Okay, but just because the Black Panthers were violent doesn’t mean one should not have supported Civil Rights in the 1960s. Likewise, let’s not assume the fringe elements need to be fought here as much as the main problem itself: mistreatment of our fellow sisters (and brothers) in Christ. One could also make a case that Satan is all too happy to make us fear the outliers and thus make no major progress on the sinful abuse of power itself.

I tend to think if we’d stop bickering with each other and unite on spreading the Gospel, we’d make a lot more headway.

Thanks, Paul!

God never told us to hide our sins.

It seems, we would do anything for Love, but we won’t do that…

Are we willing to look at John 17:20 &21 as a major cure to most all of the churches problems?

John 17:20-21 (ESV) “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

We can play Fox News politics til the cows come home & hope we clean up our local church issues to be a proper church. Yet, we have been a divided church since the Apostle John died. Satan is said to have been working on our division even before that.

How will this cure sexual or gender abuse? By ushering God unto our hurt by submitting to Him. The last part of the passage says if we unite the world will believe. That is the power of God working in our unity to do what we cannot do ourselves in our divisions. I wonder if God desires another security structure in our local body or does He desire that we have one salvation message. Because right now we are so confusing that the world has little faith in us. My church teaches immersion baptism as essential for salvation. How many would say that is wrong? There is the rub.

I could be off my rocker, but didn’t Israel, in the OT get exiled for division? That division allowing false idols in God’s Temple, allowing places of false worship, & temples to false Gods? We divide on baptism. We divide on what saves us. That’s of utmost importance. Then we have a myriad of other sins we divide on. We reap what we sow. Israel reaped the exile. We are reaping abuse, a dying church, & a nation of corruption.

I’m just thinking we need God in our issues. He is the cure to our sin. Abuses, divorces, sexual issues, etc. The list goes on & on. How ONE is God & Jesus? That’s how ONE we are to be. By that passage above, God shows up BIG in our unity. Nothing else. We get what we get without it.

Ray, I know you don’t advocate the approach you’re describing, but I would add that dealing with an abuse case within the church need not be public to be effective. Jesus outlined the appropriate way to handle sin within the church: One person confronts the perpetrator privately, and if he refuses to confess or repent, two or three people then confront him. If he repents, then “quietly handling” the issue may well be the appropriate course. Only if he still refuses to deal with the issue (if accusations are believed to be true) is it brought before the church as a whole. In this case, it’s not the pastor’s or the elder board’s decision to “rock the boat” or upset the church, but the abuser’s by forcing the issue to go public.

Of course if the abuser is a church leader, it would be difficult for him to quietly resign without anyone noticing (yet inappropriate for him to remain in office). But Jesus didn’t lay out two different courses of church discipline, one for the leaders and one for the laypeople. The lead pastor at the church I grew up in resigned after 12 years when it was discovered that he was having an affair with another staff member. The impact to the congregation was not insignificant, but God still had a plan.

The main “danger” now becomes false accusation, in which the level of discipline escalates because the accused denies that any abuse happened, because it really didn’t. These cases are likely by far in the minority, but for this and other reasons it seems a good church “policy” that individuals of the opposite sex who are not married are never alone together, even for counseling. Our church isn’t ultra-legalistic on physical contact or general interactions between genders, but this is one policy we’ve adopted that makes sense. If there’s no opportunity, there’s no place for either abuse or accusation.

As a leader, it is likely that not a day goes by in which you do not make at least one decision that is influenced by the need to maintain the confidence of those whom you lead. Church members often hold leaders to impossibly high standards, sometimes even inventing “higher laws” by which to judge them. It is likely that, as a church leader, you have made many, many personal sacrifices because of this. And that you consider it to be a cost worth paying.

All of which would create a church leadership composed of individuals who have both grown accustomed to fearing how even the smallest actions will look to the church membership, and who are accustomed to sacrificing their own desires for the good of the ministry. In their earnest deliberation, such leaders could easily assign too great a weight to the cost to the church (and possibly the cost of the “collateral damage” to you and your family) of publicly addressing an abuse scandal, and too little a weight to the cost to the abused individual of not publicly addressing it.

I am not arguing that it is right; clearly it is not. But it’s very understandable. And it’s likely another factor in the mishandling of abuse within the church.

Good, good thought!!