May 20, 2025 • 22 mins
Counselor Dave Wiedis writes this about fallen pastors: “We’re left asking, how does this keep happening? Some might respond—’That could never be me.’ But a wiser response is more profound: Could this happen to me? What resides in the deep recesses of my own heart that might lead to self-sabotage? Why do so many who love God still find themselves trapped in sin, stuck in shame, and repeating patterns they long to break? Is true heart transformation truly possible?” Dave asks the question, "Why do we keep failing and falling?"
https://blog.newgrowthpress.com/why-do-we-keep-failing-and-falling/
https://www.amazon.com/Spiritually-Healthy-Leader-Finding-Self-Sabotage/dp/1645074994
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S1 (00:00):
Kurt and Kate mornings. Not just on the radio.
S2 (00:03):
It's a podcast, too.
S1 (00:06):
There's no doubt there are pastors who have fallen into sin.
They have disqualified themselves and we are heartbroken. Some of
these pastors are very well known and some of them
serve in relatively small churches. It just seems like these
days we're hearing about pastors falling into some type of sin,
(00:29):
disqualifying themselves and the collateral damage. Well, it's devastating to
the body of Christ.
S2 (00:36):
Yeah, it's a hard topic to talk about, but so
important to look at and really dissect.
S1 (00:43):
We invited Dave Weitz to be with us. Dave is
the founder and executive director of Serving Leaders Ministries. In fact,
he's written a book, The Spiritually Healthy Leader what is
going on in the Spiritual Lives of these Men that
is causing all of the train wrecks. This is insightful.
(01:04):
And you might be saying, okay, well, those are that's
a pastor. You know, those are pastors. But not only
will this help us, if you if you hang out
with us for the next few minutes, this conversation not
only helps us to to think deeply about what may
be going on in the inner lives of these pastors.
(01:25):
But then the bigger question for us may be, well,
what's going on in my inner life, with my walk
with Jesus and the application to ourselves? Well, that can
be pretty sobering and quite helpful as well. Let's dive in.
This brings obviously no joy to our hearts that we
have to even address this. But let's talk about the
(01:47):
dangers of looking the other way. I mean, we can't
bury our heads in the sand or circle the wagons
as Christians and try to protect our leaders and all
of that, because that leads to a very, very dark place.
And God does desire truth. And you know, it's the
devil is having a heyday. But I believe that with
(02:09):
some of these situations, well, maybe even all of them,
I believe that God is is pulling back the curtain.
And I think that his patience, even though he's patient
and kind and compassionate, he loves us too much to
leave us in our sin. And I think that maybe
the revelations that we're seeing, discouraging though they may be,
(02:30):
could be God purging his church. Uh, what do you think?
What do you think about that?
S3 (02:38):
Yeah. You know, Kurt, I think that there's nothing new
under the sun and that we've always had not only leaders,
but Christians who people who try to walk with the
Lord and be intimate with him fall. We do all
keep failing and falling in certain ways. And, uh, I
have a ministry called Serving Leaders Ministries that is designed
(03:01):
to come alongside ministry leaders as well as the greater
church to help us address the issues. And as you said,
you know, there's devastation that results when a ministry leader falls,
you know, the devastation that takes place to his own
personal life, his family, the church, the community is just awful.
And that you call that collateral damage and it really
(03:22):
is collateral damage. Um, but, you know, there's a calling
for all of us to be intimate with Christ, to
cultivate intimacy in our relationship with him. And what I
think happens is that people, as I said, nothing new
under the sun. David fell. Moses. We've all all seen
our leaders fall in some ways. And so there's a
calling to become introspective and honest. You talk about truth,
(03:47):
honest with the way we walk with the Lord and
what's going in our own heart, what's going on in
our own hearts that manifests itself ultimately in the fall.
You mentioned this very well-known leader who fell and we
all know about, for example, Ravi Zacharias and others who
have fallen. And I don't point fingers, but I do
(04:09):
want to say that what they didn't wake up one
morning and say, I'm going to fall or I'm going
to destroy my ministry, or I'm going to destroy my
my marriage, what they didn't do is they didn't pay
attention to the issues that are going on in their
own heart, and pay attention to them closely enough so
that they know how to repent. And and they know
(04:30):
what to repent of, if that makes sense.
