Crossroads -- Unbuckled belts in Dallas megachurches

Way too often, workaholic pastors veer into sin, and not just in big congregations

Anyone who has been paying attention of religion news has heard of the “Nones” — the “religiously unaffiliated” people who have little or no connection to any form of institutional religion.

Then there are “Nons,” the term that religion-data expert Ryan Burge has pinned on the other big trend (“The Future of American Christianity is Non-Denominational”) that is reshaping the religion marketplace. “Nons” are Christian believers — primarily evangelicals and Pentecostals — who attend congregations with zero ties to ancient church traditions or Protestant denominations.

We’re talking about all of those church signs — for flocks small or super-sized — containing words such as “fellowship,” “community church” or even “center.” Those signs almost always contain, in very large letters, the name of the preacher who fills the pulpit.

The “Nons” play a major role in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, which focuses on a recent New York Times feature with this headline: “Around Dallas, the Church Scandals Seem to Have No End — In this part of Texas, a pastor with a clean reputation is not to be taken for granted.”

In a remarkable show of restraint, the headline writer omitted a key word in this drama — “sex.” Yes, most of these scandals have involved various forms of sexual sin. Here is a key chunk of background information:

A running list of local pastors “involved in controversies this year” maintained by the local television station WFAA now contains 17 names, including five involving criminal charges. This week, a leader at Revival City Church in McKinney was arrested on a domestic violence charge. …

There’s no clear pattern to the scandals, which range widely. The churches are all Protestant but belong to different denominations — or none at all — and have different theological beliefs and worship styles.

But the cumulative impact has been unsettling for many Christians and their leaders in Dallas, a city that the magazine Christianity Today once declared “the new capital of evangelicalism.” … The Dallas-Fort Worth region is home to more than 6,500 houses of worship, the highest concentration in the top 10 largest urban regions in the country, according to the 2020 U.S. religion census.

This Dallas-area story is certainly big news.

Also, the emphasis on “Nons” is accurate and appropriate. Why?

… Many of the affected churches were essentially accountable only to their own members, with little, if any, external denominational oversight. …

Because an independent church’s popularity and growth depend largely on a single charismatic man, his downfall would bring not just institutional embarrassment, but a threat to employee livelihoods and, as some see it, to the salvation of perhaps thousands of people.

That’s true, and it is accurate to say that the churches involved in this wave of Dallas-area scandals are “all Protestant.” It is also accurate to note the role that independent superstar preachers play in these tragedies.

However, it would have helped to remind readers that the Catholic Church has clear lines of ecclesiastical authority and Rome continues to struggle with sexual-abuse scandals around the world. The same is true with Mainline Protestantism and in major evangelical bodies, such as the Southern Baptist Convention.

During the podcast, host Todd Wilken and I stressed another crucial question: Are these superstar pastors actually “pastors”? In a church with thousands of members, and spectacular multi-media worship services, the “pastors” are actually niche- or even national-audience celebrities. In most cases, the preachers appoint the “boards” that run these congregations.

Is it any wonder that many of these preachers suffer various kinds of breakdowns ?

I will end with this. Decades ago, I had a chance to spent some time at the private Colorado counseling center led by the late Dr. Louis McBurney, a Mayo Clinic-trained specialist in working with troubled clergy and other religious leaders. Here is my “On Religion” column from 2009 focusing on his work: “Memory eternal: Healer for the healers.”

While sexual sins played a destructive role in the vast majority of the cases he handled, McBurney told me that the connecting thread was something else — workaholism. This was true in churches large and small. Here is a key part of that column that I think is highly relevant, when considering the Dallas scandals and many others:

The challenges clergy face are easy to describe, yet hard to master.

* Lay leaders often judge a pastor's success by two statistics – attendance and the annual budget. Yet powerful, rich members often make the strategic decisions. As a minister once told McBurney: "There's nothing wrong with my church that wouldn't be solved by a few well-placed funerals."

* Perfectionism often leads to isolation and workaholism, with many clergy working between 80 and 90 hours a week.

* Clergy families live in glass houses, facing constant scrutiny about personal issues that other parents and children can keep private.

* Ministers may spend up to half their office hours counseling, which can be risky since most ministers are men and most active church members are women. If a woman bares her soul, and her pastor responds by sharing his own personal pain, the result can be "as destructive and decisive as reaching for a zipper," McBurney said.

Here is one final quote from McBurney, describing what he experienced in years of work with crashed clergy:

"Pastors are used to telling people about right and wrong. … Knowing what to do is not their problem. They feel a special sense of guilt because they know what God wants them to do, but they can't do it. ...

"It's hard for ministers to confess their sins, because they're not supposed to sin. They also struggle to believe that God will forgive them, because they have so much trouble forgiving themselves."

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