Pastor Lawson and the Moral Failure
Popping in to send you over to CRJ
Super late today because I had to take a child over to the DMV to get her learner’s permit, and then back across town to pick up someone else because we’re still down a car. It’s so tragic how all our personal transportation devices have to spend so long in the shop. Anyway, fortunately, my piece on what to do when a pastor sins notoriously is up.
Here’s the podcast, if you missed it last week:
It’s like the unbuckling of the Bible Belt,” quips Pastor Ed Young to Ruth Graham of the New York Times, cataloging the shocking number of pastors who have been removed in the last couple of years in the Dallas area alone for what so many are calling “moral failures.” Some have embezzled money. Others have lied or been abusive. The majority of disgraced pastors, though, have committed some kind of sexual immorality. It has become almost a banal circumstance to click open my phone and discover that a famous pastor or Christian celebrity, not just in Dallas but all over the country, has either denied the faith, deconstructed, or fallen into a notorious and public sin. The tide of apostasy and pastors embarrassing themselves seems always to grow, never to recede. It may be that men sin more frequently in these decadent times. Or it may simply be the fact of social media. When news travels around the world in nanoseconds, it should not shock us that those whose spiritual influence reaches far beyond the walls of their congregations and towns would grip the world’s attention when they fall into sin.
Inappropriate Moral Failings. In September 2024 Pastor Steve Lawson was swiftly removed from his church in Dallas, Texas after it was discovered that he had an “inappropriate relationship” with a woman. The details were murky. In the absence of substantive explanations, social media filled up with speculation and gossip. Pastor Lawson was the very last person anyone expected to suffer such a “moral failing.”
The adoption of terms like “moral failing” and “inappropriate relationship” as the go-to descriptors when a public figure is discovered sinning suggests a measurable decline for American Christianity. Biblical words like “sin,” “adultery,” and “fornication” have so fallen out of fashion even in the church that anodyne words like “failing,” “struggle,” and “inappropriate,” more fitting for the peccadillos of Hollywood celebrities, have replaced them.
But these terms, especially “moral failing,” leave a lot to be desired. One problem is that they don’t come from the Scriptures. The Bible calls us to be holy, to reflect, by following the perfect law, God’s character in the world. This impossible task drives the sinner to the cross for mercy and salvation.
Morality, as it is conceived of now, is more like a personality trait, like being the sort of person who always remembers to recycle. It doesn’t carry the heavy weight of conforming one’s heart, mind, and body to a holy and just God. Breaking the perfect law of God isn’t just a failure. It is a gross act of rebellion.
Likewise, the term “inappropriate” is far too light. Does it mean that the offender is making someone feel uncomfortable? Were they texting embarrassing messages back and forth? Or were they violating the law of God by engaging in sexual activity that, if unrepented of, could set them outside the kingdom of God? Beleaguered Christians showing up on a Sunday morning to find out their pastor violated his ordination vows, broke their trust, and destroyed his family need more of an explanation than “an inappropriate relationship occurred.”
Pillar and Buttress of Truth. The gracious thing is to remove those from ministry who are spiritually injuring their congregations. For the sake of the church and the soul of the pastor, when he abuses his office he should be removed. In the first place, he will be judged so much more strictly for his sins because of the solemn and heavy responsibility he has to protect the flock of God (James 3:1). Secondly, when he embraces error or sin, he teaches false lessons to the people in his care — that the truth doesn’t matter, that some people are indispensable, that adultery is not that bad.
What he is doing is “devouring” the sheep. The Lord, in the book of Ezekiel, has several complaints about those who “fail” to care for His people. They feed themselves rather than the flock (34:2), they clothe themselves with the wool (34:3), they neither strengthen nor heal (34:4), and rule with force and harshness (34:4), they scatter the sheep so that they are a prey to wild beasts (34:8), they muddy the drinking water (34:18), and they push them with “side and shoulder,” thrusting “all the weak” with their horns (34:21). The picture painted is one of pitiless leaders, of those with power and authority who cannot remember to look down over the pulpit at the congregants sitting with their Bibles open, heads bowed in anxiety and care.
Pastor and congregation are bound together to reveal the shape of the kingdom of God. Elders and overseers — or priests and bishops in liturgical churches — are charged with properly managing their children, being kind and understanding to their wives, devoted to chaste and sober disciplines of life (1 Timothy 3:1–7), so that they may make known the “mystery of godliness” (3:16). The household of faith, “which is the church of the living God” is a “pillar and buttress of the truth” (3:15). It is the locus of God’s saving work that brings the kingdom of heaven into the world. The godly lives of believers — both shepherds and sheep — display the mysterious and hidden character of God, what He likes, what He cares about, indeed who He is.
Very well said, Anne - thank you! May God have mercy on us.
On the other hand, I want leaders who take responsibility and seek to lead by their behavior, not only attitudes. Otherwise the sheep can become confused. And this hurts Christ.
But what about redemption? restoration? Does this not teach too?