Does Porn Use Disqualify a Pastor?
00:00:00.000 | A number of listeners to this podcast listen with their children, which is awesome.
00:00:04.840 | But today in this episode, we're going to talk about pornography.
00:00:07.520 | So just an alert there.
00:00:09.020 | This is a common question we get a lot of times in the inbox, and it's a sobering one.
00:00:13.960 | Here it is.
00:00:14.960 | "Should a pastor who uses pornography resign from his leadership role?"
00:00:20.800 | Now this is also a question that the Barna researchers recently asked about 3,000 Christians
00:00:25.520 | in a study produced in partnership with Josh McDowell Ministries earlier in 2016.
00:00:31.140 | And when they asked the question, only 8% of pastors said yes, that a pastor using porn
00:00:36.820 | should resign.
00:00:38.580 | But when the question was asked to adult Christians, 41% of them said yes, a pastor should be fired
00:00:44.920 | or asked to resign in this situation.
00:00:47.980 | So obviously this huge disparity is a cause for concern alone about sexual assent in pastoral
00:00:53.000 | ministry it seems.
00:00:54.840 | Pastor John, how do you read these numbers, the 8% and the 41%, and how would you answer
00:00:59.720 | the question yourself?
00:01:01.120 | Well, what appalls me in those statistics is not the disparity, but how low both figures
00:01:06.560 | are.
00:01:07.560 | Yeah, good point.
00:01:08.560 | Yeah.
00:01:09.560 | I mean, 8% is inconceivable.
00:01:12.080 | They must have asked the question in a peculiar way.
00:01:14.800 | I can't believe that number.
00:01:16.720 | 41%, maybe, but both of them in my opinion are appallingly low.
00:01:22.800 | And your question is, well, what do you think and why?
00:01:25.380 | So if I were on a leadership team, that is if I were a fellow elder of a pastor and it
00:01:31.320 | came to my attention that he was looking at pornography, say on the internet, or worse
00:01:37.240 | kind of involvements, I suppose, though they're all terrible, I would try to follow the steps
00:01:42.680 | of Matthew 18 and go to with the informant to talk to him personally, privately.
00:01:51.040 | And from that point on, whether he should step down from his pastoral role, either to
00:01:59.140 | an extended leave or resignation, depends in part on whether this was an isolated incident
00:02:08.880 | or a pattern.
00:02:11.040 | If all the other evidences of qualification for the eldership in the New Testament were
00:02:17.800 | present, and this incident proved to be an aberration of his consistent purity of heart,
00:02:26.160 | purity of eyes, purity of relationships, then I would try to resolve it privately with his
00:02:32.880 | wife and the other elders.
00:02:35.480 | And yes, I do think we should draw in the other elders at this point, even though Matthew
00:02:42.520 | 18 isn't talking about that.
00:02:44.780 | And the reason is that I think whether a leader is willing to be vulnerable and accountable
00:02:51.080 | to his leadership team, the fellow elders, is crucial to know.
00:02:55.280 | If he's resistant to that, it's a very bad sign.
00:02:59.680 | But if the incident proves to be an ongoing habit of watching pornography, I do regard
00:03:08.040 | him as unqualified for the pastoral ministry, the eldership.
00:03:13.180 | And I would encourage him to resign and undertake all the biblical strategies of liberation
00:03:20.060 | that he can amass.
00:03:23.360 | And behind that position are two convictions.
00:03:28.040 | One has to do with leadership qualifications in the New Testament, and the other has to
00:03:32.120 | do with the nature of grace.
00:03:34.280 | The first conviction about leadership qualifications is that pastors, overseers, elders, whatever
00:03:41.760 | term a church uses for their leaders, in the New Testament, they are called to have a higher
00:03:48.600 | standard of moral and spiritual qualification than the church members as a whole.
00:03:53.880 | And you can see those qualifications laid out in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.
00:04:00.120 | And when I try to contemplate how a man could be qualified to lead the church as one who
00:04:08.840 | has been unable to conquer the temptation of pornography, I can't imagine that such
00:04:15.860 | a person is qualified.
00:04:17.360 | I'm going to list all the reasons here that I'm drawing out of those qualifications from
00:04:21.640 | the New Testament.
00:04:22.640 | He's, in essence, being disrespectful at best and unfaithful at worst to his wife.
