When a Leader Falls

Congregational Email – December 2006

by Rich Nathan

When A Leader Falls

Recent news reports have communicated yet another story of a prominent Christian leader who has fallen into sin. The story of Pastor Ted Haggard and his confession of immorality has been broadcast around the world. How should Christians respond to the news of a Christian leader’s fall?

1. We ought to grieve. In the Old Testament when Saul was rejected as King because of his repeated acts of disobedience, we read in 1 Samuel 15.35:

Until the day Samuel died, he did not go to see Saul again, though Samuel mourned for him.

In fact, the prophet Samuel grieved so long over the fall of King Saul that the Lord had to correct him for mourning so much. We read in 1 Samuel 16.1:

The LORD said to Samuel, “How long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him as king over Israel?” 1 Samuel 16:1

When the Corinthians had a situation of immorality in their midst, the apostle Paul exhorted them saying,

And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? 1 Corinthians 5:2

It is appropriate for us to grieve whenever a person destroys themselves. It is all the more so appropriate to grieve when a well-regarded ministry is destroyed. We grieve not only for the leader, but we grieve for the leader’s family and the price the family has to pay for the leader’s sin. We grieve for the pain caused to the leader’s church. And we especially grieve that the name of the Lord is dragged through the mud by the enemies of God. Grief, not joy or self-righteous superiority, is also the emotion we ought to have when we are forced to discipline someone who is involved in unrepentant sin. The apostle Paul modeled the correct emotion every Christian ought to have whenever we have to correct A Christian brother or sister in 2 Corinthians 2.4.

For I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you. 2 Corinthians 2:4

2. We ought to fear God. The fear of God is not just something that was taught to the

Jews in the Old Testament. Jesus taught us New Testament believers to fear God. Thus, we read in Matthew 10.28 these words:

“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 10:28

Everyone who claims to know God ought to stand in reverence and awe of God’s holiness and power. We ought to fear turning away from God and having our hearts captured by God-substitutes such as lust, greed, ambition, or an addiction. Throughout the Bible we are taught that the God who is our lover and friend is a jealous God. He does not tolerate competitors for his affection in our lives. In cultivating a fear of God, it is always appropriate to remind ourselves that everything we do is done in the sight of God. And every offense we commit is not only committed against ourselves, but also is committed against God. So, when the Prodigal Son squandered the inheritance he received from his earthly father on loose living and prostitutes, he didn’t only confess his sin against his earthly father, he confessed that also he sinned against God saying, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.”

3. we ought to repent of our own sins. People came to Jesus and told him of two great tragedies that had occurred in their day. One was that some innocent people had been killed by Pontius Pilate; a second involved eighteen people who were killed when a tower fell in Siloam. Jesus used these two reports of tragedy not to underline the sin of those who had perished, but rather to call all of the rest of us to repentance. So Jesus said in Luke 13.5:

“I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” Luke 13:5

In other words, it is not just the fallen leader who needs to repent. All of us need repentance. We must not think that just because someone else’s sin has been disclosed (and our sin has not yet been disclosed) that God is more upset with them than with us. We all need a deep inward change of our minds and hearts regarding our love affairs with our own pet sins. The news of a leader’s fall is a wake-up call to the rest of us to repent.

4. We ought to guard ourselves against hypocrisy.

Jesus said in Luke 12.1: “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.”

In other words, just as yeast spreads and impacts a whole lump of dough, so hypocrisy can spread and impact our entire way of life. What is hypocrisy? Very simply, it means to play act. Hypocrisy means pretending to be better than we are. Hypocrisy involves us living one way before people and another way in private before God. To some degree,

we are all hypocrites. We all play pretend. We all wish to appear better than we are. We all wear masks. But the fact that each of us is, to some degree, a hypocrite should not serve as an excuse for us to indulge in more and more hypocrisy. Rather, we are warned to turn, as fully as we can, to Jesus who alone can deliver us from the sin of hypocrisy. As we see men and women get trapped by sin (including the sin of hypocrisy), we need to kneel at the feet of Jesus and ask him to reveal to us big and little things, significant and insignificant things, which may be offending God.

