September 1, 1993 - 12:00pm - Scott Stevens

It was a small church in a small town with a very big problem.

In fact, it was facing what in the last few years has become a nightmare for churches in America—a pastor who has committed a sexual impropriety.

But as big as this problem was, this particular congregation had a faith large enough to beat it, and its solution is as remarkable and unique as it is biblical and loving.

For six years this church had had the fastest-growing youth program in the city. Leading it was an energetic, dynamic youth director who could attract high school students from even the neighboring towns. These began to attract their parents, and church attendance swelled nearly as quickly as at the Wednesday night youth meetings. Many people were being converted and it looked as if the future could only grow brighter.

Then, in a counseling session with the senior pastor, a troubled teenage girl haltingly admitted that she had slept with the youth pastor. It had started from a bond they had formed when she had asked for help with personal problems. She knew that the same thing had happened with several of her friends. It had been going on for two years.

Most churches that have faced such a crisis have adopted a strategy of “damage control,” a public relations term used by business to recover sales in the event of injury to customers. In this vein, pastors have been quietly whisked away with vague reasons for resignation, the silence of victims has been purchased with out-of-court settlements, and the skeletons have been kept “safely” in the closet.

The pastor and board of elders of this particular church believed in different principles. Less concerned about public image than the truth, they decided the only way to deal with the crisis was to employ the biblical principles of justice, forgiveness, community and especially love.

Thus they confronted the youth pastor. With his permission, his wife joined them and they agreed to a plan: The youth pastor would, along with his wife and the senior pastor, visit each of the families that day to admit what had happened. He would then turn himself in to the police. As soon as possible, he would announce his resignation to the congregation, including the reason for it, and would immediately seek professional help. What was most remarkable, however, was that he was asked to remain a member and regular attender of the church.

American Christianity faces two major criticisms from non-Christian society: irrelevance and hypocrisy. The valid substance of those criticisms can be clearly revealed in such a crisis as this. Sequestered in the stained glass, hiding their deepest pains behind a plastic Sabbath-day smile, churchgoers pretend to be free from the problems that plague the “secular” world outside. Church has become the last place where one would admit to a problem with drugs or alcohol or, heaven forbid, sex. The church is seen from the outside as irrelevant because it refuses to deal with the problems of real life. It is seen as hypocritical because it hides those very problems while claiming moral superiority.

This small congregation exemplified what a Christian church could and should be—a loving, forgiving, open group of people who, starting from the security of God’s love, dared to love one another radically, freely, dangerously—a group of people so committed to the truth and so willing to be vulnerable to life’s pain and injustice that they risked public ridicule to show love to everyone.

Jesus was criticized for spending his time with publicans, Pharisees, prostitutes and tax collectors. Most churches would never condone their clean, well-dressed ranks becoming soiled with the modern equivalent of such folk. How many of our pews seat the homeless? How many of our doctors find themselves next to struggling drug addicts on Sabbath morning? We have it all backward. In desperately trying to maintain a squeaky-clean image we only push away those on the the outside who desperately need the love God is waiting to show them-a love he wants to show through us. Christians are regularly accused of hypocrisy but it is very rare to hear such an accusation leveled against Jesus himself. The world “out there” recognizes things about our own Savior that we overlook.

The little church in the small town took the risk to love dangerously, to break all the rules of good public relations, to do the godly thing. It was not at all easy, but today, five years later, that former youth pastor (now working with computers) and his wife are still married. They attend the same church. While some members did move to different churches during the crisis, the families of all the girls involved are there every week. In fact, two of the families involved did not attend the church when the crisis occurred, but were so moved by the way the situation was handled that they began attending. The girls involved have each expressed a sense of closure and healing about the experience and have remarked that they wouldn’t be doing so well if the issue had all been kept a big secret.

Jesus gave us the commandment to “love one another as I have loved you.” Such love can only be fully expressed in the face of sin and error, for it is in these times that courage and vulnerability are most needed. Such love is always relevant and it is never hypocritical.