A post from my Monday morning column at Zondervan’s ministry blog, Engaging Church. (Read the full column HERE.)
A few weeks ago I heard about a pastor whose multi-year affair with a member of his church was finally uncovered. Unfortunately it’s a story that’s all too familiar.
Not only did the inevitable fallout result in two families being ripped apart, the pastor’s ministry dissolved and people left his church. Several people left because of the trauma of the affair; they were personally affected and devastated by their pastor’s sin.
In my seminary program I worked at Starbucks. One of my co-workers was a recent high school graduate who seemed put off by my seminary student status. After several surface-level conversations one day she drilled deeper, grilling me about my pastoral profession.
She shared how she had walked away from the church after witnessing years of hypocrisy and neglect from her parents, both dutiful lay ministers serving in various church ministries. She witnessed the disconnect between their public lives as lay ministers and private lives as parents and spouses. Now she doesn’t want anything to do with church.
I know of another former pastor who became something of a rock star because of his books and films. Over the span of a decade this big-name teacher with an out-sized following shifted from an evangelically consistent core of beliefs to a set more consistent with a postmodern pluralist age. And I’ve seen first hand how his personal shift has affected the beliefs of countless other Christians regarding the full spectrum of Christian beliefs.
I share these anecdotes because they devastatingly illustrate what pastor Chris Brauns calls the “principle of the rope.” It’s a principle that I don’t often consider, but one I am convinced matters to my ministry, and yours.
The Principle of the Rope
In his new book Bound Together, Chris explores “the simple truth that our lives, choices, and actions are linked to the lives, choices, and actions of other people.” (25) This device of a rope is an apt picture of the reality of how connected we are to one another, especially us ministers.
Chris explains that theologians often speak of “corporate identity” or “the one and the many” to refer to the reality that the actions of one individual can affect many. Solidarity also speaks of this idea of “a union of interests, purposes, or sympathies among members of a group.” In other words, these theological ideas and Chris’s rope principle speak of the ties that bind a group together. (26)
[…]
Chris ends his book with an apt quote from J. Oswald Sanders: “If those who hold influence over others fail to lead toward spiritual uplands, then surely the path to the lowlands will be well worn. People travel together; no one lives detached and alone.” (183)
How often do we consider how our own choices will affect those with whom we’ve been “roped”? That what we do has a rippling effect across our community because of our own choices?
