When we sit in the counseling room with another person, we represent the church and the good name of Jesus Christ.
—Jim Smith

It was a moral and ethical minefield, and Pastor Warren was walking through the middle of it. Every available course seemed rigged for disaster.

Michael Thomas, a prominent school administrator in Pastor Warren's congregation, had been nominated for elder. His election to the board of elders seemed assured, for he was active and well-respected in the church and in community circles. He already sat on the boards of a Christian school system and the metropolitan museum.

But Pastor Warren knew things about Thomas that very few others in the community knew, for Thomas and his wife had come to him for counseling. Pastor Warren knew that this man had a Jekyll-and-Hyde nature. Publicly, he was a learned, respected, socially conscious community leader; privately, he was a destructive, philandering, alcoholic husband. Pastor Warren knew of Thomas' addiction to pornography, ...