Page 5171 – Christianity Today (2024)

For the last ten years, Dale Frimodt has directed Barnabas Ministries in Omaha, Nebraska, giving counseling and encouragement to pastors and their families. These are his recommended books dealing with the sexual side of ministry.

The Myth of the Greener Grass by J. Allen Petersen, Tyndale, 1983

Petersen helps us recognize the enemy we so often battle, an enemy that seems to present itself with especially great allurement when we struggle in other areas of life. Through the interviews he includes, we are likely to see how easily we, too, could fall.

Petersen’s honest discussion and helpful advice are right on target. His realistic appraisal helps demythologize the lie of greener grass.

Divorce in the Parsonage by Mary LaGrand Bouma, Bethany Fellowship, 1979

The wife of a pastor, Bouma has seen the good and the less-than-good aspects of the ministry. This allows her to give some down-to-earth suggestions for a successful ministry marriage.

The part I found most helpful, however, was the section of interviews she conducted with people who otherwise would be only sad statistics to us. By listening to stories from some of the two hundred she interviewed, we gain insight into those things that make the minister or spouse vulnerable to sexual temptation.

Secrets of a Growing Marriage by Roger and Donna Vann, Here’s Life, 1985

For the married, a loving, open, and growing marriage provides one of the best deterrents to falling into the trap of sexual temptation. Of the many excellent books by qualified authors, this one is unique: It’s a workbook.

The Vanns designed this tool for couples to use during a personal marriage retreat. This book can turn a weekend getaway into a productive marriage builder.

Counseling Christian Workers by Louis McBurney, Word, 1986

I have a bias toward McBurney. He and his wife, Melissa, are pioneers in the field of helping those in ministry. This book provides masterful insight into the life and problems of the minister.

It seems as though pastors are most often failing the test of sexual temptation when they are slipping in other areas of their lives. The link between moral failure and lack of self-esteem or discontentment in ministry is often strong. Those who face such problems will find them diagnosed and treated in this book.

Beyond Forgiveness by Don Baker, Multnomah, 1984

What if it’s too late for prevention? Those who have succumbed to temptation writhe in guilt and fear of discovery. And when their sin is uncovered, so often they are lost not only to the ministry, but also to the church.

Baker’s book shows the story can have a better ending. Through this true account of what happened to one of his staff members, we find hope even in the face of failure. He shows how the body of Christ can be a place of redemption.

The Gift of Sex by Clifford and Joyce Penner, Word, 1981

No list of this sort would be complete without a sex manual, and this one, written by a psychologist and a nurse, fills the bill well. Approaching their delicate subject from a positive and Christian viewpoint, the Penners provide a comprehensive handbook on sex and our sexuality.

They cover such topics as the confusion about sex, anatomy and physiology, the psychology of sex, sexual technique, and overcoming problems. The Penners don’t blush, but neither do they lead us astray. This is a book to keep for reference and to give away for help.

Leadership Winter 1988 p. 34

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Orange County, hippies, bronzed bodies, fast-lane lifestyle, and sexual purity-which element doesn't fit?

In December 1965, part-time pastor, part-time mobile-home remodeler Chuck Smith became pastor of the two dozen members of Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California. Chuck reached out to the flower children, and before long thousands of converts, a new sound for Christian music, and a host of daughter churches wrote Chuck's name indelibly in the history of the Jesus People movement.

That was a generation ago. Today Chuck is still pastoring, his ministry in many ways a field hospital for those wounded in the sexual revolution. Not far from the singles bars and the bare-facts beaches, Calvary Chapel has maintained a consistent message of biblical morality to people who have seen it all. And now the church ministers as well to the children of the former flower children.

There's something refreshingly unpretentious about Chuck and his megachurch: Both appear casual yet driven, laid-back yet rock-solid. LEADERSHIP editors Kevin Miller and Jim Berkley met with Chuck to find the answer to a question that increasingly challenges every pastor: How do you hold up sexual morality to a hang-loose culture?

In your early days at Calvary Chapel, how did the issues of sexual morality confront you?

That was the age of the hippies, and social rules were breaking down. To give you an example, my daughter was in high school at the time, and she had a teacher say he envied the kids growing up in this generation because they didn't have any hang-ups with sex and they could freely indulge. I thought that was horrible. It was encouraging immorality.

Back in my generation, we had stronger mores. Promiscuity was looked down upon; we were challenged to present ourselves pure to our future husband or wife. In the last generation, churches have faced a different cultural milieu. There's no societal consensus on what sexual morality is.

How has that most affected the people in your congregation?

It shows up in the counseling room because of the painful disappointments, the shattered lives. People have gotten sexually involved without the commitment of marriage. They give the rationale, "As long as it's an expression of love, isn't it all right?"

But I ask, "What kind of love?" True love demands commitment, a willingness to pledge ourselves in a bond of faithfulness before God.

Uncommitted love can't be very deep. Thus, the relationship they're looking for isn't there. When it breaks up, they're devastated. Shattered relationships bring to us people who are broken.

Another way it shows up is with unwanted pregnancy. When whatever form of birth control they've been practicing doesn't work, they have to face the dilemma of Do I keep the child? Some have opted for abortion, and we're counseling people who cannot get over the fact that they destroyed a life ten or twelve years ago. They still spend sleepless nights thinking about what they did. Some come to us upset over the fact that because of an earlier abortion they can't get pregnant now that they want to.

The so-called free love winds up exacting a high price.

Do you see any changes taking place?

All of a sudden, the brakes are being put on by the fear of AIDS and herpes and chlamydia. It has radically changed things in the last couple of years.

It used to be that the swinging singles crowd here in Orange County would clog the night club parking lots on Friday nights. The guys and gals would go to find someone to spend the weekend with. Now when I drive by, there are fewer cars, and some clubs have gone out of business.

