Executive Director of Grace to You and Grace Community Church elder Phil Johnson shared more details regarding Dr. Steven Lawson’s moral failure on social media Wednesday (Sept. 25), in a post he has since deleted.
Johnson, who is a friend of Lawson, clarified for his followers that Lawson did in fact inform the elders of his sin, but only after he was caught by the father of the woman he was having an “inappropriate relationship” with.
“Steve himself informed the elders, but only after the girl’s father had confronted Steve and threatened exposure. This was not a noble confession of sin,” Johnson wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Lawson was “removed indefinitely from all ministry activities at Trinity Bible Church of Dallas” last Thursday (Sept. 19) by the elders. Lawson was the church’s lead pastor.
In a statement released by the Trinity Bible Church of Dallas elders, they informed the public that Lawson’s removal was due to an “inappropriate relationship that he has had with a woman.”
In his post, Johnson addressed how the elders defined Lawson’s moral failure. “‘Inappropriate’ is too ambiguous,” Johnson said. “As if someone merely caught them holding hands. This was a 5-year relationship with strong romantic overtones. Both parties insist no literal fornication was involved, but their tie to one another was adulterous in spirit, if not in fact.”
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Providing more details for his followers, Johnson said that Lawson is 73 and the woman he was having his “inappropriate relationship” with “is in her late 20s.”
“She is not a member of his church,” Johnson added. “In fact, she lives in a different state nowhere close to any of the ministries Steve served.” He then said he doesn’t “believe any good end would be served by exposing her identity to the public.”
In addition to his removal at Trinity Bible Church, Lawson was also removed from his role as professor of preaching and dean of D.Min. studies at The Master’s Seminary and he resigned from all of his OnePassion Ministry duties, a ministry he founded and had been serving as president.
‘You Are the Fool of All Fools for 15 Seconds of Gratification,’ Said Steven Lawson
During an event that took place not that long ago, Lawson answered a question he was asked regarding moral purity and if he could theoretically go back and change anything in his early 20s, what would it be.
In his answer, Lawson said that one “needs to cultivate, I’ll just tell you, quite frankly, the fear of God in your heart. And I know a lot of reformed guys would give the answer the ‘Love of God.’ Sure, amen, but I’m not going to discount the fear of God.”
Lawson went on to explain that what helped him stay pure in the early years of his life was “a healthy, holy fear of God. Of what God would do if I fell into that [sexual] sin. The discipline of the Lord. He would have taken me to the woodshed, and it would not have been pretty. It would have been painful.”
“The Bible says, be sure your sin will find you out. Secret sin on Earth is open scandal in heaven and God knows,” Lawson added.
Continuing his answer, Lawson shared about a time when he, being the Dean of the doctoral program at The Master’s Seminary, asked a well-known, respected pastor to lecture at the seminary. But days before he was scheduled to lecture, Lawson received an email from the elders of this pastor’s church informing Lawson that the pastor had disqualified himself from ministry due to sexual immorality.
This prompted Lawson to address the seminary’s Doctor of Ministry students and wrote down over “20 things sexual immorality will do to destroy your life and destroy your ministry and destroy your family. And I took two hours without a break to go through that list.”
