Like you, I’ve heard a lot in the past few days about U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
Like you, I have some personal opinions about the wisdom of exchanging five terrorist leaders for the sergeant.
Like you, I wonder why Sgt. Bergdahl ended up being captured by the Haqqani network.
And like you, I don’t know whether Sgt. Bergdahl is guilty of desertion … or innocent … or something in between.
But I do know this: Sgt. Bergdahl has not yet told his side of the story … and until he does … we need to be very careful about making final judgments.
Why bring this up on a blog devoted to pastors and church conflict?
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Several months ago, a friend and colleague sent me an email.
My friend had spent several hours with a pastor who was forced out of a church he had planted.
One of the staff members began spreading a rumor that the pastor and his wife were taking illegal drugs.
Someone called a public meeting.
When the pastor stood up to confront the charges being made about him, those who opposed him stood up and shouted, “You’re lying!”
Because they kept yelling at their pastor, he finally stopped talking and walked out of the church … and resigned soon afterward.
Satan couldn’t have planned it any better.
That pastor – and all pastors – need to be protected by the following safeguards in every church:
First, the pastor has the right to know any charges being made about him.
How many people told that pastor that people were saying he was taking illegal drugs?
My guess: few, if any.
I was recently told for the first time about a charge some people made about me 4 1/2 years ago.
The charge was 100% false, but why wasn’t I told about it sooner? How many people believe it to this day?
And why wasn’t I ever given a chance to defend myself against that charge?
Second, the pastor has the right to meet with his accusers.
The staff member who made the accusation about drug usage needed to speak with the pastor and his wife before taking his charge to anyone else.
By taking his charge to others first, he could have ruined their reputations and careers. What if the charge was totally false?
If a similar charge was made against a top leader in a secular corporation … and it proved to be false … the person making the charge would be dismissed and possibly sued for slander.
When people make charges against a pastor … but never make the charges to his face … they almost always exaggerate the charges. Remember that.
Third, the pastor has the right to see any and all evidence against him.
What kind of evidence did the staff member have that the pastor and his wife were taking drugs? Blood tests? Photographs? Eyewitness accounts?
Or was it all just speculation?
The pastor needed to be presented with all the evidence.
If the evidence was strong, the pastor might have privately asked for forgiveness … or gone into rehab … or resigned on his own … without involving the congregation.
But if the evidence was fabricated … or misinterpreted … then the pastor needed to be able to tell his side of the story.
Otherwise, when we don’t like a pastor, we can just manufacture lies about him, and he’ll be forced to leave … without anyone ever discovering where those lies originated.
Fourth, the pastor should never initially be confronted with a charge in public.
Why would a staff member take a charge against his pastor public?
To embarrass him? To humiliate him? To use the power of the mob?
Yes, yes, and yes … but most of all, to engage in retribution.
Many of the charges that people make against pastors are really punitive in nature.
How can you tell?
Because the people making the charges never talk about restoring their pastor … or redeeming him … but only about removing him.
Where do we ever find that sentiment in the New Testament?
Finally, the pastor should be given due process whenever charges are made against him.
Many … if not most … churches lack such a process.
And even if they do have one, the process (found in church bylaws) is often ignored because people become anxious and overly-emotional.
But it’s critical that a pastor … as well as any spiritual leader … be allowed to have a hearing and tell his version of events. Proverbs 18:17 says, “The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him.”
When do church leaders ever question those who make charges against their pastor?
The ethos in most churches is that whenever people make accusations against a pastor, they’re almost always accurate.
But they aren’t … not by a long shot.
In the story about the pastor allegedly taking drugs, why did the pastor’s opponents shout him down when he tried to answer their charges?
Because they didn’t want their pastor to be given due process. They had already selected themselves as judge, jury, and executioner, and in their eyes, he was guilty.
But if he had been allowed to speak, the truth would have exposed their own guilt and hatred, and they could not allow that to occur.
My prayer for churchgoers everywhere is that whenever they have concerns about their pastor’s character or behavior, they will insist on a fair process rather than immediately declare his innocence or his guilt.
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I don’t know the complete truth about Sgt. Bergdahl. Maybe nobody does right now.