5. We ought to pray. It is always appropriate for us to pray not only for ourselves but also for our Christian leaders and churches. But we ought to pray all the more whenever we hear of a leader’s fall. We know that Satan does paint a target on leaders. We know

that every leader is vulnerable and that every church is upheld only by the grace of God. Pray for inward holiness for ourselves and our leaders. Pray for protection from the work of the evil one. And pray that God would weave even the tragic news of a leader’s fall together for good: the good of the fallen leader, the good of his family, the good of his church, and the good of all who hear this news and take it to heart by repenting!

"Send the Chaperones Away" -- Rumi

Inside me a hundred beings

are putting their fingers to their lips and saying,

“That’s enough for now. Shhhhh.” Silence

is an ocean. Speech is a river.

When the ocean is searching for you, don’t walk

to the language-river. Listen to the ocean,

and bring your talky business

to an end.

Traditional words are just babbling

in that presence, and babbling is a substitute

for sight. When you sit down beside your beloved,

send the chaperones away, the old women

who brought you together.

When you are mature and with your love,

the love letters and matchmakers

seem irritating.

You might read those letters,

but only to teach beginners about love. One who sees

grows silent. When you’re with one of those,

be still and quiet, unless he asks you

to talk. Then draw the words out

as I do this poem with Husam,

the radiance of God.

I try to stop talking,

but he makes me continue. Husam, if you are in

the vision, why do you want me to say words?

Maybe it’s like the poet Abu Nuwas,

who said in Arabic,

Pour me some wine,

and talk to me about the wine.

The cup is at my mouth

but my ear interrupts,

“I want some.”

O ear, what you get is the heat.

You turn red with this wine.

But the ear says,

“I want more than that!”

to understand love

a weary heart stopped crying long enough to see the sky

and she fell in love with beauty there --

out of the dark forest she wandered

into the wide open spaces of peace

afforded by the warmth of the sun

and the promise after the storm clouds passed.

“now i see,” she mused to the emptiness,

“now i see.”

a sudden illumination, leading to a repose

such as this is indeed a welcome reprieve

from the tumult the heart had formerly known.

she stretched out in happy satisfaction

on the cold damp earth

and let the sun dry her out of her soggy state.

dryness and clarity baked into her,

and she began to understand love.

we must love one another or die. . .

"All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky

There is no such thing as the State

And no one exists alone;

Hunger allows no choice

To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die."

- W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939"

good stuff

if i were you, i would check out this podcast. especially the sermons from the series on 1 Corinthians, and even more specifically the sermons on the gifts. i find them quite biblically based and challenging. go here!

= from Bonhoeffer =

here are few words i found inspiring from "the cost of discipleship" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. i would highly recommend this book. it is a hard read (challenging) but well worth it for really testing the heart.

this is from the chapter on the disciple and his neighbors.

Thus i am not permitted to apply to the other person what does not apply to me. For, with my judgment according to good and evil, I only affirm the other person’s evil, for he does exactly the same. But he does not know of the hidden iniquity of the good but seeks his justification in it. If i condemn his evil actions i thereby confirm him in his apparently good actions which are yet never the good commended by Christ. Thus we remove him from the judgment of Christ and subject him to human judgment. But i bring God’s judgment upon my head, for i then do not live any more on and out of the grace of Jesus Christ, but out of my knowledge of good and evil which i hold on to. To everyone God is the kind of God he believes in.

