Help to Keep From Falling
Perils of Power: Immorality in the Ministry by Richard Exley, Honor Books, $9.95
Reviewed by Dave Wilkinson, pastor, Moorpark (California) Presbyterian Church
Immorality in the ministry. We’ve read the stories and felt the embarrassment.
Richard Exley, pastor of Christian Chapel in Tulsa, Oklahoma, writes: “I will never forget the moment I learned of the Jimmy Swaggart tragedy. A squall of disoriented emotions swept over me-disbelief, shame, anger, grief.”
To be honest, I was not as pained as Exley by the fall of some of the televangelists. Perhaps, in a sinfully smug, mainline church way, I had never expected anything more. But I am pained by the downfall of some of my own friends-from whom I had come to expect a lot more. I read Exley’s book to try to understand this epidemic. I was not disappointed.
Exley’s thesis: “All sexual sin is not rooted in lust-at least not initially. When a local-church pastor commits adultery, it is usually with someone with whom he has developed a relationship. It is good gone awry. What began as legitimate ministry-a shared project, or a giving of comfort-becomes an emotional bonding, which ultimately leads to an illicit affair.” He quotes Carlfred Broderick, who writes in Couples: “With a little help from rationalization, the sympathy leads smoothly into tenderness, the tenderness to the need for privacy, the privacy to physical consolation, and consolation straight to bed.”
Exley identifies two types of men who are especially vulnerable to sexual temptation. (There are no women pastors in his book.)
The first is the man for whom “ministry hasn’t really lived up to his expectations. It seems he is never free from criticism, at least not for long. Things aren’t so good at home, either. He wishes he and his wife were closer. He wishes she were more sensitive to his needs. A little appreciation wouldn’t hurt, either.”
The second is the minister who achieves his goals and finds them empty. At the height of their careers, “they have probably achieved more ‘success’ than they ever dreamed possible, and with it more frustration. The minister may be thinking that this isn’t how he is supposed to feel. Where’s the fulfillment, the satisfaction? Who is there to share his achievements? He is probably not intimate with his wife, and his children are strangers.”
Many ministers, Exley writes, “labor a lifetime believing that if they can just reach their goals they will finally feel accepted, worthy. Not true! There is not enough success in the world to quiet the discordant voices within. Self-esteem is not the by-product of achievement, but the natural consequence of a healthy relationship with one’s parents, peers, and, of course, God. It is a matter of who you are in Christ, not what you have done.”
It’s these complex roots of immorality that lead Exley to call for a period away from ministry for pastors who succumb. He carefully distinguishes between suspension for punishment and suspension for restoration.
“When the infidelity comes to light, we want to assume the best; we want to believe that it was something that happened only once, in a moment of weakness. Unfortunately, that is usually not the case. Instead, we often discover that it has been a tragic pattern for a number of months, perhaps even years. Frequently, it has involved several women.” Exley notes “the desperate need the minister has for a period of time away from the ministry where he can deal with the destructive habits of a lifetime. Even when a minister confesses and repents, it is still in his best interests to require him to cease ministering for a time in order to rearrange his priorities and reestablish his family relationships.
“Adultery is seldom just ‘sexual sin,’ and while it is definitely a spiritual problem, it is more than just a ‘spiritual problem.’ It involves a number of factors including, but not limited to, the way we relate to our spouse, our own self-image and sexual identity, our lifestyle, our work habits, and even the way we do ministry. These are issues which simply cannot be dealt with in a few days away, nor can they be adequately addressed while the minister is still involved full time in the ministry. The pressures of ministry are simply too great, the temptation to return to the familiar routine too compelling-a routine which contributed significantly to the problem in the first place.”
I contacted Exley by phone and asked about the rapid return of Jimmy Swaggart to the pulpit. He expressed deep apprehension about Swaggart’s future-citing both the lack of time and perspective for restoration to take place and the possible “spirit of rebellion” that led Swaggart to renounce the jurisdiction of the Assemblies of God. Time and distance, he stated again, are essential. While he does not agree with those who say that a minister who sins should never be restored to a place of prominence, he stresses that restoration, while complete, must come in stages. “Let him show that he is faithful in a few things before he is made ruler over many things,” he said.
To make such a time of restoration possible-and even to encourage fallen pastors to confess in private if they are not publicly found out-Exley calls for denominations to set aside funds “not only to underwrite the cost of counseling,” but also “to provide living expenses for the minister’s family while he is undergoing treatment.”
