Those are the words of a Jacksonville, FL pastor to his congregation after the church’s youth pastor was arrested last week for sexually molesting a 15-year-old girl.
Truth is… I’ve heard these words way too many times.
“These allegations come as a complete shock.”
Should they, really?
Should there not have been some warning signs? Could there not have been a way to protect the church (and this 15 year-old from this youth pastor?)
Well… yes, and no.
First, you can never truly stop someone from doing something like this. Even with the best safeguards, the attraction of sin is so strong that they will find a way around the safeguards put in place.
That said… most churches do NOT have adequate safeguards in place.
In some ways it’s hard to believe that these things come as a ‘complete shock’.
No body gets up in the morning and accidentally (or in the spur of the moment) has sex with a 15 year old girl. That just doesn’t happen.
Something was happening long before that in the heart of the youth pastor.
And we have to constantly be looking for the signs.
We have to care about our employees, not just about their work, but about their family and their lives.
Are they happy, balanced, unstressed?
Are they accountable to anyone?
Do we notice anything different about them?
These types of behavior are nearly always the acting out of some area of unhealthiness in a person.
And we need to be sure that we are never in complete shock.
I wonder… have you ever had an instance where you had a friend or staff member fall like this? If so, was it a complete shock? In retrospect, should you have seen in coming in some way, shape or form? Or did they totally hide things and completely fool you?
I’d love to hear your perspective…
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I had a friend that was a youth pastor in our area. He got involved romantically and physically with a 16 year old. In this case, she was the one perusing it (and had been involved with older guys in the past), but he should’ve been the adult and put a stop to it.
There were definitely signs ahead of time that something was fishy… He’d drive her jeep and she’d drive his car… Late night talks… I challenged him on it as a friend and he claimed it was all good.
In his case, he was insecure and struggled with self-esteemed, so he was eating up the attention she paid to him. In reality, he never should have been launched into ministry without those issues being addressed.
We had a staff member and his wife who BOTH got involved with sexually explicit chat rooms. We knew nothing until he came to tell us that his wife was flying to another city to have a sexual encounter with someone she had met through the chat room.
We were totally blindsided. Looking back now, I still don’t see any way we could have known what was going on.
The Bible says “your sin will find you out,” but it doesn’t say when that will happen.
I agree that this sort of thing should not be a “complete shock” as often as it seems to be. Pastoral staffs need to know each other, be connected as families, and ask one another tough questions. If this is going on, the number of “shocks” should go down. The few immoral issues I’ve seen did not involve minors and were shocks. Each was asked about odd behavior and denied any wrong doing until proven. Devastating to all, but not “shocking” to those close to the situation.
We always want to believe the best about ministers, even though we know better. Often we don’t see and we are “completely shocked” because we can’t imagine that ministers would let their (our) sin nature reign and break the bonds of trust and faithfulness. Denial is not just a river in Egypt (Mark Twain), it does a thriving business in the local church too.
No one, lay or official, shall be entrusted to be with minors, or the opposite sex without another person with them. (Church By-Law’s, Mountain View Southern Baptist Church,.Porterville, Ca.) Last revised 2000.
This should be the rule, not the exception. However, If you knew the heart of the person standing next to you, you would get up and move away. And unfortunately, that includes me.
We owned a small franchise store and hired a local youth pastor in his 20s to be the day manager. People were complaining they couldn’t get waited on when he was working alone — and if I walked by the store he was always on the computer up front. Pornography reigned in his life.
I agree that there needs to be a policy for all Pastors, teachers, etc that they shouldn’t be alone in counseling, teaching, etc. They need an another person or assistant. This problem has been around since day one — that’s why Church insurance policies have insurance clauses for immorality law suits.
That’s why the Bible warns against wolves in sheep’s clothing. The wolves come in — and separate (alone) the sheep — and then they kill them.
The enemy comes to lie, kill, destroy and as leaders we need to be cautious. Men don’t need to be teaching the 4th grade girls Sunday School class — and with recent headlines women shouldn’t be teaching the Jr High boys alone. Pastors should have their wives present for counseling of women. There is safety in numbers.
Its a sad,sad state of affairs — but its a sick and needy world. Christ is the answer for all problems but the Word says we are to be wise.
I agree!