I committed adultery

An ex-pastor's tragic story

Anonymous

My name is Roger.* I used to work in your conference before I had to leave the ministry. It wasn't be cause I lacked success. I lost my ministry because I did the unthinkable. There is no nice way to put it—I left my spouse for another woman. I committed adultery.

After the emotional equivalent of a nuclear holocaust, I learned some important lessons. Now with some time passed, I feel compelled to tell my story. I think perhaps it might prevent others from doing what I did.

During my ministry I wrote some articles for Ministry. This almost certainly will be the last one. I can group my thoughts into three areas. First, what happened and why. Second, the results of what happened. And third, how the church responded to what happened.

I intend to be honest. Some of what I have to say may not be agreeable, but bear in mind I am speaking from experience and from my heart.

Why did it happen?

No one in his or her right mind wakes up and says, "Today looks like a great day to commit adultery and destroy my marriage." It's infinitely more subtle than that.

I married quite young, priding myself that I could beat the statistics against teen marriages. You see, I'm the kind of per son who has a big enough ego that I hate to admit weakness or defeat. That in turn feeds directly into the pressure every minister faces. We need to look good, not just from nine to five but every minute of every day. We learn to come across as a near-perfect friend, counselor, parent, and spouse. People expect it of us, and we often come to expect it of ourselves. I believe this creates a unique kind of job stress that helps cause breakups in pastoral families.

Looking back, I see that the marriage I had before committing adultery had many foundational cracks I simply chose to ignore. My spouse at that time was quite different in personality from me. Often we had a hard time relating. Certainly, better attempts at communicating through those barriers at an early stage might have prevented what happened. However, when you have yourself convinced that you have the strongest marriage of anyone you know, it's all too easy to ignore the problems. Little irritations that remain unaddressed don't go away. They just build in the subconscious and make one vulnerable to temptation. This, I am sure, was a major factor in what happened to me.

The second part of the equation was a friendship that grew over the years. Frankly, it was the deepest friendship I had ever known. At first, there was no romantic involvement with this woman. It was just that here was a person to whom I could say something anything and feel completely understood and accepted. That's a great thing. Everyone should have that kind of friendship at least once in a lifetime. Further, I don't feel that that kind of soul-mate friendship needs to occur strictly between spouses. The problem for me was that after several years I began to have feelings of romantic love toward this person.

How did I deny there was a problem at that point? Easy. I simply convinced myself that there was no way my friend felt the same toward me. Thus, ignoring the possibility that she was also in love with me, I continued the friendship as usual. Indeed, there came a point where I began to hurt inside over my desire to be with this person, but still I denied there could be any real danger. Then one day I discovered that she felt exactly the same toward me as I did toward her. That was ground zero. My life would bear little resemblance to sanity for some time.

As I look back on why things happened, two lessons are obvious. First, we need to admit to ourselves that there is no near perfect marriage. Those little things in our spouse's personality that we can't relate to need to be addressed. We must talk them through and achieve resolution. If we can't handle it ourselves, then we need to get professional help. In my case, my ex-spouse, my friend, her husband, and I eventually went to counseling. But it was too late. We simply can't afford to put off dealing with problems we see in our marriage.

The second lesson has to do with friendships with the opposite sex. Ninety-nine percent of the time I feel there is no problem. However, looking back, I see two red flags that I was blind to. From the moment I met my friend, I found her attractive. That's neither good nor bad. Almost every church has members that are physically attractive. But upon dis covering how well she and I related to each other, I should have backed off. The other red flag was when I realized I was beginning to view her as more than a friend. Rather than hiding behind the thinking that there was no way she could have similar feelings, I should have assumed she did.

Thus, for me, preventing the all-too-often divorce/remarriage situation boils down to self-honesty. If there is some kind of dissatisfaction in one's existing marriage, it needs to be addressed, not ignored. And, if feelings toward a member of the opposite sex arise, we need to admit them to ourselves and perhaps even to a trusted friend. Having admitted those feelings, we need to take action to prevent them from deepening.

What were the results of my actions?

In a word, unimaginable. Oh, sure, I had given a great deal of thought before hand to the implications of leaving my existing marriage. I knew there would be guilt. I knew the kids would be deeply affected. I knew many people would be shocked. I knew I would lose my job (my denomination has no recovery program for ministers who divorce and remarry). However, anticipating the consequences paled in comparison with experiencing the reality of what happened.

I mentioned guilt. I had never known a sense of self-loathing such as followed in the wake of breaking up my family. I had never been prone to depression, but suicidal thoughts became almost a daily occurrence. Looking back, I realize that without God's intervention I probably wouldn't have lived through those early days.

And my kids? They were indeed hurt. Devastated, in fact. As they grow up they will encounter problems. Most kids do. Like any parent, I pray their skirmishes with puberty and the temptations of the world will be minor. But to the degree they do have problems, it will be all too easy to beat myself up inside and say "It's all my fault." Sure, in my head I know that's not being entirely fair to myself. I should tell myself that those problems might have occurred anyway—but then, I will never know for sure.

