Holding Pastors Accountable

The facts are clear—Steven Lawson and his wife are members of Trinity Bible Church. We have verified this information from two sources within Trinity Bible Church. It is not clear how these rumors began to spread, but like a destructive wildfire, such false accusations need to be stopped.

Source https://g3min.org/statement-regarding-steven-lawson-and-trinity-bible-c…

Why didn't anyone at P & D check with Trinity before publishing? It seems to me that if we are going to hold our brothers and sisters accountable, we owe them the courtesy of checking our facts before we start our criticism.

Apart from an apparent mistake by P&D, what does a church do when a pastor does a fireable moral failing? They pretty much fire them, and that pastor generally doesn't show his face there going forward. Side note; Julie Roys did have sources that allege Lawson was not a member. May have gotten it wrong, but there is a source.

But to the point, I'm not quite sure what changes with membership. There is a question of what one does with all the books he's written--I'm guessing the publisher is taking a bath on that!--but beyond that, I think there ought to be some soul searching about how people at TMU (where Lawson worked) and elsewhere missed the signs that something was amiss. Julie Roys' account of the matter does not suggest anything that I'd see as hugely wrong, though an incident where the young lady combed Lawson's hair and straightened his tie was reported. Maybe more comes out that will help us understand what is going on here.

but beyond that, I think there ought to be some soul searching about how people at TMU (where Lawson worked) and elsewhere missed the signs that something was amiss.

I appreciate the statement about missed signs, but I will tell you from experience that pastors involved in moral turpitude are often masters of concealment. They are exposed only after someone stumbles upon an email, text message, or dm. That is what happened in three of the four cases of pastoral moral failure that I personally witnessed as a church member and elder. In the fourth case, the married youth pastor (in his 40s) was seen being "too friendly" with one of the young, single church secretaries (in her 20s). As a result, the senior pastor asked a man on staff to surveil the youth pastor, and that is how the affair (sorry, the "clergy sexual abuse") was discovered. If someone wants to conceal and lie about a matter, there's not much you can do about it before the fact.

One member of my previous church suggested that all elders should have tracking software installed on their phones so that church members could know where their pastors are at any time of day. Really? Is that reasonable?

Ron Bean says:

Why didn't anyone at P & D check with Trinity before publishing?

It appears we made an error. A correction will be issued.

However, I would like to see a statement from the church itself. It appears that G3 has it right, but it an official statement should be made by the church. It is a terrible thing to endure for a church and who needs the extra attention a statement brings? Nonetheless, that would quell all rumours.

And we are sincerely sorry that the mistake was made. I don't think it negates the thrust of the article however.

It wasn't a pastor, but I remember being shocked when an aquaintance at church was found to have been "in flagrante delicto" with women not his wife. Not quite sure how we get to know each other well enough to figure these things out, if indeed it's possible.

There are never guarantees with humans.

Churches can be diligent about the qualifications for elders in the epistles. Maybe they can intermittently revisit them and re-evaluate the pastor/elders. But there is no mandate in the epistles for churches to become or to hire private investigators to dig, spy on, monitor, etc.

The qualifications in the epistles don’t claim to be exhaustive, though, so there is some room for practical problem-solving innovation.

And some things in those qualifications are implied, like trust.

Which leads back to the problem. A man can be entirely qualified and trustworthy at the time the church signed him up, but not later. Humans and trustworthiness… the two don’t really go together all that well. Trust always has to be qualified, scoped in some way with some always reserved. But without becoming joyless and cynical and paranoid. A tricky balancing act.

Transitioning into fulltime pastoral ministry after spending 25+ years in a corporate environment has been relatively smooth. However, I've found myself perplexed when it comes to being alone with women other than my wife or daughters.

In the corporate environment, the expectation was that I would comport myself professionally when alone with women in meetings, at conferences, and while traveling together. I and my female coworkers did this routinely throughout my 25+ years in the corporate world.

In the church environment, however, the expectation seems to be that I should never be alone with a woman (unless she is my mom's age) in any setting. Either we won't be able to control ourselves, I will initiate an inappropriate relationship with her, or she will falsely accuse me of making sexual advances. I find this mindset disturbing.

When I first began working at the church, the person hired to clean the church was a young, attractive woman. There were times when it was just her and me in the church building. I didn't know what I should do. Should I continue working in the pastoral study or should I leave and work from home? I texted the elders, and they didn't seem to care either way.

We now have a young, less attractive woman cleaning the church. And, again, I find myself wondering what is the right option. My 25+ years working in corporate tell me that I'm overthinking it. So, I continue my day as usual. But, I know there would be some brother pastors who would hightail it out of the building.

Probably each church tends to be predominantly on one side or the other, but I'd bet that in many/most churches, you will have both people who think the "Billy Graham rule" is almost in one of Paul's epistles, and some women who will actually find it quite offensive if you work too hard to avoid being alone with them because they view the implicit message as "you are a likely homewrecker." Like Tom, I tend more to the corporate view--women know when you are giving them appropriate space or not.