Other clubs are issuing cards to people who test AIDS-free, but the day after you get the card you may have sex with a person with AIDS, and that would invalidate the whole thing. It gives a false security, but the clubs are trying anything now to enhance attendance and create again that illusion of free sex without responsibility.

You attract a lot of unchurched people to Calvary Chapel. How has the sexual revolution affected the attitudes they bring into church life?

We see the different mind-set reflected more in the adult singles fellowship than any other group. The adult singles are usually single because one of the marriage partners has taken to the sexual revolution and become unfaithful, thus adding to the statistics of broken marriages. Usually the ones left behind end up here in the adult fellowship.

Divorce is a traumatic experience that leaves people sexually vulnerable because they feel rejected and unworthy. They seek to be assured again of their beauty or desirability, and many seek that assurance sexually. And, of course, having been married and having experienced sex, they also tend to be less inhibited.

Adult singles represent a large percentage of our population today. It's vital to minister to this segment of our society, but in so doing, we have to deal in a strong way with biblical values and morals.

How do you do that?

We have our Friday night singles fellowship, but that isn't our only ministry. My method of teaching the Word of God is to go straight through the Bible. As I'm covering a book, whenever I get to the issues of fornication or adultery, I don't dodge them.

They're not always popular subjects, but I've got to relate what the Word of God has to say on these issues. I don't soften it. I try to be just as straight as God's Word in declaring the standards God has set.

I realize all of us-married or single-have problems with our fleshly desires warring with the Spirit. But it seems everybody wants special dispensations for their particular problem, as if theirs were incurable: "Well, I'm just not made to find satisfaction with only one woman. It's my nature to have a variety of sexual partners."

We have to face the fact that as long as we're living in this body, we're going to be confronted with sexual temptations, whether hom*osexual desires or extramarital attraction. We've got to determine to obey God, to be true to the commandments of Scripture, no matter what our particular temptations may be.

When your teaching doesn't sink in, do you ever have to step in more forcefully? Let's say a fellow is cruising your adult singles group as he would a Friday-night bar-what do you do?

I see myself in the role of a shepherd watching over a flock, so it's my responsibility to protect my flock from wolves.

Recently I've gotten reports from two or three sources that a certain man has slept with three women in the singles fellowship. I have an appointment to talk with him. I'll let him know that's not what we're about. And if it persists, I'll tell him we don't want him to attend the singles fellowship anymore; he's not welcome until he returns with repentance and confession. I'll also say that if we see him getting close to any woman, we'll feel obligated to warn her of his history of declaring his love only to get sex.

It's the same thing with a woman; if we find that she's enticing one guy after another, we let her know she's not welcome.

Has this practice caused you any difficulties?

We don't stand up in public and disfellowship or excommunicate these people; we do it within the confines of the office, warning them and those they might harm.

How do you handle divorce?

With a group this large, it's inevitable that divorces are going to happen.

The Scriptures list just causes for divorce. Jesus said, "Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication [he made the exception there], and shall marry another, committeth adultery" (Matt. 19:9). What the Lord made an exception, we consider an exception.

We don't encourage the innocent party-the one left behind, whose spouse moved in with or married another-to stay single, because that's an extremely difficult lifestyle, especially when there are children involved.

The Lord recognized "it is not good that man should live alone." Paul said that if the unbelieving partner is not content to remain with the believer, let that person depart; the abandoned one is not under bondage (1 Cor. 7:15). We interpret that: "If an unbelieving spouse who's not content with you as a Christian says 'I'm splitting' and goes out and gets married to somebody else, then you're free to remarry."

We have Calvary Chapel pastors who before accepting Christ were married and divorced, and when we met them they were living with their second wife. They brought that background when they came to Christ. We look at that as: "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2 Cor. 5:17).

We're looking at a young man right now to bring on staff. His wife left him eight years ago, and he did everything he could from a biblical standpoint to reconcile. She has now married another man, and he has remained pure. He plans to get married here soon, but that past shouldn't exclude him from giving his life in service to the Lord.

We realize divorce is not God's best; it's an accommodation when a person's heart is so hard that he or she will not yield to God's Word.

What do you do when unwed couples who are living together want to become members of the church or active in church fellowship?

If word comes to us that a couple is living together, one of our pastors will talk to them privately but plainly, saying that the Bible speaks against living together while unmarried.

We don't go out looking for these couples, but one comes to our attention nearly every month, and we feel we have to confront the issue head-on.

If a cohabiting couple comes to be married, we'll tell them we can't marry them in the church unless they will live separately until the time of marriage. We will not perform the sacred vows for them until they have made a scriptural kind of response to God's expectations for them.

How do couples usually respond?

Usually with indignation. The two have developed their own rationale for why they should be an exception to God's rules. They don't like to be told we don't consider their case exceptional.

But we've had many cases where we failed to get through to the one but we got through to the other. Usually one of them has not been walking with the Lord, and he or she talks the other into thinking the relationship is okay. The convincer tries to justify it by saying, "Well, we love each other, and it's not economically feasible to get married right now" or "I'm not totally free from my other encumbrance yet, but as long as we love each other and plan to get married some day, this is okay."

We find the one who is more spiritually sensitive will often respond positively when he or she realizes, Hey, this is a serious matter, so serious that it's threatening my relationship to the church, which I consider important. This one will often break off the relationship at that point, which usually angers the one who has been pushing the thing.

We marry people all the time who have lived together, but these are the ones who, when they faced the counselor, decided to live separately for a time. Many have made that separation and remained pure until the wedding in order to proclaim their commitment before the Lord.

Sometimes the "under-churched" haven't picked up all the church conventions, such as not wearing revealing clothing to church functions. How do you handle that problem?

We ignore it. I learned quite a lesson back in the days of the Jesus People movement. One Monday night, I had a gal come in and sit right in the front with a blouse that was unbuttoned to her navel. My first thought was, Is that any way to come to church? I was tempted to blast the kids that night about the way we should dress to honor God.

