- This may be the most important talk you will hear.
- It may save your life and your ministry.
- A week doesn’t go by that a leader doesn’t experience a moral failure.
- None of us is immune.
- Even the possibility of a moral failure will take a leader down.
- There are serious issues at stake when we talk about a leader falling in the Church.
- The issues are the soul, health and future of those who have fallen and the church involved.
- We are responsible for those who have fallen and concerned about the trust that has been broken in our congregations.
- In Adam’s own church, two pastors were involved in an extramarital affair.
- There were four ways their church could respond: They could say nothing and hope no one found out; they could be evasive they could use the ‘Scarlet Letter’ approach, calling out the sin and distancing themselves from the offender; or approach with transparency, honesty, and compassion.
- The Church is called to reach out to those who are broken.
- We need to reach out to our failing leaders as we do to broken people outside of the church.
- There are two levels of integrity: the integrity of the leader to those they are responsible for and the integrity of the Church to be the Church.
- Many people expect the Church to act like Pharisees and stone those who are sinners.
- We all struggle with sin and temptation.
- There is sin and consequences but there is also grace.
- Church of the Resurrection has a Staff Covenant. The expectations and policies are clear to the staff.
- If something looks like a date or smells like a date we are going to call it a date.
- You can develop all the policies in the world but you won’t prevent something from happening.
- Twice a year, they bring the staff together to talk about misconduct.
- We are all wired with three fundamental drives: reproduction, intimacy, sin.
- Those drives can lead us towards self-desctruction.
- As leaders we are constantly giving of ourselves… we get empty, lonely, and vulnerable.
- Our vulnerability can lead us places we don’t want to go.
- “Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love…”
- We work with other people doing things that are going to change the world.
- Moment of the Maybe – when you find yourself wrestling with something and you begin to wonder… that’s where sin is justified.
- When we’re pondering the “maybe,” our reasoning diminishes.
- We never ask, “How does this end?”
- We don’t consider the consequences.
- Words have power… they are a short distance between our feelings and acting on them.
- Never share your feelings with another person that is not your spouse.
- The maybe can turn into a yes.
- Don’t let the Devil ride because he’s going to want to drive.
- There is so much pain and trust that’s broken… it’s hard to figure out where to begin again.
- There are Second Chances, but try everything to stick Plan A.
1- Remember Who You Are
- You are a child of God.
- You are a leader in the Church.
- You are someone’s husband or wife, daughter or son
- You are a child of the king.
- Ask yourself if you will feel better after you do something.
- Will I feel proud or ashamed?
- More free or more enslaved?
- What will happen to the Church, people who trusted?
- Imagine the worst possible outcome of your actions.
- How does this end happy?
- Stop, Drop, and PRAY
- Ask God to help you with your feelings.
- It’s like taking a cold shower.
- We tend to stop praying when we’re playing with the maybe.
- James 5:16
- The power of temptation is its secrecy.
- Sometimes we have to take radical means to avoid sin.
- It’s better to enter the Kingdom of God missing a hand or an eye than to have both hands and both eyes and be outside of the Kingdom.
- We might have to erect high boundaries.
- We might need to leave.
- We are called to honor God with our bodies. We are called to model for others what it means to be a follower of Christ.
- There are consequences when we fall.
- The final world of the church must always be a word of grace, not judgement.
- We serve a Lord who was a friend of sinners.
- He said, “the Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost.”
- His final prayer was “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”