Ministers Must Never Lie (September 10, 2006)

Yesterday I recommended to a relative that she try to get her pastor fired.

It takes a lot for me to say that, because as a pastor I'm sympathetic to my brothers in the vocation. My instinct is to take their side. I know the frustration of trying to keep people attending your church when they could go elsewhere; the fearful realization that you've got no job skills to fall back on if the ministry doesn't work out; the weekly panic of having nothing original to say for Sunday's sermon. People who complain to me about their pastors may be surprised to hear me say, "Well, in his defense..." or, "I had a similar situation myself" or, "I'm not sure you're being fair to him." Just as the Roman Catholic Church has been suffering a plague of pedophile priests, so the evangelical church has been reeling from predator congregations. I know one church that has evicted four good pastors in eight years! Pastor-killers need no encouragement from me.

So a minister has to screw up royally for me to say, "Get rid of him." What my relative's Reverend did wrong (among other things) was lie. She has caught him in several lies now, including a whopper last Sunday. A while ago he refused to take a prayer request for a missionary, explaining, "I don't pray for people I don't know." But when introduced to a missionary a couple days ago he exclaimed, "It is so good to meet someone I've been praying for!" Jerk. He is incompetent in several ways, but for me the lying is - all by itself - a covenant breaker. Tell him good-bye.

We all sin, of course, and to demand sinlessness on the part of your pastor is sinful. You have to put up with the fact that he's a little vain, a little lazy, a little controlling, a little gossipy, a little hot-tempered. Nobody's perfect, and Jesus is not available to pastor your church.

But there are limits. We all know that you can't have a pastor who goes around seducing the ladies. What I'm saying is you also can't have a pastor who lies. Better that he should steal from the offering plate (though that's bad too) than that he should bear false witness - whether in the pulpit or out of it.

Why do I place such a high value on honesty relative to other virtues? Because the gospel depends so crucially on it. We preachers declare to people that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Son of God who died for sinners and was resurrected the third day, who reigns in heaven and who reigns in our hearts. But if we are found to be liars in other things, who is to say we are not lying about this?

Of all the sins committed in the early church, there was only one recorded that resulted in an immediate, divine death sentence. That was the lie of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. Other sins could be rebuked and repented of (for example, Peter's racist lapse in Galatians 2), but lies could not be tolerated at all. When you are facing death by lions in the Roman Coliseum for the stand you have taken for Christ, you are not encouraged to hear an apostle confess, "I may have exaggerated a wee bit when I said I saw Jesus alive after his crucifixion." The apostles stood on the truth in the face of death. We who preach their message must stand on the truth in the face of life. Why believe us otherwise?