But the Lord convinced me to hold off on that one and just bring them the Word and God's love. When I gave the invitation, that young girl was the first one forward. She became a stable member of our group and never again came to church in that condition. And I thought, I could have driven her away!

So reaching that life was of greater concern than the propriety of her attire.

That's right. Another example: some of our guys have mentioned that girls are coming to our Monday-night meetings in running shorts so short they expose a portion of the lower anatomy. It's a stumbling block for them.

Some people want me to preach about it, to lay down the law. But I've found that darkness is best expelled by turning on the light. When the light of God's love and Jesus Christ come into a person's life, the darkness has to go. I teach about modesty when I cover those sections of Scripture, and when I bring people into the light, they seem to conform themselves from then on.

In what ways can pastors safeguard their own sexual purity?

Actually, there are three common areas of temptation for any minister: sex, money, and glory. We have to take safeguards in each.

For sex in particular, pastors have endangered themselves in counseling situations. It's easy for a woman who is being rejected at home by an uninterested husband who spends no time with her to be thrilled by a pastoral counselor who actually listens. She begins to pour out her heart to the pastor, who has sympathy and understanding, who assures her of her value as a person and gives her the support she needs. Suddenly she fancies herself in love with the pastor. She begins to fantasize how wonderful it would be to be the wife of this kind man who loves the Lord so much and spends time in prayer. That electricity begins.

We're all human; we love the admiration and attention. We don't discourage it; we don't want to hinder the, uh, "work that God might be doing in her heart." Not wanting to reject her-after all, she is hurting-we begin to rationalize and accept this affection. In Satan's cleverness, that's how we can easily find ourselves in an unsavory situation.

This same dynamic can happen in any kind of relationship where two persons are thrown together in a common endeavor. That's why the pastor's secretary or another active worker is often where the pastor turns. He may feel his wife isn't fully supportive of his ministry.

A wife may ask him on Friday night, "Why do you have to make that pastoral call? You saw them last week." She seems to be hindering his ministry, whereas the secretary is there assisting the ministry, willing to stay overtime if need be, and they feel the closeness of being drawn together in a mutual ministry.

How much affection do you allow yourself to show toward female parishioners?

When a woman comes up and hugs me, I can't just pull away. I'd appear awfully cold and unfeeling. But for those who I suspect find the hugs more meaningful than I intend, I'll pick up a child to hold if I see them coming. That effectively wards off inappropriate hugs! After two or three times, it becomes obvious I'm not seeking to promote physical affection.

When people are going through deep trials, however, and I know they're hurting, a hand on the shoulder-some touch-is very meaningful. Touch can be a very healthy means of displaying concern. But it's always possible that the agape kind of love can be misinterpreted as eros, so I have to remember that I'm doing this as God's representative, showing them God's concern.

We can't be cold and unresponsive, because the people will then view God as cold and unresponsive. And yet, there is that balance. We dare not let it get to the point that it could be interpreted as eros. If that's the message they're getting through our touch, we have to back off and hold our own hands when we pray. We have to be careful with touch, because we're not there for an erotic purpose.

We're in deepest danger when the erotic appears kind of good to us, when we're seeking to feed our own ego. It's tragic for any of us to take advantage of the ministry as something to fill our own ego needs.

As you see so many lives hurt by sexual impurity, what gives you the courage to continue ministering?

God gave us his laws to protect us. People so often view the Law of God in such a wrong way-condemning and restricting-rather than something that brings beneficial and enjoyable results. In reality, violating God's Law brings sorrow, misery, hopelessness, and despair.

The misuse of our sexuality is a cause-and-effect proposition. God says, "If you do these things, you're going to hurt yourself and others." I want the fellowship to learn the wisdom of the Law of God: God isn't trying to keep us from having a great time; God's trying to protect us from calamity.

Sometimes when I'm driving on the freeway and somebody recklessly cuts in on me, I feel tremendously angry. My temptation is to lean on the horn and shake my fist at the jerk. After all, he's endangering my life and the lives of my grandchildren with me, and even his own life. I want to protest loudly.

But then as God deals with those feelings, he replaces them with a prayer: "O God, help us all to get home safely. People like that guy are crazy. It's only a matter of time until they're going to hurt someone if they continue like that, so Lord, please get us and him home safely."

When I see the devastation, the wreckage, that sexual promiscuity has wrought, again I want to scream: "You fools! Don't you know you're going to hurt yourselves and those around you? Can't you see we'll all lose if you keep on like that?"

But again, God calms me down and replaces my frustrated cry with a prayer: "Lord, they're crazy. They're going to hurt somebody. Help them to get home safely. And help me to show them the way."

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Her face was convulsed with emotion as tears ran down her cheeks, her hands twisting a forgotten handkerchief into a tight knot. She finally choked out the reason she wouldn’t go near church: “I was baptized almost seven years ago. The preacher called and convinced me that’s what I needed to do. We went right to the church, just the two of us, and he baptized me. Then he came into my dressing room and made a pass at me!”

As she told me her story, I was shocked. An extreme event? Yes. Appalling? Atypical? Yes, but sadly not a unique or isolated occurrence. Even some of the churches I’ve been associated with have had to ask for a preacher’s resignation because of sexual misconduct.

So why the sexual failings, especially among ministers? A lack of Christian devotion or sincerity is rarely to blame. I suspect something more insidious is behind the problem. I’ve noticed three subtle but powerful dangers that cause extra temptation for the “professionally religious”:

Overfamiliarity with God. It’s hardly possible to be too close to God. But it is possible to become so accustomed to the reality of God that we no longer stand in awe of him.

