Restoring Kingdom Builders

When I was in high school, there was a girl at my church who liked me … and I knew she did.

Because I didn’t feel the same way, I tried never to say or do anything that would make her think I wanted to be more than friends.

She ended up going to my college, although I didn’t recall seeing her around campus.

One afternoon, as I was getting in my car to drive home, she came running toward me and asked if she could speak with me.

She asked me to forgive her.

She confessed that she had liked me for a long time, but because I didn’t reciprocate, she came to hate me instead … and her hatred was eating away at her so much that she wanted to get rid of it … by telling me how she felt.

I verbally forgave her on the spot, which seemed to help her feel better, and she left with a heavy load removed from her shoulders … and transferred onto mine.

But I’ve always remembered that encounter.

The good: it took a lot of courage for her to track me down at school and speak with me, and I’m sure she felt better after our little talk … but I never saw her again.

The bad: I wish she hadn’t told me that she had hated me for several years.  I started wondering, “Who else hates me but hasn’t told me?”

Scripture encourages God’s people to deal with interpersonal issues as they arise.  Paul writes in Ephesians 4:26-27:

‘In your anger do not sin’; Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.

Paul tells us four things in these two verses:

*It’s normal for believers to feel anger at times.

*It’s possible to be angry without sinning.

*We are commanded to resolve our anger before nightfall.

*When we let our anger fester, Satan gains an entry point into our lives.

Please note that pastors and church leaders are included – not excluded – in these verses.

Unresolved anger can turn into bitterness, and Satan loves to take one person’s bitterness and disseminate it throughout a family … or a church.

As I often say, division in a church starts when people begin to pool their grievances … usually against their pastor.

So God’s counsel to all of us is:

RESOLVE YOUR ANGRY FEELINGS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE … AND RESTORE BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS AT YOUR FIRST OPPORTUNITY.

If every Christian did this, we’d have fewer conflicts in churches, and fewer pastors would ever experience the heartbreak of a forced termination.

But many … if not most … believers fail to deal with offenses as they arise, so they hoard their grievances – which eats them up alive – and end up passing them on to others.

Bitterness then becomes a cancer that eats away at the joy and effectiveness of people’s lives.

People then tell themselves, “I can’t get rid of my anger until I get rid of the object of my anger” … in all too many cases, the pastor.

Let me share two stories that present opposite ways of handling an issue with a pastor.

The first story involves confronting a pastor immediately about an offense.

One Easter many years ago, a man in my church ended our first service with a performance song.  As the singers and musicians gathered at the front to receive directions for the second service, this gentleman approached me and accused me of saying something derogatory about him right after the service.

I assured the man that I did not say what he claimed, but he was adamant.  (It’s not something I would even think, much less say about another person.)

If I apologized to him, it would be a lie … but if I didn’t apologize to him, I knew he was going to spread my “offense” to as many people as possible.

I’m glad he came to me directly before he said anything to anyone else.

But he couldn’t have chosen a worse time.

I understand that singers and musicians can be very sensitive … especially on a big Sunday like Easter.

But pastors can be sensitive as well … especially right before or after they preach.

That’s a sacred time for a pastor.

I can remember times in my ministry where I was so shook up over something someone said before a sermon that I couldn’t wait to finish my sermon and go home.

One person’s need to “unload” can impact an entire congregation.

So if you do need to speak with your pastor about an issue you feel strongly about … wait until he’s done preaching for the day first … or you might indirectly harm your church family.

Or better yet … calm down … forgive him from the heart … and then either speak with him or let it go.

Dr. Archibald Hart believes that before we confront someone, we should first forgive them, and only then should we confront them.

Because otherwise, we may confront them in anger … as the singer did with me … and we end up making matters worse.

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The second story involves waiting two decades to confront a pastor.

In his book Love in Hard Places, theologian D. A. Carson tells about the time a Christian friend took Carson aside.

The friend told Carson that he wanted a private word with him because Carson had offended him. So the two of them arranged a meeting, and Carson’s friend told Carson about an incident that had happened twenty-one years earlier.

Carson and his friend were having a theological discussion and his friend quoted a few words from an author who had written in French. Because Carson grew up speaking French, Carson repeated the French words after his friend because he was unconsciously correcting his pronunciation.

Carson’s friend didn’t say anything at the time, but several decades later, he told Carson, “I want you to know, Don, that I have not spoken another word of French from that day to this.”

Carson apologized for offending his friend, but upon later reflection, Carson felt “there was something profoundly evil about nurturing a resentment of this order for twenty-one years.”

After all, how can you even remember what happened if the incident occurred so long ago?

Hold onto that last line as you read the next story.

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This is my concern about the “Me Too” movement in our culture right now.

