People are not punished for their pastor’s sin. But when a leader—a preacher, a teacher, a writer, a coach, a parent, a role model—lives and leads under the sway of unrepentant sin, inevitably some followers will follow him into sin. In Isaiah’s day, God withheld compassion from the widows, “for everyone is godless and an evildoer, and every mouth speaks folly” (Isaiah 9:17). The people were not punished for the pastor’s evil, but for their own. And how did they find their way into wickedness and away from God? “Those who guide this people have been leading them astray” (Isaiah 9:16).
Before the Fall
First, a word to leaders. Faithfulness, holiness and purity are priorities and necessities for all believers in Jesus Christ, but especially for you. Whether you are a leader in your church, your small group or your family, when you allow sin to live in you, it will infect those who respect, admire and imitate you. You cannot quarantine yourself in your iniquity while you’re pouring yourself into others through sermons or counsel or influence. It’s like trying to filter the coffee back out of the water after it’s been brewed.
“Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Timothy 4:16). Personally and in community—in specific, intimate, honest relationships with other men—persist in your pursuit of Christlikeness. Keep the faces, the souls and the eternities of your followers before you as you face temptations to look, to indulge, to cheat, to sleep with someone else, to be lazy, to lie, to sin.
And finally, a word to followers: Treasure faithfulness, holiness and purity in leadership. Pray for your pastor’s purity. Commend a leader’s character when you see it. Don’t take it for granted. Cultivate it among aspiring leaders—future pastors, elders, fathers and mothers. Celebrate every kind of grace God gives—the grace that saves wretched, helpless sinners and the grace that slowly but surely makes them pure and whole again.
The qualifications for church leadership (1 Timothy 3:1–7; Titus 1:5–9) are not a scorecard for comparing pastors—not a way for filling out the back of a spiritual baseball card. The qualifications are the character-focused fences built by God to protect his precious sons and daughters. Qualifications do not nullify the gospel of grace. They commend grace wherever it grows, and they guard grace at work throughout the church.
When calling leaders, consider carefully if this man’s teaching and life declare and demonstrate the power, beauty and purity of God—not perfectly, but tangibly and consistently.
The collapse of a leader’s ministry does not signal the collapse of Christ’s church. No, not even hell can prevail against her (Matthew 16:18). Heaven is not thrown into crisis with a scandal, however shocking or hard the fall. It is a sad and sober moment, though, for us to assess ourselves—our resolute dependence on God for the grace to live worthy of God (Philippians 2:12–13)—and to pray for the protection of his children in churches everywhere.
