I’ve felt the same sadness that you probably did when reading the headlines about Ravi Zacharias, Bill Hybels, Carl Lentz, and other faith leaders falling from grace. Like you, I support victims coming forward, abusers facing consequences, and hypocrisy being rooted out of church leadership.
When I read those tragic headlines, my heart immediately jumps to the predator’s wife, the unfaithful’s kids, and the people that minister baptized. I don’t do that because of some pious effort or supernatural empathy. I’m not trying to brag about that. I came to that perspective the hard way.
See, my dad is one of those preachers who groomed teenage girls and then sexually assaulted them. I’ve listened to the exposé about my dad in my podcast app. His story is being considered for inclusion in an upcoming documentary about abusive pastors. Anyone with an Internet connection can read damning evidence of my dad’s crimes, released through the social media posts of victim advocates. Any friend or stranger can scroll through all of the comments beneath those posts about what justice should look like for a man who shares two-thirds of my name.
Between you and me, I agree with the overarching sentiment of most of those comments. My dad’s victims aren’t statistics to me. Each of those stories arrives as a gut punch. I know those women, their parents, and their siblings. I remember the spark in their youthful eyes.
I remember the days over the past twenty years when a new grenade of revelation would drop into my family. With each revelation came difficult conversations. Those discussions eventuated in another assurance from Dad that his past was behind him and that he was healthy now. My mom, my siblings, and I all still walk with a limp and rub the scars that formed around the shrapnel of those explosions.
So it’s with visceral empathy I’ve prayed that the loved ones behind the national headlines don’t abandon Jesus, that they don’t associate their pain with the Father, that they feel the Holy Spirit mourn with them.
Sadly, those headlines aren’t over. There will be more wolves to unmask next month and next year. It’s not that we’ve seen just the tip of the #churchtoo iceberg. The glaciers of human depravity and unhealthy religious systems will keep forming new icebergs. When the next prominent pastor falls off his artificial pedestal, here’s what I hope you’ll do.
Pray for his restoration to health not to his platform.
Jesus doesn’t need that man to get back to teaching, preaching, or leading. Not soon, not ever. The gospel is not dependent on charismatic personalities. The Father doesn’t need impressive fundraisers or conference speakers to expand his kingdom. If anything, he wants the opposite—those who feel inadequate and dependent on him.
At the same time, God wishes that no one would perish and that all would come to repentance. Not an apology, not an admittance, not a time away to figure things out. No, the Holy Spirit desires “truth in our inward parts.” The Father’s love in John 3:16 applies to everyone, even pedophiles and predators. It’s a hard prayer to ask Jesus for their personal recovery and a redeemed future, but that’s where our heart can align with that of our Father.
Pray for his family and congregation.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that every member of my family has responded differently to each of the revelations about my dad; and with our spouses and kids, my family rolls more than twenty deep. Relationships are complicated; and the conversations surrounding these situations require supernatural empathy, patience, and nuance. Now multiply that potential for pain by however many people sat in the chairs or watched him online. Add to that sum all the people who are looking for an excuse to leave the church or never give Jesus a chance. Hell’s devouring lion salivates. It’s feeding time.
Prayer connects our hearts to heaven. Our intercession somehow influences the supernatural battles that rage in places we cannot see. When we listen during those vertical conversations, the Spirit leads us to comfort and encourage the hearts of the hurting—whether the victims of those pastors or the proxies in our own community. As we all draw near to the throne of grace, we draw closer to each other. That strengthens our flocks against the wiles of both wolves and the roaring lion who empowers them.
Notice your small choices.
Neither these men in the news nor my dad jumped from safe minister to salacious headline maker in one step, one leap, or one moment. At some point, they said a small yes, a tiny no, a little shift in the wrong direction. That broke the surface tension to make the next nudge in trajectory a little easier. And then another. Not all of those shifts were related to their sexuality, either. When they turned down the volume of God’s voice in their soul in any area, it made his warnings fainter at the next crossroad. Unchecked, their momentum and entropy worked hand in hand to eventuate into catastrophic failure.
That’s how the enemy works with us too. We don’t have to be prominent to follow the same path, to suffer the same fate. That’s why these headlines should prompt us to take inventory of our days, our decisions, and our trajectories.
Pull your secrets into the sunlight.
Along those lines, if we find anything, we need to bring it out of the shadows. Sometimes, that’s covert behavior. Other times, it’s unhealthy motives for good behavior. Often for me, it’s excuses I make for myself but not for others. Evil wants us to wrestle alone with that memory, that tendency, or that habit. Satan whispers to our souls that we can manage it, undo it—that nothing will metastasize or affect anyone else.
Jesus’ little brother, James, told us confession is how we heal. We know from more than a century of science that inoculation works the same way. It’s harder for disease to take purchase in our bodies and fester if we address it in small doses before it becomes an immediate crisis. If we bare our wrong thoughts, words, and actions promptly and often to trustworthy souls, we make it harder for shame to snowball. We cut off experiments before they grow into addictions. I do that in a therapist’s office and in prayer circles, with my friends and with my wife. And rarely am I as resolved to disinfect my soul with the light of revelation as I am after I ponder the stories of men who didn’t.
Few of us will have the proximity or relational capital to prevent celebrity pastors from spiraling into great failure, but we can all prevent the same grief in our own souls. You and I can be lanterns of authenticity in our families and holy lights in our communities of faith. We can represent a redeeming gospel in such a way that even critics see wolves as aberrations. Our response can influence that of others.
I don’t want your partner, your family, or your sphere of influence to ever suffer what I and my loved ones have. But I’m willing to live under the weight of those headlines if it means that others will let those bold letters guide them to health, freedom, and a more attractive gospel.
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Stock images purchased from iStockPhoto.com.
