Recent church scandals involving prominent leaders in the Reformed and Charismatic worlds join a long and depressing list of pastors and ministry leaders whose reputations and life’s work has been damaged, discredited, or destroyed by sins they thought they could keep secret.

A Little History

The problem of clerical scandals is not new, of course. In some periods, it was widespread. It was an open secret in the 1400s that many supposedly celibate priests had concubines. In many cases their bishops knew this and rather than taking action against it, they encouraged it. After all, they could fine priests who had concubines, so if their priests kept them, the bishops had a regular source of extra income.

When the Reformations hit in the 1500s, one big concern was maintaining clerical discipline. In Lutheran and Anglican areas, the bishops were far more diligent to oversee the clergy than had been the case among the Catholic bishops a century earlier. The Catholic Church also cleaned up its act and enforced educational and moral standards among all varieties of clergy. The Reformed world, except for Hungary, did not have a church structure that used bishops, so they needed an alternative system of clerical discipline.

Pastoral Discipline in Reformed Regions

In areas that adopted Reformed Protestantism, pastors generally worked together collectively to maintain discipline among their ranks via a practice known as censura morum, or examination of morals. Censura morum was a combination of confession, mutual correction, and admonition. In Geneva, the pastors did this quarterly in one of the meetings of the Venerable Company of Pastors. In the Pays de Vaud, a French-speaking region in Switzerland, it was done at the synod, where officers of all the churches of the region were present.

(The Pays de Vaud was absorbed into the German-speaking Canton of Berne, which suspended the synods out of fear that the francophone churches would be independent of the Bernese church. They eventually permitted a synod again in 1549. Pierre Viret, a minister in the region, thought the synod was going well when the Bernese cut it short as too disorderly after four days of “fraternal admonitions.”)

In areas where the Calvinist reform spread, censura morum sometimes continued, but in any event, bodies like the presbytery or classis oversaw the doctrine and behavior of ministers. In practice, it seems most pastoral discipline occurred in the wake of complaints leveled by members of the congregation.

At the Local Level

Along with the formal censura morum, the officers in the local church (pastor[s], elders, and sometimes deacons) would meet together in the consistory or session to provide spiritual leadership and discipline for the members of the congregation. To do this, they needed to be under discipline themselves, and so ideally they would engage in mutual admonition to insure they were not themselves falling into sin.

Although the pastor was not technically under the authority of the consistory, they did pay his salary, and so they had a great deal of practical leverage over the pastor’s behavior and teaching. At times, the relationship seems to have been almost adversarial; in France, for example, there are many records of pastors complaining to synods about not being paid. This sort of thing today discourages pastors from preaching about controversial topics, which is why C.R. Wiley, my colleague on the Theology Pugcast, encourages pastors to become financially resilient by developing outside sources of income.

Pastoral Discipline Today

In theory, most evangelical and Reformed churches and ministries continue this general model. In the Reformed world, presbyteries and the like continue their role of providing pastoral oversight and discipline, and consistories or sessions continue to function. In congregational churches and parachurch ministries, the pastor or leader is in principle accountable to a board.

In practice, however, all too often it doesn’t work.

Although the kind of adversarial situations described above do happen, usually resulting in the pastor leaving, the more common and dangerous situation is when the members of the board/session/consistory are so close to the leader that they fail to challenge him when questionable situations arise. An accusation or rumor of sexual impropriety arises, and rather than investigate it, they take the leader’s word that there is nothing to it. The same happens with financial irregularities.

Even worse, in many cases the leadership will close ranks around an erring pastor to fend off criticism or to try to keep a lid on a brewing scandal. They often do this in the name of protecting the reputation of the Gospel, which really means the protection of the reputation of the church or organization, and thus protection of its finances. This is basically the same reason bishops in the modern Catholic Church have covered up the sexual sins of priests.

To put it differently, especially in churches and organizations that lack outside oversight, it is too often the case that problems aren’t caught early and dealt with before they rise to the level of scandal. Members of the board are reluctant to press into uncomfortable issues and get in the leader’s face even when there are clear warning signs of trouble.

Some Suggestions

If you are a board member or officer of a church, you need to love your pastor or leader enough to do the uncomfortable thing and challenge him when an issue comes up and pursue it to make sure that nothing inappropriate is happening. It is the best thing you can do for him and for your church. If you find nothing is there, great; if there’s a problem, hopefully you can catch it early enough that it won’t derail the ministry.

If you are a pastor or a leader of an organization, you need accountability to someone and you need to give them explicit permission to ask hard and uncomfortable questions. And it goes without saying that you need to be honest with them. That includes confession, discussions of temptations you’re struggling with, and the like. They’re there to help you, but they can’t if they don’t know what’s going on.

And a practical suggestion: whatever you may think of Rick Warren, he made a habit years ago of keeping a notebook of newspaper clippings of every scandal involving a pastor or head of ministry and reading it every month. Again, forget whatever theological differences you may have with him. Assembling and reading such a notebook can help remind you of the consequences to you, your family, and your ministry if you give in to temptation.

The Billy Graham Rule (never be alone in a room with a member of the opposite sex) is also good practice.

Some News about Every Square Inch Ministries

The ministry has not been very active over the summer due to changes in my employment situation. This has made it difficult to block the time to be as active on the site as I had planned. To help remedy this and to help cover the costs of maintaining the website and producing resources, I have started a Patreon page. If you have found my ministry helpful and would like to support it, I invite you to check out the tiers and the premiums at https://www.patreon.com/EverySquareInchMinistries. Thank you.