A brother in the Lord whom I have never met recently resigned his pastorate because of a sinful relationship with a co-worker. I don’t know him or his church, but I do know that he is more like us than many of us would like to admit.
The following quote comes from another blogger who does know the pastor involved.
4. Another interesting part of this story is the documented online history that Gary has online during the past six weeks (during his admitted affair). According to his tweets, Gary and Revolution Church were seeing some amazing things happen for the Kingdom. This included a family vacation, a marriage retreat, his assistant watching his kids and then hanging out with his wife, and baptizing a ton of people at the church. Even during this season of sin, there was an appearance that all was well and God was blessing.
Here are my two thoughts:
1. Results are not always an indication of godly ministry. He appeared to be prioritizing his family and God’s blessing appeared to be upon his ministry. But he knew he was rebelling against God. Evidence of fruitful ministry does not mean it is right.
2. Talking (or writing) openly about personal matters (whether on Facebook, Twitter or in a small group) does not guarantee that you are being transparent with your heart.
When I was younger I worked in the restaurant business. We openly welcomed people into our dining room, yet carefully blocked their view of the kitchen! I believe that a lot of Christians invite people on to the “front porch” or even into the “living room” of their lives, but they never let others see the messy backroom where things really happen. We would literally have hundreds of people dine with us on some evenings but only a dozen employees would be allowed in the kitchen. You may have hundreds of Facebook friends, but how many people know your heart?
MondayMorningInsight.com > A Prayer for Another Fallen Servant…
Right on! We with corrupted nature's tend to put so much faith in what we can see by way of external indicators when they are so often misleading that they are of no use at all. For example, in John 6 we see a successful ministry with a decreasing number of disciples as contrasted with some of today's unsuccessful ministries with increasing attendance where the gospel is perverted, ignored, changed and repackaged as the health/wealth immitation good for nothing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reminder that we shouldn't judge God's work based on our external business model methods because it isn't up to us who the gospel changes, it is up to God to enable his saints to come to him.