S1 (04:33):
Yeah. It does. It seems like some of the chatter
that we have online about this issue has to do
with a, um, I don't know, how do I put
this maybe a, uh, influx, if you will, of narcissistic
personalities who end up being pastors. And that is leading
(04:58):
to a lot of these problems because you have these
leaders who are narcissists, and then you have spiritual abuse
that comes into play. So it's not just necessarily a
sexual fall, but maybe it's something else or either or both.
And maybe it's something like you've got a bully as
a pastor, you've got, I mean, it's the perfect ground,
(05:20):
the most fertile ground for them. Think about it. Because
if you're a narcissistic personality and you build up, let's say,
let's say a megachurch in a large ministry that just
you keep feeding off of that and feeding off of that,
and that's so unhealthy, then you don't care about other
people and you just roll over them like a steamroller.
(05:41):
Do you think that because we have made many of
these pastors, celebrities, that we are unintentionally attracting narcissistic personalities
into the pastorate?
S3 (05:57):
You know, I think that could be there could be
something to that. But I also think that whether someone
is a full blown narcissist or whether there's a pastor
out there and there's thousands and thousands of pastors who
are trying to do the right thing and walk with
the Lord. The issue is what's going on in my
heart and in the spiritually healthy leader. The subtitle of
(06:20):
my book is Finding Freedom from Self-sabotage. I try to
explain that one of the biggest measurements of our spiritual
health is what we're most passionate about. Jesus said, where
your where your heart is. You know where your treasure is.
There your heart is also. And we all have what's
called ruling passions, these things that are that we care
(06:43):
most about. Now, when you ask most Christians and you say,
what are you most passionate about? Most people are going
to say Jesus or intimacy with him or the gospel, right?
But but the truth is, most of us there's a
there's a huge disparity between what we claim and what
is reality in our lives. Is it the Lordship of Christ?
(07:06):
Is it really intimacy in doing his will? Or is
it something else like this? Finding love, getting people to
adore me or affirm me? Is it power, success, control?
Even something like comfort, self-protection, or being unique? So when
you talk about pastors of megachurches, I think every pastor
(07:28):
and every Christian has to deal with the truth of
what am I really most passionate about? Because we can
claim to be in love with Jesus or claim to
be committed to the gospel, and at the same time
have an ultimate commitment to getting relief from my loneliness
by engaging sinful behaviors.
S1 (07:46):
Is that is that how we. Is that why we
see these pastors who are proclaiming God's truth? But then
they're living a double life because they're trying to meet
these other needs?
S3 (07:58):
Yes, I think so. You know, I think someone can say, hey,
I'm most dedicated to building this church, but at the
same time have an unknown commitment to impressing others or
gaining affirmation from others. And the truth is, the degree
to which we're not conscious of these ultimate commitments in
our lives is the degree to which they can control us,
(08:19):
and they can undermine us.
S4 (08:22):
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S1 (08:34):
You know, where are the faithful pastors? And here's the point.
There are so many godly men who are out there
preaching in pulpits and churches every weekend, every Sunday. They
love the Lord. They are pursuing holiness. They care about
what they're doing. They care about you, and they're being faithful.
(08:58):
And yet we don't hear about those guys as much
as we hear about the guys who flame out and
self destruct. I totally get that. But, but, but but
we need to talk about this because, um, we're going
to use Peter as an example, a case study here, Dave.
But I just want I just want to point something
(09:19):
out before we get into Peter is a good example
of this is the fact that we talk about and
we've talked about it here on the show many times,
this whole era of deconstruction, Christians who are quote unquote,
deconstructing their faith, dismantling it. One of the reasons they
(09:40):
give is I'm tired of Christian leaders living a double life,
preaching one thing, doing another, and I'm sick of it.
This is just the way I'm just laying it out there.
And so I think this is we talked about collateral
damage of a pastor falling or ministry leader falling. That's
(10:02):
one of them is deconstruction. We'll get to Peter in
a moment, but I want to get your thoughts on that?
S3 (10:06):
Sure. Um, anytime someone has an excuse to reject the
gospel or to reject walking with God, and as you say,
when when a pastor or a leader acts hypocritically, it
gives people an excuse to deconstruct, to begin to deconstruct.
Of course, deconstruction starts with presuppositions that start with things like, well,
(10:29):
the Bible's not the Word of God, or my subjective
experience is what controls and what will govern my belief system.
