I was the same way. I had a first-class Southern Baptist education and I let it be known. I wasn't flaunting it, but sometimes, I had the need to be arrogant about it.

But I should have exercised humility. Especially in public. Especially in my ministry later. Especially in life.

Next time I'll talk about the long-term effects of the self-righteous behavior I learned and really where it all started for me.