Exley’s wide-ranging prescription is rooted in the belief that “the fatal flaw is not to be found in the man alone but in the whole body of Christ.” He calls for a change in the way success in ministry is measured: from numbers to character. “God has predestined us not to success but to Christlikeness.”
Exley admits that he also struggles with measuring success. He writes, “Any time I start to feel smug about the size of ‘my’ church or the books ‘I’ have published, God reminds me of our covenant. ‘Richard, if you couldn’t build your self-worth on the size of your congregation when it numbered 100, you can’t do it now that it numbers more than 1,000.’ “
At times Perils of Power serves as Fatal Attraction for pastors. In several real-life examples, Exley points out how succumbing to the “tender trap” is a great way for a pastor to undermine and even destroy everything he has loved and tried to build.
But the point is not for pastors to be scared stiff. It is for pastors to be loved straight.
Controlling the Uncontrollable
Counseling for Problems of Self-Control by Richard P. Walters, Word, $12.95
Reviewed by Gary L. Gulbranson, pastor, Glen Ellyn (Illinois) Bible Church
Nearly two thousand years ago, the apostle Paul wrote: “That which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate” (Rom. 7:15). Paul described a common problem people present to pastors and Christian counselors: a struggle with self-control. They drink too much. They eat too much. They shoplift. They smoke, gamble, gossip, explode in anger, lust, lie, and live beyond their means. And like the apostle, they cry out for help.
Richard Walters wants people to know that self-control is possible though admittedly not easy. “There is no quick fix for lack of self-control,” he writes. “The disorders are often complex and deeply embedded in the person’s life-style and . . . the disordered person . . . may resist counseling.”
Walters draws his insight from years of experience as a therapist in private practice, as a counseling minister in a local church, and as a staff psychologist in a Christian psychiatric hospital.
Disorders of self-control arise when people become so enmeshed in self-centered behavior that they begin to destroy themselves and those around them. The task of the Christian counselor, Walters says, is to help the person identify the cause of the problem, manage the problem behavior, and eventually, through the healing power of God’s truth and presence, overcome the problem.
To illustrate this process, Walters weaves the story of Bram and Glenda Wilnock throughout the book. In the beginning, Bram is given to periodic explosions of anger directed against his family. We look on as a pastor takes the Wilnocks from a rocky beginning to the point where Bram can say, at the end of the book, “Now that I know I’m not in this by myself [having learned to trust God and Glenda], I can fix the little things as they come along instead of letting them build up till I bust. It’s sure a lot better!”
The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 describes the principles and processes that apply to problems of self-control. At the heart of this section is a counseling sequence derived from Isaiah 6:10. The counselor helps the struggling person manage the crisis, see relationships that model health, hear truth about self and living, understand the disorder, turn toward health, be healed, and grow in Christian maturity.
Part 1 closes with two chapters of particular interest: “What to Do When Counseling Is Not Wanted” and “What to Do When Friends and Family Interfere.”
In part 2, Walters expands on a list of root causes of self-control: sinful human nature, physiological influences, emotional deficits, wounds from the past, and discrepancies in belief systems. He leads the reader through several step-by-step case studies, recording dialogue between pastor and counselee to show principles in action.
In the case of an impulsive spender named Eric, for example, Walters shows the pastor probing for the roots of his habit. The pastor has just said God brings good things into his life and makes it larger, not smaller, and Eric replies, ” ‘Maybe that’s easier for you . . . because you’re a preacher.’
“Pastor: ‘Try it this way-I’m a preacher because it works, but it wasn’t always easy, and it’s not always easy now. To start, I had to trust, and to do that I had to overcome some suspicions.’
“Eric: ‘Yeah?’
“Pastor: ‘I had been turned off to God by some people I saw.’
“Eric: ‘Like you said, “I can understand that.” ‘
“Pastor: ‘You’ve had some bad experiences.’
“Eric: ‘I had a Sunday school teacher cuss me out in class when I was a little kid. I’ve never forgotten that.’
“Pastor: ‘Of course you haven’t. What does it mean, now?’
“Eric: ‘I’m pretty skeptical. Not about God-I believe in him-but I don’t want him turning me into some kind of a loony-tune like that teacher, or into a monk or a missionary or something.’
“Pastor: ‘You don’t want your life to be wasted. You want your life to be enjoyable, to go to good places. And you figure that if you gave up some control to God he would hold you hostage, just lock you up.’