And so once they depart from the Bible as the
Word of God, and understanding that truth is not subjective,
it is an objective reality. And and right and wrong
is defined by God Himself, whether we agree with it
(10:50):
or not. You're on the road to deconstruction.
S1 (10:54):
When do you think, trust me, we're going to get
to Peter, but when do you think we are going
to get there? But when do you think according to
God's Word, when has a pastor crossed a line where
he is disqualified. And in your opinion, when or maybe
is like when or if, can they be restored to
(11:15):
their former position? Is there a line here? What's the criteria?
Where's that line of disqualification?
S3 (11:24):
You know, that's a great question. And the obvious answer
would be sexual immorality crossing lines there. But also, you know,
we often make that the, the big thing where what
about financial impropriety. What about as you talked about narcissism,
what about, um, uh, self-centeredness that makes the ministry completely
(11:47):
around the one person where the person, the pastor begins
to become toxic and abusive? It's interesting. At serving Leaders ministries,
we work with many, many pastors. And most of the
pastors we're working with are people who have goodwill, who
want to do the right thing. We often find, uh,
people come to us who've been abused by pastors. I've
(12:07):
had horrendous cases of of pastoral abuse that didn't cross
the line to sexual misconduct, but were horrendous kinds of things.
For example, a pastor said to a congregant, I know
the sin that you committed for you to get cancer
or I. And and that was just one of many,
(12:28):
many things that, oh, you know, and then and the
the governing bodies of this pastor, for example, weren't willing
to take steps against him on that because, well, he
didn't really cross a line or, well, we don't really
know what he was doing there. And it only it
was only after he crossed the line of sexual misconduct
(12:49):
where they actually defrocked this person. So it's a it's
a horrendous problem when beyond sexual misconduct and, you know,
go ahead. Yeah. If, if I can say Peter engaged
in horrendous misconduct as well.
S1 (13:08):
Yeah, let's talk about that. Let's just kind of lay
it out.
S3 (13:11):
Yeah. I mean, everybody knows the apostle Peter. He's not
just one of the 12. He's one of the three.
He's identified Jesus as Messiah. He preaches at 3000 people
are saved at Pentecost, and he receives a word from
God in Acts chapter ten that says, Peter, don't ever
discriminate against the Gentiles. So what happens? Peter is pastoring
(13:34):
an apostle in the churches in Galatia, which are made
up of Jews and Gentiles. And what does the passage
in Galatians chapter two tell us? Paul rebukes Peter directly
to his face in front of people publicly, because Peter
has done what? Engaged in discrimination. And he's he's heard
(13:54):
the Gentile believers by withdrawing from them. When men from
James this passage says, when the men from James came,
these are Jewish legalists who come into the church. Peter
withdraws from them, fearing those of the circumcision. That's a quote.
So here is Peter. He has what I call a
(14:15):
ruling passion of self-protection. Meaning, in the moment that those
men from James appeared, Peter withdrew the word. There is
a Greek word for a military, an army that withdraws
from battle to seek shelter in safety. Now, Peter knew
better than this, and I don't think he woke up
(14:35):
one morning and thought, I'm going to offend the Gentile believers.
But what did that do? You know, you talk about
people being hurt and deconstructing. Well, what would it feel
like if your pastor walked away from you and acted
as if he didn't know you and didn't want to
know you? Yeah. So? So he undermined the gospel. He
undermined his relationship with these people. He was supposed to
(14:56):
create unity in the church, but he created more, more, um,
dissension in the church by doing this. And it's interesting
that if you look back at Peter's life, there's patterns there. Uh,
he was. He denied Christ. He was on the water
and he looked down and he saw the waves. And
he started to sink. Because of what? Fear? So in
(15:17):
my book, The Spiritual Healthy Leader, I talk about going back.
In order to go forward, you need to go back
into our own lives to see patterns, repeating patterns where
a ruling passion arises and that ruling passion governs our life.
And if I could just to define that a ruling
passion is that which we pursue with most passion and
(15:40):
most energy above all other things. And I would say,
if you were to interview Peter right before this event
happened and you said, Peter, what are you most passionate about?
He said, Jesus preaching the gospel, but the reality was
the reality was in that moment when he withdrew from
those Gentile believers and hurt them. He was more passionate
about self-protection than he was about the gospel or about
(16:04):
unity in the church. And all of us have ruling passions.
They may be Maybe they come out as valves like this.
I'll never be embarrassed again. Or I'll always be in control.
