Upon the Fall of a Pastor

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On the week we were engaged, Jared and I were grocery shopping together when he got a text that nearly took the wind out of him. It was from a fellow pastor, asking if he’d heard the news: a preacher they both greatly respected, a stalwart leader and renowned expositor, had fallen to immorality. Overnight, his leadership over an international ministry had ended, his pulpit taken from him, and because it had garnered a great following, great was the fall of it.

As I watched Jared parse out this reality and grieve, I realized I have seen two responses to this kind of news:

One is the response of the Philistines “when they saw their champion was dead.” Goliath fell, and they fled, because without a leader, why fight?

The second is the response of the Fellowship when Gandalf fell beneath Moria, locked in a fight with the balrog. They wept, then picked up their swords and pushed on toward Mordor.

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A few evenings after it happened, and I could tell the news had been carving on him, Jared and I talked about it. We were pulling down the driveway at the end of the Lord’s Day. He’d preached twice. His church lies in the cattle land forty minutes from home, so between morning and evening services, he’d driven 2.5 hours that day. He didn’t say it, but he was tired.

I think I expected an answer of defeat—an “I saw it coming” or “There goes another.” These are the responses I see rolling up and down the Internet, after all.

Instead, he stopped the car and told me he wanted to be more faithful in the small things, that a big downfall only trails a thousand little, careless decisions, that when a man cannot find joy in simply coming home to his wife, in working and ministering and pastoring with her by his side, he will not be content. In other words, the antidote to great sin is great joy in what God has given him.

As he talked, I realized Jared was not surveying this situation as a bystander, but as a brother in the fight. When a fellow soldier falls, there is no time to analyze what went wrong, but only to grab the sword off his belt and keep swinging.

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This has all made me reflect on what it will mean to be a pastor’s wife. I’ve begun to notice the little ways Mom serves her husband and pastor—how she quietly supports him like the ballast beneath a ship. On a vessel, a ballast fills with water to lower the ship’s center of gravity, settling it down further into the waves. Mom keeps Dad tethered this way. If Dad were ever to think of himself as too high or mighty a pastor, I am confident Mom would gently bring him back to the waters he’s been commissioned to sail.

My perspective on this is a humble one, as I have yet to marry a pastor, but here is what I have seen:

To be a good, faithful pastor who is safeguarded from sin, there must be a locality to the ministry. A man must be tethered, first to Christ, then his wife, and then to his church. This cannot be the relationship of a ball to a chain. He must find joy in simply returning from the warfront to her, and she must take great joy in being his harbor.

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So I have seen great pastors fall, but I have also seen faithful pastors in little places—pastors like my own dad, like Jared, who grieve their brother, pick up the fallen sword, and fight the good fight Christ has already won.

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