===

But the disciples must ask, they must seek and knock, and then God will hear them. They have to learn that their anxiety and concern for others must drive them to intercession.

it's times like these...

i like reminiscing. take last evening as an instance to prove my point. we were watching a girly movie and my darling and quite pregnant sister got up to use the restroom. we paused the movie so she wouldn’t miss anything, and in the few minutes that she was gone i fell into a state of amazement at: life.

it’s incredible and frightening how time passes so quickly and slowly simultaneously. it’s crazy to look back over the last 2 years and remember where i was, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. in the course of two short years i have run the gauntlet of my emotions concerning my future. i remember distinctly sitting out back of Trinity UMC one youth group night the summer or fall of my senior year and expressing to someone there that i was going to YWAM when i graduated because i couldn’t think of anything better to do than to serve my God in that way. then, for reasons i can’t tie together, i decided to wait and go to college first. i like to think it was God’s way of preparing me for what He has for me, but perhaps it was a free-will decision. (for a funny perspective on free will, check out Scott Adams’ blog).

anyways, in summation: two years has produced this varied response to the question “what are you doing with you life, Kara?”: 1) go to YWAM 2) go to Malone 3) go to OSU-N 4) go to YWAM Mexico 5) go to YWAM Chico. and to Chico i go! i prizzomise that short of some writing on the wall from Jesus i will go to Chico for DTS in January. i fully believe that is where God wants me, although at times it is not where i want to be.

there’s a lot to be learned on my end. even this movie that we watched last night, “the prize-winner of defiance, Ohio” taught me a little something. in it, the lead character (wife to a drunkard and mother of 10) keeps her family together and surviving by winning poetry and jingle contests. this woman shows the love of Christ m ore thoroughly and completely than i’ve ever actually seen in life. over and over and over again she gives grace, and more grace, and still more grace. don’t you think the human storehouses would cease to provide such measures of love and kindness? especially toward people who don’t deserve it and repeatedly lash out against it? yet love breaks through. at one point in the movie, the mother says these incredible words to her grudge-bearing daughter who is angry with her father: “forgive him so you can embrace this truly remarkable day.” it was a stunning example of the freedom in Christ when a person lays down their life for love. but boy, does it look hard.

i think the call to us is to lay down whatever it is in our lives that keeps us unlovely so that we “can truly embrace” these remarkable days that we are handed. i marvel at the consistency of love offered and the quality of it as well. it was so much like Christ’s friends, or at least what i imagine watching Christ interact would have looked like. funny enough, the whole movie brought to mind an old hymn that i had only ever heard the first line of. thankfully, my madre is a fountain of hymn-lyrics and she busted it out for me. i later found it in one of the old hymnals laying around and thought i would share it with you:

He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater

He sendeth more strength when the labors increase;

To added affliction He addeth His mercy,

To Multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.

His love has no limit, His grace has no measure,

His power has no boundary known unto men;

For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,

He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again!

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,

When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,

When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,

Our Father’s full giving is only begun.

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO BECAME HIS COUNSELOR? Or WHO HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:33-36)

returning - as promised

this is a fear that i have that i would appreciate prayer about: i am afraid that upon my return i will not have a place, any place. well, especially the place that i want. there are certain things that i desire to return to and i am afraid that when i return my place will be filled and there will be no need for me. and then i will exist in a quasi-existing state, living but not fulfilling any roles or contributing where my heart is passionate.

i suppose i know full well that since God has ordained for me to go then when He ordains for me to return it will be for His reasons again, and i will have a place. but in honesty i'm very happy with what i've built up around me and i enjoy being secure in my positions. perhaps that is something that God desires to strip me of.

i know the answer to my problems, i know the comfort for my fears.
but sometimes i just prefer to sit and wish for tears
i long for tears to flowing run from heart then down my face
to express what i have long since felt from bowing to Your grace:
the frustration that has been building deep in my mind
am i not doing this right?

school's out in another 2 weeks basically, thanks to God! i am ready to be done studying and attending classes. the end of the quarter marks one year for Micah and Marjorie to be in Bosnia and they will return to Denver that day! i am so excited. they will be home (here) for New Years and it will indeed be amazing to see them. this week, for thanksgiving, Josiah and Aleen are coming in town and i feel like i haven't seen them for years! it will be good to have some heart to heart talks with Aleen. i am so thankful for my family, i do give thanks for them.

i also want to say a huge and general thank you to God for love. totally for His love that draws us to Christ so we can live in love with the Divine one! and what a love. i am falling in love with the love of Christ and the person of Christ and i love it. it's all about love.

what i do? i do for Love. what You do? You do for You. All You do is rooted in Love, and i am rooted in You.

givingthanks

hope renewed
it cannot disappoint
God has chosen to keep me thus.
heart lifted
He will not disappoint.
You taste better than all of this stuff.

kept secure
i could not be more blessed
You have kept me again and again.
rescued, safe,
overwhelmed at Your feet:
i remain.
Oh, how i need You, Friend.