Or I'll be successful or I'll. I'll be a great minister.
Could be a ruling passion. But when you take something
that's good and it becomes an ultimate commitment in one's heart,
(16:25):
that's when it rules us. And that when that's when
it informs the decisions that we make. It informs the
path that we take. It informs pastors and how they
how they operate in the church. And it also informs
every Christian, because everyone has a ruling passion that may
not be the supremacy of Christ. It is something else.
(16:47):
And the key is for whether it's pastors of megachurches,
pastors of churches, or just laypeople, we all need to
say what is ruling my heart? And is Jesus ruling
my heart in the moment, not my ruling passion?
S1 (17:02):
Yeah, Tim Keller said it well, right. Sin isn't only
doing bad things, it's more fundamentally making good things into
ultimate things.
S3 (17:11):
Exactly. Exactly. And we can take a good thing. Like,
for example, protecting your children from pain is a good thing.
But if you make that an ultimate thing, you can
hurt your children. Just like, um, you know, in Scripture where, uh,
Samuel the prophet protected his children, a better example would
be this everybody knows that a good thing is to
(17:33):
keep the peace to to avoid conflict. But if that
becomes an ultimate thing, either in a church or in
a family, failing to address conflict or failing to address
a toxic person by avoiding conflict will destroy your church
or destroy your family, because you'll let the toxic person
run amok and control things in the church. So it's
(17:56):
really important for all of us to get in touch
with what is really governing my heart. And it's and
it's very difficult because, you know, we like to think
better of ourselves than sometimes we are. And, you know,
we're told not to think of ourselves more highly, but
think in reality. So what's the what is the truth
about my own heart? And frankly, Kurt, I you know,
(18:19):
I have looked at my own heart. What? There was
a time in my life where avoiding loneliness was the
most important thing. Even though I was following Christ, even
though I proclaimed him and was trying to, I was
not aware of it. And so what I ended up
doing was using people to get me out of my loneliness,
rather than understanding who who God is to me and
(18:42):
how I need to go to him first. For all
of these longings that I have in my own heart.
S1 (18:47):
That's incredibly insightful and helpful for each and every one
of us Christian leaders, or just regular Joes following Jesus.
And see, that's the thing, isn't it? It's, uh, love
the Lord your God with all your heart, with all
your soul, and with all your strength and with all
your mind. What does that look like? And and we
know that when we see a Christian leader fall, or
(19:10):
any believer for that matter. It didn't happen overnight. It's
been over time. There's an erosion of the soul. There's
misplaced priorities. We have to be intentional. And the most
important thing about us is our walk with the Lord. Period.
Am I keeping it fresh every day? Some days maybe
(19:31):
I have the warm and fuzzies. Some days I don't.
But I show up every day and I want to
keep that fire kindled for the lack of wood. The
fire goes out. We need to be intentional about this
so that we don't end up far away from the Lord.
Waking up one day and we're like, how did I
get here? So that's that's a decision that we have
(19:53):
to make each and every one of us. It's a
personal decision, but it's so important, isn't it?
S3 (19:58):
It's so important. And and you know, here's, here's what
happens if if my ruling passion for affirmation or success
or not to be lonely is really the ultimate commitment
in my life, Then Jesus is Lord is not. And
either God is the center of our lives, and our
ultimate commitment is to walk under His Lordship and the
(20:18):
supremacy of Christ, or something else will be. For me,
it was getting out of loneliness. For other people, it's
gaining affirmation. For the narcissist pastor. It's getting this admiration
and adulation that he so, so desperately desires. And it's
not a lost cause. If we can say, Lord, I,
(20:39):
I acknowledge, I admit that my ruling passion has been this,
but I want you to be my Lord, and I
want you to control me, and I want to, you know,
I want to obey you in all things. Then my
ruling passion will not be that which controls me. In fact,
it will subordinate my longings and my desires to the Lord,
(21:01):
so that I will do whatever he calls me to do,
even if my longings or my passions are not fulfilled,
versus saying, oh yeah, my my ruling passions govern everything,
and the Lordship of Christ comes under that. And therefore
I'll obey God as long as my passions are satisfied.
S1 (21:22):
Wow, this is good stuff for each and every one
of us. Dave, thanks so much for being with us
this morning and unpacking some truths that, you know, it
kind of hurts, but in order to have the healing
and to grow, we need to inflict a little pain
from time to time and say, okay, well, you know,
we need we need to actually accept reality. And then
(21:44):
at that point receive the grace of God. He's there
for us. And he's like, you know what? I began
a good work in you. I will complete it. Philippians
one six. We hang on to that because he's for us.