Were people shocked? Oh yes! Ninety percent of the people I thought of as friends stopped talking to me. I remember going to an annual church rally a couple years after the breakup. I saw some people I knew fairly well, looked in their faces, and said hello. They turned away as if I didn't exist. Do you know what it's like to hold out your hand to an official church greeter and have him refuse to shake your hand? I do. Yes, it brings back guilt. It also causes hurt and anger.

You want to grab people and shout, "Hey, I didn't divorce you! I still want you as a friend!" I now find myself cynical to ward those I once thought were close to me. I prize those few rare friends who during that most difficult time said, "We don't understand what's going on, but we love you and want you to know we care for you no matter what."

Did I lose my job? In a heartbeat. There was even an attempt to use a loop hole to deny me severance pay (money desperately needed by my former wife and the kids as well as myself). Unemployed. You know all that hype we as pastors get about how much money we could make if we used our skills in the business world? Hype is about all it is. Try marketing yourself on the strength of a degree in theology. I did manual labor for a while. It was hot, dirty, and dangerous work. It wasn't all bad, though. Physical labor makes for good therapy. I also gained a new appreciation for the blue-collar workers who make this country run. Then I worked for a church member for a while, until he tried to cheat me out of several hundred dollars. That wasn't all bad either. It opened my eyes to the fact that folks at church who are all dressed up in their "Sunday best" can become very different creatures when they step into the office Monday morning. The bottom line is that I went from being a successful pastor of a large church to being just another guy looking for a job.

Any one of these consequences of my sin would make for a major life crisis. Put them all together, and the stress load was crashing beyond belief. Time heals. But looking back, I realize that without God's gentle hand, I simply would not have survived.

So how did the church as an institution react?

In a way that makes me ashamed of it. Not just for myself, but for all those who have made the same kind of mistakes I did. I expected the loss of my job. But I didn't expect that I would cease to exist as far as our state conference governing body was concerned. It was like dropping off the face of the earth. I had served on committees, worked together for years with various members of the conference staff. In some cases I was instrumental in getting them elected to the office they held. I never heard from them again. At a time when I needed to be ministered to as never before—and I let that fact be known—I was ignored. That hurt a great deal. I felt like the racehorse with the broken leg whose life ends with a bullet. I was no longer an asset. Therefore, I was no longer worth anyone's time or trouble.

As far as membership goes, mine was dropped. There was no contact. No one addressed the issue with me. In fact, no one even bothered so much as to tell me. I found out by accident about six months after the fact. Even as a pastor, I disliked the premise of disfellowshipping. Indeed, I can say in all truthfulness that I never allowed a person in any of my churches to be dropped from membership who wanted to remain a part of the church, regardless of his or her faults. Thus, to be discarded without so much as a phone call hurt a great deal.

Well, from my perspective, that's what happened

Earlier I discussed a number of things I know I should have done differently. Now I will mention a few things the church needs to consider doing differently.

First, conferences need to have a recovery program in place to minister to pastors who have problems whether such problems involve marital breakups, chemical dependency, or whatever. I would go so far as to say it is a sin when a church organization "amputates" a worker and then makes no attempt to help that individual heal. The same goes for the church in general. Dropping someone from church membership who is in emotional trauma does not heal anyone or anything. Obviously the church needs to respond in some way. But I'm not sure that "shooting our wounded" is the best way. You see, when someone commits a major sin, that person knows it. He or she also feels the hurt that the sin itself brings. Thus, a church that merely leaps to its feet and screams "You sinner, you need to be punished" is not accomplishing much. In fact, after being outcast, I learned there exists a large underground of former members who love and believe the teachings of the church. Yet they stay away because they cannot feel at home in a church where they sense they are neither accepted nor forgiven.

Please don't think for one minute that I am saying we should not call sin by its right name. We must. Sin is sin. What I am saying is that, instead of shunning the erring one the church needs to be Christlike enough to say "Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more" (John 8:11, NKJV). By my own doing, I went through hell and put a lot of people I care deeply about through hell. The realization of what I had done put me lower than I had ever felt before. At that lowest point, to be blunt, it felt like my church kicked me when I was down. By God's grace I hope no one in any church ever has to feel that way again. My plea to the church and its leadership is that whenever a minister falls (or any member, for that matter), we need to reach out to that person. Even if such a person is removed from the payroll or from membership, we need to be far more caring, far more loving, far more gentle. We need to be far more Christlike.

As a postscript, how am I doing now?

Better. God heals. Time heals. I know I will carry emotional scars for the rest of my life. But, the pain has abated. Having remarried, I love my new wife very much. Adversity drew us closer together. Further, I have found work I enjoy and have been able to use my pastoral skills now and then to help out friends on a casual basis. And, oh yes, we have a church home in the same denomination in which I once served as a minister. Truth is, we were very, very close to leaving the church until we visited our present particular congregation. Why did we stay? Because from the day we walked through the front door, they accepted us for who we were rather than condemning us for what we had done. No one said, "Shame on you for breaking up two families and causing so much trouble." Instead they genuinely said, "We're glad you're here—be sure to come back next week." We did.

I want to thank that church. I want to thank the pastor of that church. Above all, I want to thank the God who breathed into that church the gift of unconditional love. May all of us come to know that gift in our hearts.

* Roger Bryant is a pseudonym.


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Anonymous

July 1992

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