As preachers, our times of worship are easily identified with work. Our recreation, much of it, is wrapped up in church activities. Our career is the church; our homes are often the property of the church. Our amusem*nt, our jokes, our funny anecdotes and ironic remembrances, our comic relief-all center on the church. We handle the things of God day in and day out.

Because of this, we may begin to lose the awe that keeps us in profound respect of the holy and righteous God who will judge his people.

Sin saturation. Compounding this tendency is our constant traffic with a numbing array of people’s sins. Rightly we speak of God’s boundless forgiveness and willingness to restore. But week after week, a torrent of sins needing forgiveness flows past our awareness until we may begin to lose sense of the awfulness of sin. We who ought to hate sin more than anyone because we so constantly see its devastating effect can become the most blas toward it.

We’ve seen so many gross sins that when we are then tempted, it may seem such a minor thing if we, too, should sin: All that forgiveness will surely cover me, won’t it?

Job overload. It seems close to blasphemy to say we need time away from the things of God. Maybe that’s why so many are unwilling to say it, let alone secure it.

Everyone else needs a break from thinking about jobs and the demands of work. Since our “job” surrounds us with the things of God, our minds need a similar rest. It’s only natural.

Yet, so much do our minds need a hiatus from constant religious exposure that we can find ourselves vulnerable to amusem*nt far removed from the things of God, and our society offers limitless opportunities for such escape. They’re as close as the television knob, the magazine rack, or the bookstore. And they sully the hands of God’s workers.

The answer? A devotional pattern that places us starkly in awe before a fearsome God. A God-angled view of sin and its consequences. A habit of escaping the pressures of Christian work, for relaxation and renewal-activities that don’t violate the holiness of God. Easy? Not at all, but necessary.

-Bill D. Hallsted

Truman (Minnesota) Church of God

Leadership Winter 1988 p. 19

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

“Something terrible has happened.” The tense voice was my friend’s, calling from across the country. “Yesterday our pastor left his wife and ran off with another woman.”

I was sad, but not shocked or even surprised. Fifteen years ago I would have been shocked. Ten years ago I would have been surprised. But I’ve heard the same story too many times now to ever be surprised again.

I recently spoke on sexual purity at a Bible college. During that week, many students came for counseling, including three I’ll call Rachel, Barb, and Pam.

Rachel got right to the point: “My parents sent me to one of our pastors for counseling, and I ended up sleeping with him.” Later the same day, Barb, a church leader’s daughter, told me through tears, “My dad has had sex with me for years, and now he’s starting on my sisters.” The next evening I met with Pam. Her story? “I came to Bible college to get away from an affair with my pastor.”

For every well-known Christian television personality or author whose impropriety is widely publicized, there are any number of lesser-known pastors, Bible teachers, and parachurch workers who quietly resign or are fired for sexual immorality. Most of us can name several. The myth that ministers are morally invulnerable dies slowly, however, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. But there never has been a mystical antibody that makes us immune to sexual sin. Even those of us who haven’t fallen know how fierce is the struggle with temptation.

Furthermore, ministry brings with it serious built-in hazards, moral land mines that can destroy us, our families, and our churches. Among them: our position of influence and that strange blend of ego-feeding flattery and debilitating criticism, which can fill us with either pride or despair. As a result, our perspective can be warped, our resistance to temptation diminished. In addition, our endless tasks and the consequent disorienting fatigue can make us oblivious to what’s really happening to us.

I recall with embarrassment my naivet‚ as a young pastor. Every time I heard the stories of Christian leaders falling into sexual sin, I thought, It could never happen to me.

What level of pride is required to believe that sexual sin could overtake Samson, David (“a man after God’s own heart”), Solomon, and a host of modern Christian leaders, but not me? Paul’s warning in 1 Corinthians 10 deserves a prominent place on our dashboards, desks, or Day-Timers: “If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall.”

Fortunately, I wised up. The person who believes he will never be burglarized leaves his doors and windows open, and cash on the top of his dresser. Likewise, the one who thinks the danger isn’t real invariably takes risks that wind up proving costly. I now live with the frightening but powerfully motivating knowledge that I could commit sexual immorality. I started taking precautions to keep it from happening to me.

Practical Guidelines for Sexual Purity

Monitoring my spiritual pulse. Often those who fall into sexual sin can point back to lapses in their practices of meditation, worship, prayer, and the healthy self-examination such disciplines foster. All of us know this, but in the busyness of giving out, we can easily neglect the replenishing of our spiritual reservoirs.

Daily disciplines are important, of course, but I’ve found that for me they’re not enough. God gave Israel not merely one hour a day but one day a week, several weeks a year, and even one year every seven to break the pattern of life long enough to worship and reflect and take stock.

I periodically take overnight retreats by myself or with my wife. In times of greater need I’ve been away a week, usually in a cabin on the Oregon coast. This is not a vacation but a time in which the lack of immediate demands and the absence of noise give clarity to the still, small voice of God that is too easily drowned in the busyness of my daily life.

Guarding my marriage. I find I must regularly evaluate my relationship with my wife. In particular, I watch for the red flags of discontentment, poor communication, and poor sexual relationship. We try to spend regular, uninterrupted time together to renew our spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical closeness.

Many Christian leaders move so freely and deeply in the world of great spiritual truths and activities that unless they take pains to communicate daily, their spouses get left out. This development of two separate worlds leads to two separate lives and is often the first step toward an adulterous affair with “someone who understands me and my world.”

Communication is key because every adultery begins with a deception, and most deceptions begin with seemingly innocent secrets, things “she doesn’t need to know.”

At work, I surround myself with reminders of my spouse and children-pictures, drawings, and mementos. When traveling, I make contact with my wife as often as possible. If I’m struggling with temptation, I try to be honest and ask for prayer. Fierce loyalty to our wives is also a key; I try always to speak highly of my wife in public and never to downgrade her to others. And I’m careful not to discuss my marriage problems with anyone of the opposite sex.