S2 (21:56):
Thanks for listening to Kurt and Kate Mornings podcast. Please
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S2 (00:03):
It's a podcast, too.
S1 (00:06):
There's no doubt there are pastors who have fallen into sin.
They have disqualified themselves and we are heartbroken. Some of
these pastors are very well known and some of them
serve in relatively small churches. It just seems like these
days we're hearing about pastors falling into some type of sin,
(00:29):
disqualifying themselves and the collateral damage. Well, it's devastating to
the body of Christ.
S2 (00:36):
Yeah, it's a hard topic to talk about, but so
important to look at and really dissect.
S1 (00:43):
We invited Dave Weitz to be with us. Dave is
the founder and executive director of Serving Leaders Ministries. In fact,
he's written a book, The Spiritually Healthy Leader what is
going on in the Spiritual Lives of these Men that
is causing all of the train wrecks. This is insightful.
(01:04):
And you might be saying, okay, well, those are that's
a pastor. You know, those are pastors. But not only
will this help us, if you if you hang out
with us for the next few minutes, this conversation not
only helps us to to think deeply about what may
be going on in the inner lives of these pastors.
(01:25):
But then the bigger question for us may be, well,
what's going on in my inner life, with my walk
with Jesus and the application to ourselves? Well, that can
be pretty sobering and quite helpful as well. Let's dive in.
This brings obviously no joy to our hearts that we
have to even address this. But let's talk about the
(01:47):
dangers of looking the other way. I mean, we can't
bury our heads in the sand or circle the wagons
as Christians and try to protect our leaders and all
of that, because that leads to a very, very dark place.
And God does desire truth. And you know, it's the
devil is having a heyday. But I believe that with
(02:09):
some of these situations, well, maybe even all of them,
I believe that God is is pulling back the curtain.
And I think that his patience, even though he's patient
and kind and compassionate, he loves us too much to
leave us in our sin. And I think that maybe
the revelations that we're seeing, discouraging though they may be,
(02:30):
could be God purging his church. Uh, what do you think?
What do you think about that?
S3 (02:38):
Yeah. You know, Kurt, I think that there's nothing new
under the sun and that we've always had not only leaders,
but Christians who people who try to walk with the
Lord and be intimate with him fall. We do all
keep failing and falling in certain ways. And, uh, I
have a ministry called Serving Leaders Ministries that is designed
(03:01):
to come alongside ministry leaders as well as the greater
church to help us address the issues. And as you said,
you know, there's devastation that results when a ministry leader falls,
you know, the devastation that takes place to his own
personal life, his family, the church, the community is just awful.
And that you call that collateral damage and it really
(03:22):
is collateral damage. Um, but, you know, there's a calling
for all of us to be intimate with Christ, to
cultivate intimacy in our relationship with him. And what I
think happens is that people, as I said, nothing new
under the sun. David fell. Moses. We've all all seen
our leaders fall in some ways. And so there's a
calling to become introspective and honest. You talk about truth,
(03:47):
honest with the way we walk with the Lord and
what's going in our own heart, what's going on in
our own hearts that manifests itself ultimately in the fall.
You mentioned this very well-known leader who fell and we
all know about, for example, Ravi Zacharias and others who
have fallen. And I don't point fingers, but I do
(04:09):
want to say that what they didn't wake up one
morning and say, I'm going to fall or I'm going
to destroy my ministry, or I'm going to destroy my
my marriage, what they didn't do is they didn't pay
attention to the issues that are going on in their
own heart, and pay attention to them closely enough so
that they know how to repent. And and they know
(04:30):
what to repent of, if that makes sense.
S1 (04:33):
Yeah. It does. It seems like some of the chatter
that we have online about this issue has to do
with a, um, I don't know, how do I put
this maybe a, uh, influx, if you will, of narcissistic
personalities who end up being pastors. And that is leading
(04:58):
to a lot of these problems because you have these
leaders who are narcissists, and then you have spiritual abuse
that comes into play. So it's not just necessarily a
sexual fall, but maybe it's something else or either or both.
