Faith.In.Life

#Deconstruction

Abuse

In 2015 a movie came out called Spotlight that ultimately won the Oscar for Best Picture.  The movie was about how the Boston Globe uncovered a massive child molestation scandal and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese, shaking the Catholic Church to its core.  Since then, Protestant Churches have seen their fair share of scandals and abuse within the church.  In 2018 stories started circulating about Bill Hybels (The former pastor of Willowcreek Church in Chicago) having inappropriate relationships with women.  Hybels was ultimately exposed for bullying female staff and having them join him one-on-one in hotel rooms while he was traveling.  Hybels was ultimately asked to step down early even though he was planning for retirement, and at one point the two pastors who were supposed to follow in Hybels’ footsteps to shepherd Willowcreek both stepped down from doing so.  In 2021, Christianity Today wrote an article on popular Apologetic Ravi Zacharirus having been found to to abuse massage therapists in the U.S. and abroad over more than a decade.  Investigations showed that Ravi used his position to illicit sex from providers while using ministry funding to both fund and hide his endeavors.  Ravi didn’t live long enough to be held accountable for his actions.  Most recently, former superstar pastor Carl Lentz who once was known as “Hollywood’s Pastor” and lead Pastor of Hillsong, NY was found to have an adulterous relationship with his family’s babysitter.  Lentz’s fall led to a Hulu documentary called “The Secrets of Hillsong” which exposed a long history within the broader Hillsong Church oversight that essentially was build not abuse.  All of these examples still do not do the victims of any abuse justice and cannot speak to the hurt any situation created, not to mention the psychological trauma inflicted in each case.  

I find it particularly strange that in many cases the world has acted better in cases of abuse than the church itself.  With things like Affirmative Action or even the #MeToo movement, the workplace and the world itself have seen quite a bit of ownership of toxic leadership and created far more healthy workplaces.  So, it is incredibly sad to see how the church does not set a higher bar when it comes to accountability.  What is worse, is how some churches have used toxic theology to even justify their poor practices.  In doing so, they create a circular reasoning that not only justifies abusive practices, but encourages.  This is where we must have a proper theology and practice to improve the church across the board.  This equally means that we have to hold ourselves to a much higher standard, even what the Bible says leaders a doubly accountable (Hebrews 13:17).  In doing so, we have to re-establish John Calvin’s Third Mark of the Church.  Every Reformer agreed that there were at least two Marks of the Church, which were Word and Sacrament, but John Calvin added a third:  Accountability or Discipline.  In all actuality, people are justified in deconstructing their faith if the church does not restore accountability and discipline because, without it, the Church is just another institution and has lost its God-given value.  

In Faith’s denomination, Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians every pastor is required to be a part of a Pastor Accountability Group.  The denomination has pointed out that in every case where a pastor has a moral failing they have not been a part of such a group.  So, while having a system of accountability is essential, they are only as successful as the pastors are vulnerable.  Time and time again it seems that pastors fall the hardest when they believe they have reached some type of superstardom and therefore above reproach.  I have often said that when we reach this place in our lives, that is the most opportune time for the Devil to take something very simple and lead a person into sin.  And, in many ways, when this happen, the Devil has tricked the particular pastor into the same fall that the Devil himself experienced when as the Angel of Worship he stopped giving the worship properly due to God and began to worship himself.  So often megastar pastors are put on a pedestal.  And I have been to churches who have done this.  Even if the church started worshipping God and grew because of it, at some point they focus their worship on a person or institution.  Time and time again, though, these churches will fall apart when that person or institution fails.  Let’s be clear though, this can happen on both massive scale and small scale.  