Let me just say that i am amazed
before i here lay down my pen
before i now lay down my head
before i sink into rest
let me just say that i am too blessed
Your grace is sufficient for me
Your hand has dealt wonderfully
Your love is enough.
Let me just say...thanks.

You are far better, than the richest of fare.

Love the Journeyer, Love to You, Lord God.

will i have a place when i return?

more thoughts on this later, for now:

“Promise me you'll never forget me because if I thought you would I'd never leave.”

-- Winnie the pooh

nap time.

i am exhausted from life and living. i am half-filled with energy and half-drained to the core.
there's my personal update for the day. :)

i read 1 Corinthians 13 today, the good old 'love chapter'. what a reminder of the power of love! God does what He does ultimately out of his vast and endless love for you and i. and we have the opportunity to love Him back and love the people around us in creative ways and in the truth of Christ. what an obligation!
someone said:
"there are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love."
that's because love is hard hard work. As Joyce Cary said, "Love doesn't grow on trees like apples in Eden - it's something you have to make. And you must use your imagination too."
Love is an imaginative and intentional work that takes commitment and unselfishness. too bad we are not naturally endowed with a high level of either one! but our God is all about the process of making us more like His son Christ in everything. and so He sets us on a path of love and living to make us more like Him.
This love is not a flashy, attention-grabbing love. This is the love of Christ that seeks to better others without making it's presence flamboyant. our love has the ability to make Christ's presence flamboyant while we serve quietly. "But some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint - like a heartbeat. And pure love - why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there."
And so, my friends, it is time to love. Pursue love, the real and true love of Christ. live unselfishly, live intentionally, live seeking the Kingdom first and foremost. All other things will be added to you.

“Don't brood. Get on with living and loving. You don't have forever.”

oh i guess i should probably say something now, huh?

Here's to easy French tests and studying for Sociology exams.

Last week ended well, with a Sunday at NewLife for once and a family outing that was fantastic. God continues to provide for DTS in ways that i don't expect, and i am amazed by the outpouring of resources and the willingness of the people in my life to contribute to this phase of my life. it's super humbling, and i don't quite know how to handle it.

i'll be back at the Young Adult's group tonight, for the first time in about a month. Things have just been coming up! i'm glad to be returning. it is super weird to me that today is November 14th already. where is the time going?

super big shoutout to big brother #1! Happy birthday Josiah! see you next week!

ok back to whatever i was talking about.

i had an interesting thought about evolution today. i was sitting in Psych class, and we were discussing Freud's psychoanalytic theory about gender socialization and how males and females come to be male and female. Then we talked about an evolutionary theory, which mentioned that species and genders over millions of years develop the characteristics necessary for survival of the species, for passing along the genes. it said that the male birds with the brightest feathers get the girl birds, and pass on their bright feather genes to the next generation. and the girl birds that don't have parasites can pass on their non-parasytic genese to the next generation. and voila! here are all these birds.

ok the point is: evolutionary psychology assumes that the species on the earth live for the sole purpose of reproduction. it seems that all of the evolutionary theories focus on the ability of the species to pass on the necessary characteristics for the furtherance of the society. While biological reproduction is a viable facet of every species' existence, it seems to me that the quality of life and the joy of living is widely ignored and not mentioned in these theories. maybe because they feel so much time has passed that it's easier to talk in terms of various generations without mentioning much more than their reproduction and subsequent death. do we live to make babies and then die? what kind of a life is that?! pretty lame, if you ask me.