And maybe it's something like you've got a bully as
a pastor, you've got, I mean, it's the perfect ground,
(05:20):
the most fertile ground for them. Think about it. Because
if you're a narcissistic personality and you build up, let's say,
let's say a megachurch in a large ministry that just
you keep feeding off of that and feeding off of that,
and that's so unhealthy, then you don't care about other
people and you just roll over them like a steamroller.
(05:41):
Do you think that because we have made many of
these pastors, celebrities, that we are unintentionally attracting narcissistic personalities
into the pastorate?
S3 (05:57):
You know, I think that could be there could be
something to that. But I also think that whether someone
is a full blown narcissist or whether there's a pastor
out there and there's thousands and thousands of pastors who
are trying to do the right thing and walk with
the Lord. The issue is what's going on in my
heart and in the spiritually healthy leader. The subtitle of
(06:20):
my book is Finding Freedom from Self-sabotage. I try to
explain that one of the biggest measurements of our spiritual
health is what we're most passionate about. Jesus said, where
your where your heart is. You know where your treasure is.
There your heart is also. And we all have what's
called ruling passions, these things that are that we care
(06:43):
most about. Now, when you ask most Christians and you say,
what are you most passionate about? Most people are going
to say Jesus or intimacy with him or the gospel, right?
But but the truth is, most of us there's a
there's a huge disparity between what we claim and what
is reality in our lives. Is it the Lordship of Christ?
(07:06):
Is it really intimacy in doing his will? Or is
it something else like this? Finding love, getting people to
adore me or affirm me? Is it power, success, control?
Even something like comfort, self-protection, or being unique? So when
you talk about pastors of megachurches, I think every pastor
(07:28):
and every Christian has to deal with the truth of
what am I really most passionate about? Because we can
claim to be in love with Jesus or claim to
be committed to the gospel, and at the same time
have an ultimate commitment to getting relief from my loneliness
by engaging sinful behaviors.
S1 (07:46):
Is that is that how we. Is that why we
see these pastors who are proclaiming God's truth? But then
they're living a double life because they're trying to meet
these other needs?
S3 (07:58):
Yes, I think so. You know, I think someone can say, hey,
I'm most dedicated to building this church, but at the
same time have an unknown commitment to impressing others or
gaining affirmation from others. And the truth is, the degree
to which we're not conscious of these ultimate commitments in
our lives is the degree to which they can control us,
(08:19):
and they can undermine us.
S4 (08:22):
Thank you for taking some time to listen to this
episode of the podcast. We always welcome a review with
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and follow us as well.
S1 (08:34):
You know, where are the faithful pastors? And here's the point.
There are so many godly men who are out there
preaching in pulpits and churches every weekend, every Sunday. They
love the Lord. They are pursuing holiness. They care about
what they're doing. They care about you, and they're being faithful.
(08:58):
And yet we don't hear about those guys as much
as we hear about the guys who flame out and
self destruct. I totally get that. But, but, but but
we need to talk about this because, um, we're going
to use Peter as an example, a case study here, Dave.
But I just want I just want to point something
(09:19):
out before we get into Peter is a good example
of this is the fact that we talk about and
we've talked about it here on the show many times,
this whole era of deconstruction, Christians who are quote unquote,
deconstructing their faith, dismantling it. One of the reasons they
(09:40):
give is I'm tired of Christian leaders living a double life,
preaching one thing, doing another, and I'm sick of it.
This is just the way I'm just laying it out there.
And so I think this is we talked about collateral
damage of a pastor falling or ministry leader falling. That's
(10:02):
one of them is deconstruction. We'll get to Peter in
a moment, but I want to get your thoughts on that?
S3 (10:06):
Sure. Um, anytime someone has an excuse to reject the
gospel or to reject walking with God, and as you say,
when when a pastor or a leader acts hypocritically, it
gives people an excuse to deconstruct, to begin to deconstruct.
Of course, deconstruction starts with presuppositions that start with things like, well,
(10:29):
the Bible's not the Word of God, or my subjective
experience is what controls and what will govern my belief system.
And so once they depart from the Bible as the
Word of God, and understanding that truth is not subjective,
it is an objective reality. And and right and wrong
is defined by God Himself, whether we agree with it
(10:50):
or not. You're on the road to deconstruction.
S1 (10:54):
When do you think, trust me, we're going to get
to Peter, but when do you think we are going
to get there? But when do you think according to
God's Word, when has a pastor crossed a line where
he is disqualified. And in your opinion, when or maybe
is like when or if, can they be restored to
(11:15):
their former position? Is there a line here? What's the criteria?