It’s not only in the culture … it’s spread to Christ’s church as well.

WORLD Magazine – a Christian publication – ran an article recently that greatly disturbed me.

Twenty years ago, a twenty-two-year-old youth pastor took a seventeen-year-old high school senior girl on a date.

They parked on a secluded road.  He asked her to do something to him that was wrong.

She started doing it … he realized how wrong it was … and he got out of his car, collapsed, and repeated over and over how sorry he was.

This young man confessed his wrongdoing to the young woman.

He also apologized to the girl’s family and her discipleship group, as well as the church staff and the church leadership.

(Most people … even in ministry … would not speak to as many people as that young man did in admitting what he had done wrong.)

And when he admitted his sin, he lost his job.

(I might add, in that state, seventeen is still an age of legal consent.)

This young man ended up moving to another state and eventually becoming a staff member in another church.  Several decades later, he became a teaching pastor in that same church.

He is married with five sons.

The pastor believes that his sin “was dealt with … twenty years ago.”  He disclosed his sin to the leaders of his former church … to his wife before they married … and to the staff of his new church before joining the ministry.

The woman contends that the original church hid the youth pastor’s specific sin from the congregation and then allowed him to resign without public confession.  She claims they engaged in a “big cover up.”

But the pastor said, “Until now, I did not know there was unfinished business with [her.]”

The pastor has been placed on a leave of absence.  There is now an online petition calling for the pastor’s resignation, and a book that he’s written has had its publication date canceled.

Because of the backlash of the Me Too movement, there is now a Christian backlash against this pastor as well.

What does this story tell us about the forgiveness of sin among believers … and pastors?

Maybe the following story can shed some light on this situation.

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In his book Pleasing God, the late R. C. Sproul – one of my favorite theologians – tells the following story:

“When I was in seminary, I was a student minister in a small church.  I insulted the daughter of a woman who was a pillar of the church.  The daughter was deeply offended.  I went to her and apologized profusely.  She refused to forgive me.  I went two more times and apologized literally in tears.  Still she refused to forgive me.”

Sproul continues:

“Eventually, the time came for my monthly meeting with the minister who was my pastoral supervisor.  He was an eighty-five-year-old retired missionary who had spent fifty years in the interior of China and five of those years in a communist prison camp.  He was a man of extraordinary godliness.  I went to him with deep embarrassment for the mess I had made of my first pastoral experience.  I told him what I had done.  He listened carefully and then replied calmly: ‘Young man, you have made two serious mistakes.  The first is obvious.  You should not have insulted the daughter.  The second mistake is this: you should not have apologized three times.  After the first apology, the ball was in her court.  By refusing to forgive you, she is heaping coals of fire upon her head.'”

But … and I know this from firsthand experience … a single person who is angry with a pastor can destroy his reputation and career.

We’re living in the time of “one strike and you’re out … forever.”

Most of the time, if someone tries to destroy their pastor, they will indirectly destroy their church as well.

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When I left my last church in December 2009, I knew what was going to happen.

Everybody and anybody who didn’t like me was going to float their grievances against me to others in the congregation.

Although I made mistakes during my 10 1/2 years in that church … as I did in every congregation … I felt I made far fewer mistakes there than in any church I’d ever served.

And yet, how ironic that soon after I left, I was charged with committing far more mistakes in that church than in all my other ministries combined.

When a pastor is charged with wrongdoing, those accusations may or may not say something about him … but they almost always say something profound about his accuser(s).

I’m reminded of Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:14-15:

“For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

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My wife and I just received a bill for nearly a thousand dollars.  It was for medical care that she had received fifteen months ago.

We were very upset about the bill, as you might imagine.

In fact, we were positive we had paid that bill completely.

My wife contacted the medical office, but they said that we owed the money.

When we did some research, we discovered that we did in fact owe the money … but that it took the medical office seven months to send the bill to us.

I hate it when that happens.

And I hate it when somebody hoards a grievance against me … especially when I assume that our relationship is fine … when it isn’t really fine at all.

It’s unbearable for a pastor to ask himself, “I wonder who is going to tell me that they hate me next?”

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Pastors make mistakes, and they need to admit their mistakes … ask for forgiveness … and, if necessary, engage in restitution if it’s required.

But pastors aren’t angels, either, and when they sin and repent, they need to be forgiven … or their career and reputation can be destroyed.

I saw a video last night of a shepherd and his flock.  It’s here:

The flock knocks the shepherd over, but when he tries to get up, another sheep charges at the shepherd and knocks him down.

It’s actually pretty funny.

But what isn’t funny is when a pastor does something wrong … admits it … tries to make things right … and is knocked over by the sheep anyway.

Your thoughts?