Evolutionary theories give us no purpose because they hold no purposeful aim other than to exist and propagate the next generation. what a lot they miss by holding these tenents! they cannot ignore that their lives contain more than the acts necessary for reproduction. in life there is pain, sadness, joy, beauty, food, love, color, it's LIFE! my thought is that evolution has taken the life out of living.

later in class we watched a movie about PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. it was a hard video to watch. there was a story about a girl who was molested by 5 people in her family, got pregnant at 9 and had a 5-month old baby who was promptly killed by the molesting father, then the next year at age 10 had a full-term son who was illegally given up for adoption. and now she is a mother and wife and is trying to deal with all of this junk from her past, things that people should NEVER have to think about, let alone walk through as 9 year olds. i hate the fact that other members of my species are capable of such evil, probably because it means i'm not that far away from committing similar acts. if we are all part of the human race, what makes some people evil and some people good? inherently i am not any better than a child molester - because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. we are indeed a messed up race and we are digging ourselves deeper.

sorry for the heavy words, i hope they made sense and inspired creative thoughts about the need to reach people for Christ. are we doing all we can?

good morning orange juice!

a lot of things

A lot of things are going on. i've just returned from a wonderfully frustrating weekend with the Middle High kids from the church. It really was a great weekend of relationship building and sowing seeds, but it served as yet another reminder that laboring is hard hard work. It feels fruitless to a point, but as my dear brother reminded me today,

"the Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance."
(2 Peter 3.9)

There was a verse that i heard last week and was enthralled, so i looked it up in Philippians. Reading on, i discovered it was buried in rich context only a few chapters from where the sessions of the MH retreat where based. It's another reminder of who's really in charge around here:

so then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
(Philippians 2.12-13)

it is for this reason that i

"count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom i have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that i may gain Christ"
(Philippians 3.8)

Because of hope deferred it's been a frustrating day, in my writings this weekend i discovered that

'i cannot cry.
i have no anger to release into violence.
my frustration is great but i will not pound walls.
my world is too close to turn it all off
and there is no darkness or peace.
are you enough Christ? will you really really someday satisfy?
will this ever get easier?
are you really better?'

These are questions my MH girls have not even tasted an answer to, and don't even know that they are asking. but they are deep in the hearts of all humankind, of this i am convinced.

i felt God calling for me to pick up His words and experience peace, but i was scared of what i thought He would lead me to. i begged Him for words to sustain and not crush me. He gently led me back to Lamentations, one of the first sections of the bible that ever captured my heart:

My soul has been rejected from peace;
i have fogotten happiness.
so i say, "my strength has perished,
and so has my hope from the Lord."
Remember my affliction and my wandering,
the wormwood and bitterness.
Surely my soul remembers
and is bowed down within me.
This i recall to mind,
therefore i have hope.
The Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed
never cease,
for His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
"The Lord is my portion," says my soul,
"Therefore i have hope in Him."
The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
to the person who seeks Him.
(Lamentations 3.20-25)

And so i am led to trust again that God's nearness to me is my only good, and to ask Him just how GOOD He really is, and what that means for my life. Life is a wild ride, and my head is spinning tonight with happenings and meanderings and callings. God still has not answered some of my questions, but maybe it's that He's answering with a 'not now' and not necessarily a 'forever' or a 'never'.

live from my heart, it's monday night.

"hoping for hope"

"here's hoping for hope..."
and the poet raised her glass,
those around her gathered for love
nodded agreement and silently thought:
"what strength, what dignity, what heart this one has! to stand in the onslaught of war..."

meanwhile the lover cries without shedding a tear,
anguished by the thoughts of future realities --
she envisions her only prayer:
"i am falling helpless, and desperately longing for peace.
all i have wanted is inescapably withdrawn and all hope has been extinguished.
Everything, but love."
and the new year dawns.

i am the poet, giving the toast, making the words to make sense.
giving a moment a forever caption
my words with my life i will serve.

i am the crowd that has gathered for love, admiring my own strength and courage.

but most i'm the lover who knows the truth and sees the reality --
not having the words to explain it into cognition i simply surrender to love.