When A Pastor Gets Stuck
Being a pastor is hard, especially when you don’t believe what you’re selling. My recent post, which shared a story about a friend wrestling with the universal nature of grace, stuck a chord in so many people. What do you do when you no longer believe what you are selling. For my friend it was incredibly hard. He was a …
When A Pastor Has An Affair
This post was inspired by Chad Estes who explores an evocative response to pastors who have affairs. Chad’s post stirred something in me. Why is it so hard to get over a pastor who has an affair? If the Gospel is true then the pastoral affair should be one of the deepest tests that proves our capacity to overcome the …
The Professional Christian
I have a friend who is a pastor. And sometimes I think he secretly wishes he could dump the label. One of the tensions I see in the church is the dichotomy between the pastor and the members of the church. The system is actually designed to help foster this tension. There’s a guy up front who does all the …
The Problem Of Ted Haggard
I wrote this article for Emergent Village. —————————————————————————— I’m diggin’ this thing that is happening with Ted Haggard, but not for reasons that you probably think. Recently Patton Dodd, a senior editor with Beliefnet wrote a fascinating, and even ironically exposing piece, not just of Ted Haggard, but of the culture that is Christianity in America known as the Evangelical …
The Role of Pastor
Do you know your pastor? I mean really, really know him (or her for progressive churches). Chances are you don’t. In an era of larger and even mega-churches, the answer is likely “no”. The central role of pastor when I was young was to take care of his “flock”. I grew up in a small Baptist church in East San …
Restoring Fallen Leaders
I have a friend who is a disgraced pastor. He’s still trying to recover from the experience. He’s lost most of his friends and is struggling to understand how to put his life back together. There’s nothing simple to his story. It wasn’t a simple fall that is so easy to categorize. There were many parties involved over long periods …