But he shouldn’t be tried in the press, especially when he can’t answer the charges that people are making against him.
In the meantime, I’m going to try and keep an open mind about his guilt or innocence, especially after I read this article today from the pastor of the Bergdahl family:
He will have his day in court. Then we’ll find out the truth.
But please remember: neither the mainstream media … nor social media … nor your dinner table … constitute a fair and final court.
Restoring Kingdom Builders 
Excellent post, Jim. There is so much that happens behind the scenes in any situation that we (the public, the congregation, the employees, etc.) are unaware of, so we often don’t know the whole story.
And sometimes history reveals what can’t or won’t be revealed in the present.
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I think my largest concern is that leaders who are charged with offenses be able to share their side of the story before they’re declared guilty. The mob mentality is alive and well, both in our culture and in our churches. God’s people need to be fair and just in the way we treat our leaders.
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1) So glad you raise this up. I think so many well intentioned good harted people when online understandably find in the abstracted and superficially anonymous feeling digital setting can loose the real awareness of the flesh and bone- emotionally real other being discussed or even with whom they are conversing. Reminders that shake off the digital abstractedness of the internet are needed regularly to keep us in our bodies knowing we are dealing with other real bodies
2) Your point on the lack of real due process for clergy is something I definitely confronted in a painful way. I was in the midst of an adjudicatory process which presumed guilt and provided a host of structural protections related to the complainant that either presumed the validity of the charge or prevented any evaluation or challenge to the claim until after proceeding through a lengthy process conducted with the general assumption of complainant honesty and validity and accused guilt making any denial an evasive resistance to the authority of the church and unwillingness to grow and receive correction.
The reason for all of this was clearly stemming from the fact that the procedural approach being followed was one developed in responce to the failures of churches to respond effectively and justly to the charges of clergy sexual abuse and misconduct which had arisen across denominational lines at the time. Even the published resource materials from the denomination identified this history and purpose in how the process was presented.
Early on I could see how stunningly inappropriate such a process was to my own situation and the nature of the complaint that had been raised. The provisions to safe guard a victimized and abused complainant made no sense for the issue at hand. But analyzing it in light of what we have come to understand of mobbing and bullying the system miss applied held tremendous opportunities for an abusive party to invoke punitive ecclesiastical actions against the target. To make it concrete I resigned while experiencing PTSD symptoms steaming from several events one of which being bullying from a colleague that turned to mobbing behavior which I was ill prepared to confront and manage to my best advantage and the best results. So in the fragile state I was in even a year after the fact when the complaint and review where initiated being confined to a process where the role I was assigned was that of sexual predator-though there was nothing of that nature to the case at hand — still it was distressing and for someone just learning to manage PTSD it proved overwhelming and ultimately provoked decompensated.
In fact in this instance because the key denominational official overseeing the process was involved in the mobbing reaction when I came to basically act as whistle-blower on unsafe actions and failure to follow safe church policies in the care of the children in which a major disaster had been blessedly avoided. But in this case where the person charged with responding to my complaint refused to do so and promptly orchestrated a charge against me- at that point we where locked in a process that delayed my access to the arbitrating authorities for months . It was diabolical- hard to believe since it sounded paranoid to me when I described what was going on however it could be easily proven but now to do so I had to proceed in ways that while I could manage now at the time where consistently leading me to react as victims often will in a traumatized state that undermines their credibility in a context that demands one to summon ones ability to self advocate effectively.
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When you are in a hierarchical religious system, and you’re charged with some offense, both the process and the verdict can still be political in nature. Justice is often not blind in spiritual structures. However, if you are in a congregational church, or a non-denominational church, there is no hierarchy that you can appeal to. Knowing this, people can lie about you with the intent to destroy you and you have little recourse.
I believe that if a process is written down and understood by all parties, the outcome will tend to be just. But if the process is ignored or tampered with, the leaders will get the outcome they desire … which is not fair.
Thank God that someday, everyone will be judged by the same standard by a King who is perfectly just. Until that time, we must protest where we can and forgive often.
Thanks so much for reading and writing!
Jim
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