A BAD CLERGY SPOILS THE BARREL
Several times in my ministry I’ve had to wrestle with how to respond to bad clergy behavior. In one case I chose to speak directly with a clergy about his behavior and also with the woman with whom he was having an affair. In another case, I spoke with a woman who was uncomfortable with the way in which a clergy friend of mine was behaving towards her. While I would have liked to avoid such conversations, what I recognized was that the ripple effect of clergy behavior affects not only the reputation of the ministry generally but also can wound many Christians even from a distance. Fortunately in these two cases, some blunt “speaking the truth in love” conversations was able to prevent wide spread scandal but that is not always the case.
We Do Not Belong to Ourselves
Saying that we are “called by God,” may seem to be a grandiose statement. Israel has always struggled with the impact of claiming that they were the chosen people. “Why you and not someone else? What makes you so special?” I think one of the reasons why the media seems to take such delight in clergy and church scandals is that it seems to puncture what seems to them to be a pretentiousness of claiming that they have been specially chosen by God.
As both Israel and clergy know, being called by God is not so much a privilege as it is a burden. As one of my characters in my novel, A Star and a Tear, comments, “When you walk into a hospital room, and the person knows you as a clergy, you are their window onto the Divine. You become their source of hope for a miracle.” amzn.to/1aTDdgs
When We Sin
We may not like it, but when we slip and fall, we not only demonstrate personal failure, but we frequently shatter other people’s faith convictions. On the one hand, they can say, “See, you are not so special.” On the other hand, it feels like God or faith convictions have let them down.
We may wish it weren’t true but at one level, it is a burden we can’t escape.