Further, my wife and I avail ourselves of many of the good books, tapes, and seminars geared to improving marriage. When my wife and I went on a Marriage Encounter weekend, we were surprised to discover some differences in perspective that, if left unaddressed, could have caused problems down the road.

Taking precautions. One pastor found his thoughts were continually drawn to a coworker, more so than to his own wife. After months of rationalizing, he finally admitted to himself that he was looking for reasons to spend time with her. Then his rule of thumb became: I will meet with her only when necessary, only as long as necessary, only at the office, and with others present as much as possible. In time, his relationship with her returned to its original, healthy, coworker status.

The questions with which I check myself: Do I look forward in a special way to my appointments with this person? Would I rather see her than my wife? Do I seek to meet with her away from my office in a more casual environment? Do I prefer that my coworkers not know I’m meeting with her again? An affirmative answer to any of these questions is, for me, a warning light.

Dealing with the subtle signs of sexual attraction. There’s a mystique about spiritual ministry that some women find attractive. Their attitude toward the pastor can border on infatuation. It’s flattering for the pastor, who perhaps is nursing fresh wounds from the last board meeting, to receive attention from an attractive woman who obviously admires him and hangs on his every word. (The deacons jumped on his every word.) Often the woman’s husband is spiritually dead or weak. Finding him un-worthy of her respect, she transfers her affection to this wonderfully spiritual man, her pastor. This is usually unconscious and therefore all the more dangerous.

She may send notes of appreciation or small gifts; he may reciprocate. Expressions of affection may inch beyond the healthy brother/sister variety. The hands are held tightly in prayer; the arm lingers a bit longer on the shoulder; the embraces become frequent.

All this seems harmless enough, but a subtle, powerful process of soul merger can occur. If things are not good on the home front, the pastor will, consciously or unconsciously, compare this woman to his wife, who may be noticeably unappreciative and uninfatuated with him. This comparison is deadly and, unless it’s stopped, can lead into covert romantic affection, which often leads to adultery.

A relationship can be sexual long before it becomes erotic. Just because I’m not touching a woman, or just because I’m not envisioning specific erotic encounters, does not mean I’m not becoming sexually involved with her. The erotic is usually not the beginning but the culmination of sexual attraction. Most pastors who end up in bed with a woman do it not just to gratify a sexual urge, but because they believe they’ve begun to really love her.

I once casually asked a woman about her obvious interest in a married man with whom she worked. “We’re just friends,” she responded with a defensiveness that indicated they weren’t. “It’s purely platonic, nothing sexual at all.” In a matter of months, however, the two friends found themselves sneaking off from their families to be with each other, and finally their “friendship” developed into an affair that destroyed both of their marriages.

Lust isn’t just unbridled passion. Even when it’s “bridled” it may lead us down a path that our conscience could not have condoned had we experienced it in a more obvious, wanton way. Thus, our enemies are not only lascivious thoughts of sex but “innocuous” feelings of infatuation as well.

Backing off early. When meeting a woman for our third counseling appointment, I became aware that she was interested in me personally. What was more frightening was that I realized I had subconsciously sensed this before but had enjoyed her attraction too much to address the problem. Though I wasn’t yet emotionally involved or giving her inappropriate attention, I wasn’t deflecting hers toward me, either, and was thereby inviting it.

I felt tempted to dismiss the matter as unimportant, “knowing” I would never get involved with her. Fortunately, when God prompted me, I knew I was no longer the right person to meet with her. I made other counseling arrangements for her.

Clearing cloudy thoughts. Often we justify our flirtations with logical, even spiritual, rationalizations. One pastor didn’t tell his wife about his frequent meetings with a particular woman on the grounds he shouldn’t violate confidentialities, even to his wife. Besides, he sensed his wife would be jealous (without good reason, of course), so why upset her? Under the cloak of professionalism and sensitivity to his wife, he proceeded to meet with this woman secretly. The result was predictable.

Another pastor had been struggling with lustful thoughts toward a college girl in his church. Rather than dealing with his struggles alone with the Lord, with a mature brother, or with his wife, he took the girl out to lunch to talk with her. Citing the biblical mandate to confess our sins and make things right with the person we’ve wronged, he told her, “I’ve been having lustful thoughts about you, and I felt I needed to confess them to you.” Embarrassed but flattered, the girl began to entertain her own thoughts toward him, and finally they became sexually involved.

All this came from what the pastor told himself was a spiritual and obedient decision to meet with the girl. To misuse Scripture in this way and violate rules of wisdom and common sense shows how cloudy and undependable our thinking can become.

Holding myself accountable. Perhaps nowhere is more said and less done than in the area of accountability. From talking with Christian leaders, I’ve come to understand that the more prominent they become, the more they need accountability and the less they get it. As a church grows, often the pastors come to know many people but on a shallower level, and those around them think, Who am I to ask him if this is a wise choice he’s making?

Many pastors in small churches also feel isolated, and even those in large churches with multiple staff members are usually Lone Rangers (without a Tonto) when it comes to facing their moral struggles. In a church with several pastors, one tried to discuss “something personal” three weeks in a row at staff meeting, but each time he was preempted because of a busy agenda. The fourth week his fellow pastors listened-three days after he had committed adultery.

Seven full-timers and several part-timers share pastoral responsibilities at our church. For several years now we have committed the first two hours of our weekly all-day staff meeting to discussing personal “sufferings and rejoicings” (1 Cor. 12:26), telling each other the state of our spiritual lives, and seeking and offering prayer and advice. We make sure no one is left out. We ask “How are you doing?” and if the answers are vague or something seems wrong, we probe deeper.

