He is a young man, probably 22 or 23 years old. I met him about a month ago. He seemed reserved and quiet yet I could tell he had a good mind. Later he was assigned a mentor who is a friend of mine and he began the long journey of sexual addiction recovery.
My friend called me up with a question "Kelly", he began, "I have an interesting case. Our young friend has never formally cheated on his wife but he is addicted to pornography. He is also an active youth pastor. He promised his church and his wife that he would never mess up with this issue again and even signed an agreement stating that. The church leadership also agreed that if he did mess up he would have to confess to his wife, the pastor and then get up in front of the whole church and confess and then resign. The problem was that he did indeed mess up. He accessed porn and was tore up inside on what to do....what do you think" He asked me?
My advise was to confess. He made a promise as unwise as that is, he made a promise and agreed to face the consequences. So my young friend confessed. What was the response of the senior pastor? "Shame & cover-up" The senior pastor was angry and exasperated. Expressions such as "I can't believe you would do this again" or "why can't you just say no?" were bantered about. Then he told my friend to not say anything to anyone. "The church board is dealing with a building program and is stressed I don't want to burden them with this issue" he even told him to hide it from his wife at least for now.
What is the message there? The message is that the building program is more important than the spiritual health of his youth pastor. The message is that the senior pastor is probably embarassed and knows that this might reflect badly on his ability to attract and bring on "good" youth pastors. The message is not grace & forgiveness but guilt, shame and cover up.
Not surprisingly my young friend somewhat is relieved. He doesn't have to face the consequences of his sin. He can put it off for a while and enjoy the fantasy that God is ok with this arrangement and the fantasy that his wife will be ok when she ultimately finds out. What will happen when that wife hears that a senior pastor helped hide sin from her? What will happen when she figures out that the pastor cared more about a building than her family?
What I suspect is that there is coming a day when this senior pastor will quietly fire this man to avoid embarrassment and get him out of town so he can look for another youth minister. My friend will learn a hard lesson that sometimes church folk are not very wise, not very safe and not very understanding when it comes to sexual sin. My hope is that as long as he is with our ministry, he can continue to learn healing, learn honesty, and learn forgiveness something that he is not...at his local church.
So I sound angry? Perhaps. I just have little patience for what seems so obvious to me. You don't hide & cover up sin, you confess and deal with it. There is a ticking time bomb now. Can you hear it? Tick, tick, tick...some day it will explode and this senior pastor will have a bigger mess to deal with than he thought.
-Kelly
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3 comments:
That really bites. It definitely sends the wrong message to the young man. I am glad that he has you to speak the truth in love to him.
this youth pastor has learned a valuable lesson about sin. namely, sin is merely what everyone else tells you it is. as long as no one knows, no one gets outraged, and it only exists in your mind. if your mind is obsessed with an imaginary daddy-in-the-sky, then I guess you'd experience guilt, but that's your funeral.
Why should the wife be told? It will only hurt her, and make her feel like she is "not enough" for her husband. Why should she be punished for what he is doing??
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