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In this week’s Payneful Truth, a slight divergence from my normal practice, which is to avoid writing about anything newsworthy or topical. Some recent sad accusations against a prominent Christian leader caught my eye this past week, and prompted the following reflections.

Conspicuous sins

It’s happened again.

A much-loved, high-profile evangelical leader is being accused of sexual impropriety. I won’t mention his name, not only because I have no way of knowing whether the accusations are true or not, but because his particular name and his particular case is not the reason for this week’s Payneful Truth.

I’m writing because I wonder whether you get the same sick feeling in your guts as I do when you hear about these things. Is there no-one with integrity, not even one? Can’t these people just keep their pants on? And where on earth do they find the time?

Why is it that these high profile Christian leaders—the mega-church pastors, the denominational head honchos, the international speaker-circuit guys—seem so regularly to have their feet of clay exposed and smashed?

At one level, I suppose it is because of their very prominence. The sins of some men are conspicuous, going before them to judgement (says Paul); but the sins of others appear later (1 Tim 5:24).

The sins of famous pastors are news. The sins of ordinary pastors are known only by a very few.

But although the sins themselves might be different in character and appearance, they are sins nevertheless. Like loving God, sin is a single, unitary phenomenon, with one object and one goal. Sin is the proud rejection of God and his ways, and the exalting of ourselves and our purposes above all others. And just as the love of God manifests itself in multiple virtues, so sin reveals itself in multiple vices.

What, for example, would we say are the common but less conspicuous vices of the ordinary pastor—say, the pastor of a smallish, just-viable church of 80 adults that potters along and makes do from year to year? Despair perhaps, or laziness? Self-pity or blame-shifting or resentment of others’ success? A persecution complex? Comfort-gluttony or alcohol abuse? An unwillingness to take a risk in case it fails (again) and my battered self-image takes another blow?

A lack of outward success hurts our pride, and wounded pride looks for relief wherever it can find it. The mega-church leader, by contrast, has a surfeit of outward success, and faces a different set of temptations.

I was chatting not long ago with a prominent US-based Christian author, and he asked me what I thought was the besetting problem of the mega-church. I fumbled around and said something about a lack of personal relationship among the members.

“No”, he said. “It’s corruption.”

The truth of this observation hit home immediately.

Imagine how difficult it must be to become a beloved and powerful leader within such a massive group of people without it inflating your pride and corrupting your integrity. The high profile church leader begins to believe that he must indeed be worthy of all the admiration and acclaim he so regularly receives; that he has a special place in the church and in God’s purposes; that the little embellishments and exaggerations he starts to make to burnish his image are helpful for the church, because they provide an inspiring example; that his sins and weaknesses are understandable and forgivable, given the extraordinary pressure he is under, and how lonely and hunted he often feels; that he deserves the expensive toys he indulges himself with; that any problems that do emerge are less important than the continued growth and success of the ministry, and so can be rationalised away; that his poor (even abusive) treatment of church employees is the cracking of a few eggs in order to make God’s omelette.