Uggh

Sunday was a really special day at McKinney Church. I'll post more about it at some point in the future, but we had a surprise celebration for our senior pastor and his family who are celebrating their 25th year of ministry at McKinney.

Part of the surprise was that Jon Sherman, a former McKinney staffer and current senior pastor of Trinity Bible Church in Willow Park, TX continued our sermon in Nehemiah 3 instead of me. He did a phenomenal job of preaching from the Scriptures while honoring Ken.

Sherman illustrated one of his points about integrity by recalling a conversation he had with an older lady at McKinney many years ago. She said, "One of the things I love most about our pastor is that I have never once had to worry that I would open the newspaper and see his picture on the front page."

I'm not sure I can think of a better compliment for a pastor.

This morning Geoff Surratt has an open letter to pastors posted on his blog. This past Sunday a fairly popular pastor in the blogging world resigned from his church because of an inappropriate relationship with his administrative assistant. Gary Lamb was the pastor of Revolution Church in Canton, GA.

Obviously we should be in prayer for the Lamb family and for the family of the administrative assistant he names in his letter of resignation. And we should be on our guard lest we think we stand and fall (1 Corinthians 10:12). But dang it, if you're in a position of spiritual leadership and are not following Geoff's advice you are a fool.

I read back through Gary's blog entries over the past 6 weeks of his affair just to see if there were any clues. The duplicitous life it reveals made me nauseous. He brags on his wife, brags on his administrative assistant, and talks about his kids. How could he?

Pastors, the stakes are too high for a moment of indiscretion. The task is too great for a even a second of lost focus. And the future is too bright to risk it on a few minutes of pleasure. Nothing is worth that. You need to take steps in your life to make it virtually impossible for you to go down that road. Geoff has some great advice. I'll try to elaborate on a couple of steps I think are important tomorrow.

Meanwhile, what steps have you taken to make sure this doesn't happen to you? What have you noticed your pastor doing to protect himself in this area?