At first, this felt risky. It involved entrusting our reputations to others and opening ourselves to their honest investigation. But what actually results is usually positive encouragement. The risks, we found, are small compared to the rewards. Unlike many pastors, we don’t feel alone in the ministry. We know each other’s imperfections, and we have nothing to prove to each other. These hours of weekly accountability have become weekly therapy, and no matter how full the agenda, we are committed to keeping in touch with each other’s inner lives.

Pastors without other staff can find a lay person or two or a nearby pastor who will love them as they are and regularly ask the questions of accountability. What questions are those? Usually the questions we least want to answer. And Howard Hendricks suggests that after all the hard questions are asked, the final question should be, “In your answers to any of the previous questions, did you lie?”

This kind of accountability can produce amazing results. Once I was undergoing a time of strong sexual temptation, and finally I called a friend with whom I was having breakfast the next day. I said, “Please pray for me, and ask me tomorrow morning what I did.” He agreed, and the moment I put down the phone the temptation was gone. Why? I’d like to say it was because I’m so spiritual, but the truth is there was no way I was going to face my friend the next morning and have to tell him I had sinned.

Guarding my mind. A battering ram may hit a fortress gate a thousand times, and no one time seems to have an effect, yet finally the gate caves in. Likewise, immorality is the cumulative product of small mental indulgences and minuscule compromises, the immediate consequences of which were, at the time, indiscernible.

Our thoughts are the fabric with which we weave our character and destiny. No, we can’t avoid all sexual stimuli, but in Martin Luther’s terms, “You can’t keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from making a nest in your hair.”

I like to put it another way: “If you’re on a diet, don’t go into a doughnut shop.” For me this means such practical things as staying away from the magazine racks, video stores, advertisem*nts, programs, images, people, and places that tempt me to lust.

One man who travels extensively told me about a practice that has helped to guard his mind from immorality. “Whenever I check into my hotel,” he said, “where I normally stay for three or four days, I ask them at the front desk to please remove the television from my room. Invariably they look at me like I’m crazy, and then they say, ‘But sir, if you don’t want to watch it, you don’t have to turn it on.’ Since I’m a paying customer, however, I politely insist, and I’ve never once been refused.

“The point is, I know that in my weak and lonely moments late in the evening, I’ll be tempted to watch the immoral movies that are only one push of a button away. In the past I’ve succumbed to that temptation over and over, but not anymore. Having the television removed in my stronger moments has been my way of saying, ‘I’m serious about this, Lord,’ and it’s been the key to victory in my battle against impurity.”

Regularly rehearsing the consequences. I met with a man who had been a leader in a Christian organization until he fell into immorality. I asked him, “What could have been done to prevent this?”

He paused for only a moment, then said with haunting pain and precision, “If only I had really known, really thought through, what it would cost me and my family and my Lord, I honestly believe I never would have done it.”

In the wake of several Christian leaders’ falling into immorality, a co-pastor and I developed a list of specific consequences that would result from our immorality. The list (see Consequences of a Moral Tumble) was devastating, and to us it spoke more powerfully than any sermon or article on the subject.

Periodically, especially when traveling or in a time of weakness, we read through the list. In a tangible and personal way, it brings home God’s inviolate law of choice and consequence, cutting through the fog of rationalization and filling our hearts with the healthy, motivating fear of God.

Winning the Battle

In J. R. R. Tolkien’s book The Hobbit, there was no one seemingly more invincible than Smaug, the mighty dragon. But then that unlikely hero, Bilbo Baggins, found one small weak spot in Smaug’s underbelly. That information, in the hands of a skilled marksman, was all it took to seal the doom of the presumptuous dragon. Unaware of his weakness and underestimating his opponents, Smaug failed to protect himself. An arrow pierced his heart, and the dragon was felled.

An exciting story with a happy ending. But when it’s a Christian leader felled, the ending is not so happy. It’s tragic. The Evil One knows only too well the weak spots of the most mighty Christian warriors, not to mention the rest of us. He isn’t one to waste his arrows, bouncing them harmlessly off the strongest plates of our spiritual armor. His aim is deadly, and it is at our points of greatest vulnerability that he will most certainly attack.

We are in battle-a battle far more fierce and strategic than any Alexander, Hannibal, or Napoleon ever fought. We must realize that no one prepares for a battle of which he is unaware, and no ones wins a battle for which he doesn’t prepare.

As we hear more and more of Christian leaders succumbing to immorality, we must not say merely, “There, but for the grace of God, I might have gone,” rather, “There, but for the grace of God-and but for my alertness and diligence in the spiritual battle-I may yet go.”

Randy Alcorn is pastor of small-group ministries at Good Shepherd Community Church, Gresham, Oregon.

Leadership Winter 1988 p. 42-7

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

REDISCOVERING THE PRAYER VIGIL

by Ralph F. Wilson

A 75-year-old man beamed at me and said, “At home I have trouble praying for five minutes. Here, an hour seems too short.” As we left the church at dusk, having prayed for an hour, our replacements knelt to begin another hour of prayer.

It wasn’t always like this. In our church, intercessory prayer had been meager, enthusiasm for prayer virtually nonexistent. For years I had struggled to lead members into a richer prayer life. Then, two years ago, we discovered a time-tested method to challenge and stretch people in prayer: the prayer vigil.

The idea is centuries old. Vigil indicates a time of vigilance or wakefulness, a watch. People used to keep vigils the night before a religious feast.

We schedule a prayer vigil two or three times a year. Good Friday naturally lends itself to prayer. We’ve also tried early September, before the program year gets underway, and the beginning of the Advent season.

The nice thing about a prayer vigil is simplicity of organization. We circulate a sign-up sheet with hour-long blocks of time, provide prayer resources, open the sanctuary at the beginning of the vigil, and see that the last person locks up.

For instance, last year we set aside noon to midnight on Good Friday for our people to pray an hour at a time in the church sanctuary. The previous Sunday we circulated the sign-up sheet in the shape of a twelve-hour clock. I later asked specific people if they would shift from crowded hours to the one or two vacant hours.