“Eric: ‘That’s it. I don’t trust him.’ “
At the end of the dialogue, Walters concludes, “Eric realized that his impulsive spending was his expression of rebellion against a God who would stifle him. The pastor was different-challenging Eric’s assumptions and behavior, but affirming his personhood. Through this, Eric learned and believed the paradox that Jehovah God, who created us to be free, restores and expands our freedom when we give him control of our lives.”
Part 3 moves beyond the scope of self-control problems to a discussion of Christian maturity, which is the goal of all Christian counseling and is reached when the struggling person is able to put the control of his or her life in God’s hands.
Richard Walters has not written a theological or philosophical treatise but a theologically sound, philosophically ordered, and intensely practical manual. I have read the book twice and reached for it a dozen times already as an aid in my counseling work.
A Powerful Look at a Powerless Church
The Naked Church by Wayne Jacobsen, Harvest House, $6.95
Reviewed by John Duckworth, senior editor, church resources, David C. Cook Publishing Co., Elgin, Illinois
For months Wayne Jacobsen had been thinking disturbing thoughts. He’d been comparing the explosive church of Acts with the weak-kneed churches he saw around him. A pastor himself, he knew all too well that few Christians were even trying to compare the two, much less trying to make them match.
He tried to chase away the disturbing thoughts by plunging deeper into pastoral busyness. It didn’t work.
“When I looked for whys I kept coming to the same conclusion: Our application of contemporary Christianity was inadequate,” he writes. “When I looked at how church ministry operated, I saw how high a priority it places on safety and routine. … It placates the lukewarm and cools the zealous. It has not led us to the fullness of Jesus’ life but rather lured us away.
” ‘That’s it!’ I said aloud. ‘I’m going to find a Christianity as powerful as the one I have read about in Acts, no matter what!’ “
Jacobsen’s quest led him to pastor a less traditional fellowship. But he quickly learned that organizational charts weren’t the problem. “Church structures were only the branches and leaves of the problems I struggled with, now I saw the roots-the appetites within. My idealism was tested by a challenge to personal change. My obedience lay not in changing other people but in my own surrender to the will of God.”
That is the essence of The Naked Church: a call to individual revival that would turn the Western church upside down.
The Naked Church has not been greeted warmly in all quarters. “I’ve gotten reactions on both sides,” Jacobsen told me recently. “Some say, ‘You let the church off too easy.’ Others are hostile, saying I ‘maligned sacred things.’ One pastor called me ‘an embittered old so-and-so.’ “
That’s an odd reaction, since Jacobsen’s tone is humble and hopeful, not bitter. His commitment to the church seems stronger than ever as he co-pastors The Savior’s Community, an interdenominational fellowship in Visalia, California, where he says the book’s prescription for change “describes our vision. But we’re not doing it flawlessly.”
At least half of The Naked Church is devoted to solutions, pairing chapters about church-wide problems with personal answers. It is a book that approaches church renewal by saying, “Let it begin with me.”
Jacobsen’s emphasis on evidential feelings and his assertion that signs and wonders are to be expected today won’t set well with all readers. But fewer would argue with his call for a return to simplicity in church life. Instead of the busyness, professionalism, and protocol that have complicated so many churches-and pastors’ lives-he urges simple intimacy with God, which comes through the stepping stones of submission, humility, perseverance, grace, worship, Bible study, and fellowship. “Knowing God personally is not too difficult for anyone who wants it. We ourselves can do so little to build intimacy, for God himself is too good at it. We can only allow ourselves to be distracted from it.”
He urges risk taking: “The best training ground for moving in God’s power is not in the sanctuary but in the street.” And he always yearns to replace the bogus with the real.
Leaders need intimacy and accountability to be genuine, writes Jacobsen. They must be mature followers of Jesus, not just those who have completed academic training.
The author admits that he, too, has been intoxicated by the thrill of running a complex mini-empire. But he also knows the limits of programming. “Many people are being torn apart by our institutional objectives,” he writes, “and altogether too much ministry to the individual has been lost because we have been too busy baby-sitting the machine.”
The author is careful, however, not to urge readers to stage coups in their churches. Toward the end of the book he writes, “The solution I’ve given has been personal. This is not to say I don’t think the structures should be changed, for they harm many sincere believers as well as alienate many nonbelievers. It’s just that few who read this book will have the power to change structures.”
He included that statement, he told me, “to keep people from becoming agitators.” He’s seen some lay people try to remake their churches with divisive results.