There is a risk in what others could say. Your relationship could be totally innocent, but pastors do get enemies who could spread innuendo and ruin your ministry. It has happened. I do everything I can to avoid any such scenarios.

I can’t say this is 100% the right way, but I tend to treat this pragmatically. I can’t recall a time I’ve ever been alone with another woman in the work environment, even on travel. I’ve never worked for small companies, and I’ve never been part of a team sent on site consisting of just one man and one woman. The same has been true in church to my knowledge. Not being a pastor, I’m not sure I’ve ever been alone in the church building with a single woman of any age excepting my wife or daughters.

Unlike some I’ve talked to, I’ve accepted car rides where I’m alone with a woman at different times. The windows were not tinted, and it wasn’t a panel van or similar. Anyone could look in the windows at that time and see where I was.

My wife and I were friends with a woman who was single most of her life (married a couple years ago). She often asked for help with home repairs, etc. I always made sure to take along my wife or one of my daughters when going to her house to fix something, as I figured appearances were important. For the same appearances reason, I wouldn’t go out to eat with only another woman who was not my wife or another family member.

So to sum up, I’m not sure I’d implement a hard and fast rule where I’m never alone with another woman not my wife or other family member, but I do try to keep those to a minimum, and in situations where it’s obvious that nothing untoward is going on.

After reading everything, I'm still not sure who is right and wrong about his membership. Seems like we have conflicting testimony.

To me this highlights how we tend to take membership so lightly in our evangelical churches. When we bring in new pastoral staff, do we just assume they become members automatically, or do we go through the same formal process with them and their family members as we do everyone else? I was in a church once that devoted a portion of every business meeting to formally voting out members who moved away, or stopped coming, or joined another church. I thought that was a very good idea and I wish more churches would do that. I also think we need to do a better job in our potential member interview process to make sure the incoming member is really a believer. I am guilty here myself, often not wanting to make someone uncomfortable when their initial testimony is rather unclear...but if we don't do it, we are going to end up with a bunch of unsaved people in our membership. I think we also need to be better at teaching people what a valid testimony actually is -- a salvation testimony can't just be, well my life was messed up but I prayed and God did a miracle in my life to fix this <some issue> and I'm so glad that I am saved now.

When we bring in new pastoral staff, do we just assume they become members automatically, or do we go through the same formal process with them and their family members as we do everyone else?

When I became the teaching pastor at our current church, I asked to go through the membership class and to be voted into membership. Some questioned my decision. I told them I wanted to set the example that membership matters and that I am not just the pastor but my wife and I are also fellow members of the church. In fact, I am a member before I am a pastor.

I think we also need to be better at teaching people what a valid testimony actually is -- a salvation testimony can't just be, well my life was messed up but I prayed and God did a miracle in my life to fix this <some issue> and I'm so glad that I am saved now.

Yes, this is a common problem. We require all individuals who want to come into membership to attend a church membership class as well as be interviewed by at least two elders.

There have been times when a prospective member's salvation testimony has been lacking. When that occurs, we try to ask multiple questions to assess whether 1) they understand the gospel, 2) there was a time when they repented of their sins and trusted in Jesus Christ alone, and 3) the evidence of salvation is manifest in their lives. In many cases, the person is a believer but has never been asked to articulate these things and struggles to communicate them clearly.

Before we baptize individuals at our church, we ask them to write their salvation testimony to be read before the congregation. There have been times when we have asked for these testimonies to be rewritten because there is no mention of the gospel and no mention of repentance. Mostly, "when I was a child, I asked Jesus into my heart."

My experience is having been on a deacon board during a potential failure. It was quite a few years ago and the details were left unknown by the departure of the pastor.

He was a 9Marks proponent, and had a strong view of church membership.

I thought at the time that, though I didn’t express it, that it would be best to put in every pastor’s contract that after departure for any reason, severance money would be paid out 1 and 2 years after departure if the former pastor was still a member in good standing.

The pastor signing such a contract would be committing to enduring shame, which is the hard part. But that would be such a powerful lesson of repentance.

...I don't know what his church did, but it strikes me that if you've got a serious allegation, but the target leaves, one still ought to do at least a "good college try" on investigation so that the person's next employer can at least be warned that there were issues with his previous employment. You won't be able to get "both sides", but you get one side and you notify the person who left "now would be a good time to get in your side of the story."

And for Tom, on the light side, you'd better hope that the second, "less attractive" woman isn't on this forum! You might be looking at daggers!

But on a deadly serious note, one thing that I'm reminded of is that the link between extramarital fornication and attractiveness is not super strong. It's more of a matter of availability than of attractiveness, in my view. And perhaps more attractive women are ironically protected, in a way, because people anticipate that they will be the targets of such things.