Where's that line of disqualification?
S3 (11:24):
You know, that's a great question. And the obvious answer
would be sexual immorality crossing lines there. But also, you know,
we often make that the, the big thing where what
about financial impropriety. What about as you talked about narcissism,
what about, um, uh, self-centeredness that makes the ministry completely
(11:47):
around the one person where the person, the pastor begins
to become toxic and abusive? It's interesting. At serving Leaders ministries,
we work with many, many pastors. And most of the
pastors we're working with are people who have goodwill, who
want to do the right thing. We often find, uh,
people come to us who've been abused by pastors. I've
(12:07):
had horrendous cases of of pastoral abuse that didn't cross
the line to sexual misconduct, but were horrendous kinds of things.
For example, a pastor said to a congregant, I know
the sin that you committed for you to get cancer
or I. And and that was just one of many,
(12:28):
many things that, oh, you know, and then and the
the governing bodies of this pastor, for example, weren't willing
to take steps against him on that because, well, he
didn't really cross a line or, well, we don't really
know what he was doing there. And it only it
was only after he crossed the line of sexual misconduct
(12:49):
where they actually defrocked this person. So it's a it's
a horrendous problem when beyond sexual misconduct and, you know,
go ahead. Yeah. If, if I can say Peter engaged
in horrendous misconduct as well.
S1 (13:08):
Yeah, let's talk about that. Let's just kind of lay
it out.
S3 (13:11):
Yeah. I mean, everybody knows the apostle Peter. He's not
just one of the 12. He's one of the three.
He's identified Jesus as Messiah. He preaches at 3000 people
are saved at Pentecost, and he receives a word from
God in Acts chapter ten that says, Peter, don't ever
discriminate against the Gentiles. So what happens? Peter is pastoring
(13:34):
an apostle in the churches in Galatia, which are made
up of Jews and Gentiles. And what does the passage
in Galatians chapter two tell us? Paul rebukes Peter directly
to his face in front of people publicly, because Peter
has done what? Engaged in discrimination. And he's he's heard
(13:54):
the Gentile believers by withdrawing from them. When men from
James this passage says, when the men from James came,
these are Jewish legalists who come into the church. Peter
withdraws from them, fearing those of the circumcision. That's a quote.
So here is Peter. He has what I call a
(14:15):
ruling passion of self-protection. Meaning, in the moment that those
men from James appeared, Peter withdrew the word. There is
a Greek word for a military, an army that withdraws
from battle to seek shelter in safety. Now, Peter knew
better than this, and I don't think he woke up
(14:35):
one morning and thought, I'm going to offend the Gentile believers.
But what did that do? You know, you talk about
people being hurt and deconstructing. Well, what would it feel
like if your pastor walked away from you and acted
as if he didn't know you and didn't want to
know you? Yeah. So? So he undermined the gospel. He
undermined his relationship with these people. He was supposed to
(14:56):
create unity in the church, but he created more, more, um,
dissension in the church by doing this. And it's interesting
that if you look back at Peter's life, there's patterns there. Uh,
he was. He denied Christ. He was on the water
and he looked down and he saw the waves. And
he started to sink. Because of what? Fear? So in
(15:17):
my book, The Spiritual Healthy Leader, I talk about going back.
In order to go forward, you need to go back
into our own lives to see patterns, repeating patterns where
a ruling passion arises and that ruling passion governs our life.
And if I could just to define that a ruling
passion is that which we pursue with most passion and
(15:40):
most energy above all other things. And I would say,
if you were to interview Peter right before this event
happened and you said, Peter, what are you most passionate about?
He said, Jesus preaching the gospel, but the reality was
the reality was in that moment when he withdrew from
those Gentile believers and hurt them. He was more passionate
about self-protection than he was about the gospel or about
(16:04):
unity in the church. And all of us have ruling passions.
They may be Maybe they come out as valves like this.
I'll never be embarrassed again. Or I'll always be in control.
Or I'll be successful or I'll. I'll be a great minister.
Could be a ruling passion. But when you take something
that's good and it becomes an ultimate commitment in one's heart,
(16:25):
that's when it rules us. And that when that's when
it informs the decisions that we make. It informs the
path that we take. It informs pastors and how they
how they operate in the church. And it also informs
every Christian, because everyone has a ruling passion that may
not be the supremacy of Christ. It is something else.
