Does Struggling with Pornography Disqualify a Pastor from Ministry?

It seemed like just another picture perfect fall day. My grandfather called my teenage cousin and me to go with him for a ride. We loved to spend time with him—especially on road trips. As it turned out, this would be a very different kind of trip. Coughing all along the way, he drove straight to the hospital. While my cousin and I waited for hours, my grandfather was admitted. That was our final road trip. My grandfather died after a brief stay in the hospital.

 

I loved my grandfather. It ached my heart to think: what if he had gone in sooner? Would his doctors have discovered the cancer in time? But men don’t like to go the doctor, do they? We don’t like to admit that we have problems, and we certainly hate confessing that we need help. But acquiescing to the fear of vulnerability and to our culture’s false standard of masculinity (i.e., “I’m a man, I can handle it”) often makes for tragic endings. There’s a lesson in this for all pastors. Living by the motto, “I don’t need help, and I can’t expose my vulnerabilities,” can lead to ministerial death, even when Christ offers abundantly abounding grace to rescue us.

In his classic essay on the dangers of ministry, “The Almost Inevitable Ruin of Every Minister,” Donald Whitney writes that:   Continue at Bobby Scott