Prayer resources

Some people hesitate to commit themselves for an hour. “That was hard for me,” John confessed, “because I didn’t know what I was going to pray about for a whole hour.” People often feel inadequate at prayer; they don’t want to set up themselves to fail like the disciples in the Garden.

To allay these fears, we offer suggestions on how to spend the hour. We say, “Praying for an hour is like sitting down for a leisurely meal with a friend rather than ordering a burger and fries at the drive-up window. As you spend the time together, you find a lot of things to say.”

Here are some of the things we suggest:

Start by bringing along some things to discuss with God: your Bible, a hymnal, perhaps a church directory, and our church’s current prayer list.

Be yourself. Why wouldst thou pray like Brother So-and-So? Talk to God as you’d talk to your best friend.

Get comfortable. The stiffer you feel, the more formal your relationship will be. Sitting is fine. If kneeling helps, do it. You might want to take an hour’s walk as you talk with your Friend.

Try praying out loud, though not loud enough to disturb others. Being able to hear yourself pray improves your concentration. You’ll find your mind doesn’t wander as easily, and you can pray more fervently.

Don’t feel you have to do all the talking, however. Discuss something with the Lord, and then be silent. Sometimes God uses the times of listening to implant his answers in our minds. Gradually you’ll find prayer can be a conversation.

Consider these time suggestions. Don’t worry if your times are different, but these figures will get you started.

Preparation (one minute): Ask God to help you spend this time profitably with him. Give yourself to him for this hour.

Confession (four minutes): Spend a moment going over with him recent sins that weigh on you, but don’t dredge up old ones. Read 1 John 1:9. Ask for his cleansing, and then accept it by faith and thank him for it.

Praise and thanksgiving (nine minutes): Sing your adoration to the Lord using a hymnal or choruses you know. Now start to thank him for his goodness to you and your friends. There’s a special sense in which God “inhabits” the praises of his people (Ps. 22:3). As your heart begins to adore him, you’ll sense his presence more deeply.

Petition (nine minutes): Pray about life’s difficulties. Use this time to talk over with the Lord your own struggles. Discuss with him your relationship with your loved one or spouse, your family, your financial needs, your studies or job.

Intercession (nine minutes): Pray for friends, loved ones, relatives, neighbors, fellow workers. Don’t just read a list of names to God, but talk to him about their lives and needs. You can boldly ask him for their salvation. Ask God to bring Christians into their lives, to alter circ*mstances, and to give you opportunities for witness.

Prayer for the church (twelve minutes): Call on God for a deep renewal of love for him. Pray for your pastor and church leaders. Intercede for the Sunday school children and the youth, the families, the singles, the widows, the sick and shut-ins. Call on God for an increase in giving so the church can accomplish its work. Pray for the Christian organizations working with the college students, children, military personnel, and the homeless in your community.

Prayer for the nation (eight minutes): Pray that God will guide our president and legislators, our justices and judges, our governors and mayors, our police and firefighters. Pray for righteousness in government and a public policy sensitive to the needs of the oppressed both here and abroad.

Prayer for other nations (eight minutes): Pray for the work of Christ throughout the world. Intercede for unreached peoples. Pray for missionaries, for Third World pastors and churches, for the people of God who are suffering persecution. Pray for peace. Ask God to give food, shelter, and hope to the hungry.

Those prayers add up to sixty minutes. As people begin to visualize themselves actually praying for an hour, they are more willing to risk it. After one successful experience, they’re eager to sign up the next time.

Helping it happen

Entering the sanctuary for their hour, people find several helps on a table. Next to a log-in sheet are brief instructions for first-timers. A globe and letters from our missionaries stimulate prayer for the world. Slips with prayer requests from the previous Sunday service are found next to a constantly growing list on which participants enter other needs.

A kneeler is placed at the front of the church, though most of our people pray sitting with bowed heads. But some walk while they pray. Occasionally someone prays prostrate on the floor.

If several sign up for the same hour, they often worship and pray as a group for a portion of the time and then intercede separately for the remainder. One of our women remembers: “There were two or three people there. We sang as well as prayed. It brought a closeness we don’t experience ordinarily. I feel we’re still closer today as a result.”

Strangely, even praying alone brings a sense of unity with others. “Knowing that brothers and sisters are all praying about the same thing really stirs my faith,” Carol commented.

Before our first vigil, I didn’t think most people would be willing to commit themselves to a whole hour. Not so. After his first vigil, a 30-year-old man told me, “I just lost track of time. Before I realized it, I was there almost two hours. ” Cutting the time short-circuits this prayer experience that can permanently enrich the participants’ devotional lives.

Sensitivity to the congregation’s present level of commitment is important, however. Once after successful twenty-four-hour vigils, we tried thirty-six hours. That was just too ambitious for the size of the church; we had trouble getting enough people. We’ve found it’s better to begin small and grow gradually.

Benefits

“Can’t we just pray at home?” some ask. Not if we want the unique advantages of a vigil. The specialness of praying in the sanctuary lifts this hour above the sometimes-discouraging experiences of daily prayer. “At home,” Louise finds, “there seem to be so many distractions and interruptions. You think about all the things that need doing. But when you come to the quiet sanctuary, you can feel God’s presence.”

Rick, a father of five, explains: “The hour is so refreshing. I sense the Lord’s presence in a way I sometimes don’t when I’m off by myself for just a few minutes.”

The benefits endure. Our people have learned to intercede for one another. Having experienced the joys of a full hour, people are praying longer at home. The vigils have renewed our motivation as well. Instead of praying out of guilt, we’re finding a new longing to spend time before the Lord. We also have seen marked answers to prayer.

We still have a long way to go before we’re the kind of praying church we ought to be, but the prayer vigil has opened the door to a new dimension of prayer, allowing a fresh breeze of the Spirit to blow across our congregation.