One of the most public massive scales that we saw this happen on was with Mars Hill Church led by Pastor Mark Driscoll.  I have mentioned the podcast “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill Church” a few times now.  For as hard of a listen as the podcast is, I was shocked by first the toxic theology that Mark himself bought into and taught.  Driscoll largely taught complementarianism, and even lifted the men to some type of superhero status putting a ton of weight on them.  The podcast has one episode where they equate the teaching Mark did on masculinity with the 1999 film Fight Club.  Essentially, Mark took the boredom that is largely found within the day-to-day grind of going to work and challenged men to be heroes to the point of being dominant.  Ultimately, the teaching largely reflected Mark’s insecurities where if any staff member even remotely seemed to undermine Driscoll, well they were not going to be on staff very long.  Mark was found to use his position of power to dominate those around him even to the point of degrading the individual with Mark’s fowl language.   The second thing that surprised me even more is that when Mark ultimately left his position with Mars Hill Church, the whole network of churches fell apart.  Every church either changed its identity entirely or folded.  You will no longer find any church under the name of Mars Hill.  Meanwhile, Mark Driscoll, regardless of any spurring on by his peers to be held accountable and seek resolution, has not made any attempt to reconcile that I am aware of to this date.  Instead of being held accountable, he moved on to a church in Arizona, which is once again trending on social media sites, and yet, still having the same types of complaints against his leadership in his new position as he did his last.

A lesser-known small scale is when a Pastor comes into a church with a vision and mission and challenges the churches to come alongside of what that Pastor would like to do.  The church then is driven by a key leader, but two problems can come from this.  Either one, the church never actually owns the vision and mission, and whatever success they might encounter is ultimately based on the work of the pastor or a key team within leadership that has bought into the mission and vision.  But two, even if such a model might be successful for a time, when that pastor or leadership team moves on there is ultimately nothing left to fill their shoes.  While the churches might be fruitful for a time, ultimately their legacy will not last.  When the leader either retires or if they were found to abuse a situation or person, ultimately the vision and mission dies. 

This is where it may not matter if a person’s discipline or accountability happens within a small scale or a large scale: it’s simply that discipline and accountability have to continually happen.  A person should always be in a fluid discipleship journey where there is always someone above and over us who can ask us hard questions to which we give honest answers.  This will help guide us in taking on disciples of our own to which we can challenge them to the growth he hopefully has already obtained on our own.  Yet, this has to be an ongoing accountability.  We constantly have to have people challenging us, and even safety nets for what we should be doing if we all short.  In other words, there may be times in our ministry and lives when we actively growing, constantly becoming areas of our shortcomings and working to improve on them.  But, at some point, we might believe ourselves to be beyond a certain temptation, or at the very least we create blinders for ourselves where we cannot identify our blind spots. We must continue an awareness of discipline, discipleship, and growth so that we are never truly above reproach - and yet - in doing so we will be above reproach if we consistently say to ourselves and others “By the grace of God go I.”

But, maybe this is all pretty high level and we need to think about how we might practice such accountability.  When I was in CO I was part of a judicial commission in which we explored the moral failing of a pastor.  While I cannot share much more of the situation for my accountability reasons, I will say this:  As I was exploring what had happened I started wondering to myself what types of small steps were taken to find oneself in a compromising position.  When you start to look at a particular moral failing from this perspective, you begin to realize that a person’s failing was not a sudden life-changing decision, but rather a slow fade based in many different compromises.  While at some point you might be accountable, what might it take to remove one’s accountability, to start hiding frowned upon actions that may not even be sinful per se, but while living in the grey you find yourself completely compromised and walking in the darkness sinning to the point you have to hide what you are doing.  While there may be some part of yourself that may want to be found, you ultimately realize that to do so would compromise yourself entirely.

Over the years I have seen many pastors and leaders held accountable.  The denomination may hold to a process of discipline and accountability, and may even defrock the leader from the denomination.   But, what is particularly strange, is that the person does not respect the decision.  They move from one area to the next or from one denomination to another.  While the other area or denomination might even approve of the particular actions that the previous had held accountable, there is a severe problem in the process when the individual fails to own the discipline or accountability handed to them.  We need to have due process, the person needs to be humble enough to step down or lay low while the process is working itself out and then own their actions and submit themselves to disciples and accountability.