(16:47):
And the key is for whether it's pastors of megachurches,
pastors of churches, or just laypeople, we all need to
say what is ruling my heart? And is Jesus ruling
my heart in the moment, not my ruling passion?
S1 (17:02):
Yeah, Tim Keller said it well, right. Sin isn't only
doing bad things, it's more fundamentally making good things into
ultimate things.
S3 (17:11):
Exactly. Exactly. And we can take a good thing. Like,
for example, protecting your children from pain is a good thing.
But if you make that an ultimate thing, you can
hurt your children. Just like, um, you know, in Scripture where, uh,
Samuel the prophet protected his children, a better example would
be this everybody knows that a good thing is to
(17:33):
keep the peace to to avoid conflict. But if that
becomes an ultimate thing, either in a church or in
a family, failing to address conflict or failing to address
a toxic person by avoiding conflict will destroy your church
or destroy your family, because you'll let the toxic person
run amok and control things in the church. So it's
(17:56):
really important for all of us to get in touch
with what is really governing my heart. And it's and
it's very difficult because, you know, we like to think
better of ourselves than sometimes we are. And, you know,
we're told not to think of ourselves more highly, but
think in reality. So what's the what is the truth
about my own heart? And frankly, Kurt, I you know,
(18:19):
I have looked at my own heart. What? There was
a time in my life where avoiding loneliness was the
most important thing. Even though I was following Christ, even
though I proclaimed him and was trying to, I was
not aware of it. And so what I ended up
doing was using people to get me out of my loneliness,
rather than understanding who who God is to me and
(18:42):
how I need to go to him first. For all
of these longings that I have in my own heart.
S1 (18:47):
That's incredibly insightful and helpful for each and every one
of us Christian leaders, or just regular Joes following Jesus.
And see, that's the thing, isn't it? It's, uh, love
the Lord your God with all your heart, with all
your soul, and with all your strength and with all
your mind. What does that look like? And and we
know that when we see a Christian leader fall, or
(19:10):
any believer for that matter. It didn't happen overnight. It's
been over time. There's an erosion of the soul. There's
misplaced priorities. We have to be intentional. And the most
important thing about us is our walk with the Lord. Period.
Am I keeping it fresh every day? Some days maybe
(19:31):
I have the warm and fuzzies. Some days I don't.
But I show up every day and I want to
keep that fire kindled for the lack of wood. The
fire goes out. We need to be intentional about this
so that we don't end up far away from the Lord.
Waking up one day and we're like, how did I
get here? So that's that's a decision that we have
(19:53):
to make each and every one of us. It's a
personal decision, but it's so important, isn't it?
S3 (19:58):
It's so important. And and you know, here's, here's what
happens if if my ruling passion for affirmation or success
or not to be lonely is really the ultimate commitment
in my life, Then Jesus is Lord is not. And
either God is the center of our lives, and our
ultimate commitment is to walk under His Lordship and the
(20:18):
supremacy of Christ, or something else will be. For me,
it was getting out of loneliness. For other people, it's
gaining affirmation. For the narcissist pastor. It's getting this admiration
and adulation that he so, so desperately desires. And it's
not a lost cause. If we can say, Lord, I,
(20:39):
I acknowledge, I admit that my ruling passion has been this,
but I want you to be my Lord, and I
want you to control me, and I want to, you know,
I want to obey you in all things. Then my
ruling passion will not be that which controls me. In fact,
it will subordinate my longings and my desires to the Lord,
(21:01):
so that I will do whatever he calls me to do,
even if my longings or my passions are not fulfilled,
versus saying, oh yeah, my my ruling passions govern everything,
and the Lordship of Christ comes under that. And therefore
I'll obey God as long as my passions are satisfied.
S1 (21:22):
Wow, this is good stuff for each and every one
of us. Dave, thanks so much for being with us
this morning and unpacking some truths that, you know, it
kind of hurts, but in order to have the healing
and to grow, we need to inflict a little pain
from time to time and say, okay, well, you know,
we need we need to actually accept reality. And then
(21:44):
at that point receive the grace of God. He's there
for us. And he's like, you know what? I began
a good work in you. I will complete it. Philippians
one six. We hang on to that because he's for us.
S2 (21:56):
Thanks for listening to Kurt and Kate Mornings podcast. Please
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no matter where in the world you are, you can
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