Had Jacobsen written the book specifically for pastors, he says now, “I would have offered more institutional possibilities.” But for both pastors and lay people, the core of the problem is still personal. We need “the intimacy with God that says I’m going to follow him wherever he leads.”
The Naked Church offers food for thought and prayer, not success stories. Jacobsen knows that the goal of truly knowing God will make us hungry, as it has him.
NEW AND NOTEWORTHY
Child Sexual Abuse: A Handbook for Clergy and Church Members by Lee W. Carlson, Judson, $6.95
Child sexual abuse deeply disturbs the lives of many church families. Urgent but not alarmist, this little book aims to help the church recognize the problem and do something constructive.
Carlson, family and resource minister for American Baptist Churches, focuses on the unique role of the church. He believes the church should keep in mind its particular contribution as an agent of repentance, forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation.
Besides the theological and ethical dimensions-including an argument for discretionary confidentiality-he briefly explains the causes and signs of abuse, the situation of the various people involved, and what to do after reporting. An annotated bibliography guides the reader to specialized resources.
Youth and Missions: Expanding Your Students’ World View by Paul Borthwick, Victor, $6.95
Paul Borthwick wants to put myopic, self-satisfied youth groups out of business. He may succeed.
Borthwick’s tactic? Expand the students’ world view by example, by exposure, and by experience. He argues convincingly that this vital task rests not only with the youth ministry but with the entire congregation and with missionaries, too.
In short, Borthwick, minister of missions at Grace Chapel, Lexington, Massachusetts, has written a concise and motivating book, bursting with practical suggestions on how to get youth involved in the worldwide mission of Jesus Christ.
Advertising Your Church Services: Using the Media to Reach Your Community by C. Norman Noble, Standard, $7.95
“Make no mistake. It is not the message that needs help; it’s the messenger and the audience,” says C. Norman Noble, a market consultant.
Eschewing crass commercialism that treats Jesus Christ “as if he were a commodity to be bought or sold,” Noble shows how the church can intelligently present itself in any medium, especially the newspaper. From creating a budget to proofreading, Noble lays out the how-to’s of advertising. Along the way he includes dozens of creative ads his Seattle church has used with good results-and gives license to steal.
Recruiting, Training, and Developing Volunteer Adult Workers by John Hendee, Standard, $9.95
Recruiting, training, and developing workers. What fun! No, but the vitality of the local church rests upon it. That, at least, is the considered opinion of John Hendee, pastor of administration at the Central Christian Church of Mesa, Arizona. So in this primer, he seeks to turn the burdensome into the potentially manageable and rewarding.
He breaks down the complex task of adult ministry into its components. The three participles in the title, for instance, are each given a chapter, and are preceded by chapters on purpose and programming. The last chapter includes a tool especially useful for the disorganized: a “Ministry/Project Planner,” a series of sheets that helps planners attend to the multitude of details involved in any event.
Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John B. Kruis, Baker, $6.95
Kruis directs the Biblical Counseling Center in Jenison, Michigan. He believes that “the Scriptures are ideally suited for any and every counseling situation.” Thus, he supplies scriptural quotes on such topics as bitterness and brooding, homosexuality and hate, sex life, and substance abuse.
One caution: the chief weakness of any such book is the temptation to use passages out of context. Heeding that caution, the book can be used with profit. In addition, the book could be the starting point for many a topical sermon.
Counseling for Substance Abuse and Addiction by Stephen Van Cleave, Walter Byrd, and Kathy Revell, Word, $12.95
Counseling and Self-Esteem by David E. Carlson, Word, $12.95
For the nonspecialist who wants counsel on how to counsel, these books (volumes 12 and 13 in the Resources for Christian Counseling series edited by Gary R. Collins) offer realistic advice and intelligently combine biblical theology with psychological insights.
Van Cleave, Byrd, and Revell, all actively working with drug rehabilitation programs, explain the many-layered causes and effects of drug abuse. They offer loving, tough, step-by-step suggestions for healing. Eight appendices demystify technical and slang drug jargon and suggest other resources for the addicted.
David Carlson, visiting professor of psychology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, presents a “psycho-theology” of self-esteem, in which he makes ample room for the doctrine of total depravity. Most of his book, however, teaches pastors and other counselors how to build self-esteem in others. He advocates a “sensory method,” which teaches people to hear, see, and perceive themselves without distortion, and to become aware of how they physically act out self-esteem.
Reviewed by Mark Galli, pastor,
Grace Presbyterian Church
Sacramento, California
Copyright © 1989 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
