It was a rhetorical question that I recently raised with three of my colleagues from large United Methodist churches in our area. We were mourning together the mounting reports and fallout from the alleged sexual inappropriateness by our colleague, Tyrone Gordon – the now defrocked pastor of St. Luke Community UMC in Dallas who recently surrendered his credentials as an Elder in the UMC.
St. Luke Community UMC is one of the largest and most significant of our black UM churches. A lawsuit has been filed against Mr. Gordon, St. Luke church and our North Texas Conference by a UM local pastor in Dallas who used to work at St. Luke as a sound and light assistant. Since the news broke, this young man has allegedly received hate mail for making his allegations. It is a horrible situation with persons all around the issues being terribly hurt in the unfolding process.
Yet sadly, this is not the first of my colleagues in just this conference to fall. Three others have been forced to surrender their orders and one is serving signicant jail time – all over the course of just the last three years. It is more than sobering.
My feelings range from profound sadness to frustration to indignation to anger because, whenever a pastor betrays the trust of the people he or she is called to serve – regardless of denominational stripe, MY job just got a little bit harder. I have to work that much harder to earn the trust of an increasingly skeptical and jaded unchurched world that sees so often only the headlines blaring pedophile priests, philandering pastors and money-stealing ministers. It leaves me with my question to my colleagues gathered at our church last week, “How do we guard our souls?” because as one of my friends said, “We are all vulnerable,” and he was right.
Lent has taken on a new focus for me this year, using some of Jesus’ and John Wesley’s well-practiced advice plus one or two of my own to guard and bolster my soul. My practices have been certain to include:
* daily scripture reading, prayer and silence
* devotional reading
* journaling my reflections and prayers
* regular communion (hard to avoid this one)
* regular Christian fellowship (hard to avoid this one too)
* fasting one day a week
* hugging my wife and my son nearly every day and telling them I love them.
* and I pray for our pastors and our Bishops – their jobs are so demanding and stressful; they need all the support they can get.
Thank you for your prayers and care – for your pastors and for the larger church. We need each other and we need Christ every step of the way in this wilderness of Lent and life. What are you doing to guard your soul?
With you on the walk,
Matt