00:04:30.280 | He's defiling his heart time after time and falling short of having a pure heart that
00:04:37.300 | can see God.
00:04:38.640 | Blessed are the pure in heart that can see God.
00:04:40.440 | How can you lead a people if you can't see God for who he really is and are constantly
00:04:45.320 | defiling your ability to see the Lord?
00:04:48.360 | He's making it very difficult for himself to look at women in the church with any purity.
00:04:55.740 | The flock that he's called to care for without seeing them in some contaminated way as those
00:05:02.360 | images are corrupting his mind.
00:05:05.780 | He's manifesting a lack of self-control, which is explicit in the qualification list.
00:05:11.800 | If the outsiders knew what he was doing, he wouldn't be well thought of.
00:05:16.080 | No, he wouldn't.
00:05:18.520 | Even the world would not regard such a man as fit to be a spiritual leader of men and
00:05:24.360 | women.
00:05:25.360 | They might regard him as normal like everybody else, but they wouldn't.
00:05:28.440 | They wouldn't say that such a man should be a spiritual leader.
00:05:33.520 | In the New Testament, qualifications for elders are given about not being addicted to wine
00:05:39.920 | and not being lovers of money.
00:05:41.840 | That's interesting.
00:05:42.840 | When you take money and wine, in other words, he's saying you're unqualified if the temptation
00:05:52.080 | of wine and the temptation of money overcome you.
00:05:57.240 | Well, if money and wine knock you out of the ministry, how much more the inability to overcome
00:06:04.520 | the temptation to pornography.
00:06:06.640 | I say more, I say worse, because these are real women on the screen.
00:06:11.280 | This is a pastor.
00:06:12.800 | These are real women.
00:06:14.000 | They have souls.
00:06:15.000 | They're going to heaven or hell.
00:06:16.960 | They have mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers whose relationships are being
00:06:21.080 | ruined by these lives.
00:06:23.040 | This is just incomprehensible to me that anybody could defend their fitness for ministry while
00:06:28.320 | engaging in a regular way with this kind of thing.
00:06:32.760 | When it becomes known in the church, and it will become known in the church, that he is
00:06:37.680 | a user, how will his credibility in the preaching of holiness and purity and obedience to Christ
00:06:45.120 | have any credibility or weight at all?
00:06:49.340 | The fact that the New Testament elevates the qualifications for leadership in the church
00:06:54.280 | above what is expected of all Christians, and even those are high, makes it difficult
00:07:00.620 | to imagine how a pastor in a pattern of pornography could be qualified to lead the flock of God
00:07:07.260 | into a more holy and pure walk with God, which is what his job is at its heart.
00:07:13.100 | Now, I said there were two convictions behind my position, and the other one is just a short
00:07:18.240 | word about a view of grace.
00:07:21.900 | Of course there is forgiveness for such sin, just like there's forgiveness for all of us,
00:07:28.160 | and grace is eager to offer it to a penitent, humble pastor.
00:07:35.520 | But when grace operates in community, not just one-on-one, but in community, it takes
00:07:43.020 | into account not just an individual who needs forgiveness, but a church that needs protection,
00:07:49.340 | gracious protection, a church that needs godly examples in leadership, graciously needs godly
00:07:55.860 | examples in leadership, and thus grace toward the people will result in the removal of the
00:08:03.460 | leader.
00:08:04.460 | People don't get that lots of times, that grace is not a simple thing of just one-on-one.
00:08:09.220 | There's more people involved than just one.
00:08:11.660 | So because of those two convictions, I would encourage pastors who are in a pattern of
00:08:17.340 | pornography to step down.
00:08:21.460 | That is a hard truth, but a necessary word for the health of our churches.
00:08:25.620 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:08:26.980 | And for more details about this podcast or to catch up on past episodes that we have
00:08:31.140 | released or to subscribe to the audio feed, even send us a question of your own, go to
00:08:34.140 | our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:08:39.540 | So should we be killing sin or should we be relaxing in grace?
00:08:44.160 | How does sanctification work?
00:08:46.160 | It's a perennial question we get in the inbox, and John Piper will answer it on Friday.
00:08:49.860 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:08:51.860 | We'll see you then.
00:08:52.420 | [BLANK_AUDIO]
00:09:00.840 | [ Silence ]