Responses to "Pastoral Search Report"

Purporting to be a report of the pastoral search committee, this column listed various Bible characters the committee had rejected for one reason or another, then asked where evangelicals should draw the line in moral failures... beyond which a minister gets tossed out, short of he or she gets help, counseling, discipline and correction, but still holds the job? Your responses:

From: [email protected] (Jonathan B. White)
You have done an outstanding job of framing an issue that has bothered me for 20 years: the lack of a comprehensive, objective standard of ethical and moral conduct for clergy. I studied accounting in college and worked with a CPA firm before entering ministry. The accounting profession has a higher standard of professional ethics than does the ministry, a state I have felt is scandalous. I've been in meetings where discipline/restoration was discussed and people seemed to completely miss the point when I observed that a secular counselor violating a counseling relationship would receive stricter discipline than would a pastor, or that a school teacher guilty of improper conduct toward a student would face more severe penalties than would a pastor abusing his position of trust toward a member of the congregation. WE NEED A UNIFORM, STANDARD CODE OF MINISTERIAL ETHICS. Pardon me, I just realized that by Internet standards, I shouted.

Another side of this issue that I find interesting is the degree to which standards which are applied are generational and cultural. Porn is no big deal to many boomers, who grew up with it, but is viewed by many veteran pastors as being as bad as, or worse than, adultery. The older pastors (I know this is an over-generalization) often sympathize with a guy who has committed adultery ("it happens so easily," or "we all know how vulnerable we are," but when it comes to the use of porn they go ballistic. I guess they see it as deeply perverted, while adultery is just something that sometimes happens when people are thrown into close proximity. I know some people who read what I just wrote will feel that I am "soft on porn". I don't think I am, it's just that I find the standard some others hold to be deeply confusing. These issues need to be openly discussed, debated, and a standard arrived at. One thing will prevent that from happening. A standard would be branded as legalism. That is what has happened for the past 20 years whenever someone has tried to establish an objective, uniform standard, rather than a subjective, cultural one. --Jonathan White