What's been happening during the last few years that Christian ministers have become as involved as we have in sexual wrongdoing? Is it just that a less deferential culture has emerged leading to an unprecedented exposure of behaviors that have been going on among us all along? Or has there in fact been a rise in our involvement in such things?
Even as I ask these questions, I'm aware that I can't answer them with ultimate adequacy. But along with many, my sense of disquiet is not one that merely manifests itself in a condemnation of those of my colleagues who have "fallen." My disquiet also brings me up sharply as I see myself standing vulnerable before my God, with the realization of how susceptible we all are to the pervasive, persuasive patterns of the contemporary attitudes, thoughts, fantasies, and behaviors, which confront us and tend to shape us more than we might realize.
Then of course, there are those immensely significant factors associated with the sexual sins of clergy: We see these most clearly when clergy dallying becomes public, causing incalculable damage to the hearts, homes, and marriages of those involved; and when festering congregational bewilderment and disillusionment become familiar cross currents in their wake, and when the credibility of Christian ministry in general is wearing so thin, not to mention the upheaval that ravages the souls of our own spouses, marriages, and families, and when a species of sterility takes over the previously secure trajectory of our lives and vocations.
We must also confess that we seldom dare to actually count what our illicit, undisclosed sexual behavior costs us and others when it comes to our marriages, our self-respect, our sense of personal integrity and ministerial veracity. It's also hard for us to assess how secret and so far unexposed illegitimate sexual patterns impair our spiritual and emotional being, and how they blight our own sense of pastoral authenticity which is so foundational to our function as ministers not to mention how they affect our credibility and effectiveness as preachers as we stand up to handle the holy things of Cod.
Thus there is a particular aspect of clergy sexual transgression that haunts us, I think. It has to do with our grasp of the stark contradiction between sexual sin and the holiness of our call to be prophets and priests of the Most High Cod.
When we muster the courage necessary to actually face this reality we are confronted by the magnificence of our calling as it stands in stark contrast against the dark, shifting value systems of our time, sexual or otherwise. In the light of such disparity, we simply have to face the question of whether we have in fact been caught taking a rather long and fatal spiritual nap while a corrupt mind-set has evolved and established itself amongst us; a mind-set that impairs our deepest convictions about who we actually are as ministers of God.
We must ask ourselves if we still actually believe that our calling is indeed all that high and all that holy.
Throughout my ministry, I have been a serious advocate of ministers being more approachable, more human, and more themselves, while they strive to be less stiff, stentorian, authoritarian, and formal; that they curb their ultimately egotistical attempts to live up to some sort of contrived ministerial image. This quest is certainly not wrong in itself, but I am now sensing a rising, pressing need for us to be much more prayerful and careful about the way we go about establishing the realities behind the ministerial image we seek to adopt and project. I know I'm not alone when it comes to these concerns.
The third article in our 2004, six-part series by Miroslav Kis dealing with pas tors and sexual sin is in this issue (see page 14). It confronts us with a most potent challenge when it comes to the things we are discussing here.
Finally there's the terribly important question of how we deal with one another as clergy when one of us does "fall." I am glad indeed to be able to present in this issue, our cover article by Dwight Nelson, who deals so insight fully with this critical question.
Both these articles demand a deeply honest reading. The fact is, these articles transcend the sexual questions that they deal with frontally. They address questions that are jugular to what it means to be a Christian minister in the here and now.