Ralph Wilson is pastor of Lindley Avenue Baptist Church in Tarzana, California.

MORE IDEAS

Working Out Bugs in Visitation

When Pastor John Paul Clark arrived at Wesley Free Methodist Church in Anderson, Indiana, a few years ago, he began helping one faithful layman make evangelistic visits every Thursday. Soon, however, they encountered three obstacles, ones that hinder many churches’ efforts in visitation evangelism:

They needed more volunteers to help make visits.

They ran out of good prospects.

They often didn’t find people at home.

Clark tackled the first obstacle by announcing evangelism training for those who might be interested in making visits. Twenty people showed up for the first session, though only ten returned for the second.

“I must have scared some people away,” Clark admits. “But I was pleased that ten stayed, since that represented 15 percent of the congregation, and church-growth specialist Peter Wagner says usually only about 10 percent of a congregation has the spiritual gift of evangelism.”

Clark works to retain volunteers by beginning each Thursday evening with a brief training session (15 minutes) followed by prayer (10 minutes). “It’s a shot in the arm for them,” he says.

The next obstacle was the lack of prospects. To solve the problem, the church outlined a 5,000-home area surrounding it and obtained names and addresses for the homes through a city directory and credit bureau report (for families that have recently moved). The church then printed a six-page, full-color brochure explaining the church to unchurched people. Each month, 200 to 300 brochures are mailed with a letter from Pastor Clark. Five or six days later, several women in the church phone the homes that received them.

“The callers simply inquire whether the people received the brochure and where they attend church,” Clark says. “If they don’t attend anywhere, the callers invite them and ask if they’d be interested in a brief visit by a couple of people from the church.”

With the new procedure, Clark says, “We have more prospects than we can handle.”

Still, finding people at home is a challenge. To make it easier for the visitation teams, Clark provided each with at least 50 prospects from the brochures/calls. From these, a team needs to line up only two appointments for each Thursday.

“It takes work to line up appointments,” one team member told Clark recently, “but the super part is, we spend most of our time talking with people rather than running door to door to find somebody home.”

Further, these prospects are the team’s to visit and revisit. If, after the first 15-minute visit, the prospect is open to another, the team may return. “We realize that often we have to build relationships with people before they will accept Christ,” explains Clark. “One family was visited 20 times before they received Christ.”

By working on the three obstacles to visitation evangelism, Wesley Free Methodist has seen significant growth. In a year the church’s Sunday morning attendance rose from an average of 60 to more than 110.

Another church, Airline United Methodist in Houston, Texas, has found an effective way to recruit volunteers for home visitation.

Prospective visitors are asked to make visits only one night each month. People are more likely to consent because it takes only two hours each month. In addition, people can choose which Monday of the month they will serve. Through this approach, enough teams have formed to ensure that visits will be made each week.

To make involvement less threatening for some, each new person is paired with someone experienced in home visitation, according to Pastor R. Pat Day. And the church provides a nursery on the fourth Monday of each month so parents with small children can get involved.

Drive-Time Devotions

Members of suburban churches often commute long distances to and from work each day. The long drive or train ride may eat up time, but it also offers an opportunity to build a regular devotional life.

Phil Nelson, pastor of Oak Brook (Illinois) Christian Center, has found a way to encourage that process.

Each week he prepares a 60-minute tape that contains six short devotional messages, about eight to ten minutes in length. Usually the messages provide brief commentary on a few verses of Scripture with selected insights drawn out; in sequence they gradually cover an entire book or section of Scripture.

To receive the tapes, a member pays a one-time $5 fee. The church has a tape rack in the vestibule, and each Sunday, members return the previous week’s tape and pick up the next one. By recycling tapes, costs are kept low.

“I thought the tapes would be used only by commuters,” says Nelson, “but people have told me they use them for family devotions. Some listen to them while doing chores around the house, and several truck drivers are using them on their long-distance runs.”

Ministry Fair

A shortage of people to staff Sunday school and other Christian education ministries-it’s a common problem.

College Church in Wheaton (Illinois) has developed a creative solution.

One Sunday last May they held a “Celebration of Service.” The morning worship service, focusing on why Christians serve others, was shortened to 45 minutes. Then the congregation proceeded to the fellowship hall where they found 12 booths, each displaying pictures, crafts, brochures, curricula, and other items that explained the various Christian education ministries.

Handouts gave details: ministry goals, qualifications for volunteers, time commitment involved, and contact people.

In addition, at each booth people could talk to those who were already involved in the ministry.

“People circulated, asked questions, and gathered information,” says Mark Wheeler, pastor of Christian education. “Many signed up that day.”

Not only did the ministry fair give the Christian Education Board a head start on recruiting, Wheeler explains, “it also educated the congregation about the areas of service and how many people are needed.”

What’s Worked for You?

Each account of a local church doing something in a fresh, effective way earns up to $35. Send your description of a helpful ministry, method, or approach to:

Ideas That Work

LEADERSHIP

465 Gundersen Drive

Carol Stream, IL 60188

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

In recent months, the news media have reported a number of cases of clergy indiscretion, stories that have raised the question: Just how common is such indiscretion?

Before addressing this topic of temptation in ministry, LEADERSHIP commissioned a poll to determine the scope of the problem. The research department of Christianity Today, Inc., mailed nearly one thousand surveys to pastors, and 30 percent responded.

According to the results of this survey, sexual temptation among pastors is a problem-70 percent of the respondents expressed the belief that pastors are particularly vulnerable.

In the words of one respondent: “This is, by far, the greatest problem I deal with.”

The Struggle

The survey probed the frequency of behavior that pastors themselves feel is inappropriate.

Since you’ve been in local church ministry, have you ever done anything with someone (not your spouse) that you feel was sexually inappropriate? The responses: 23 percent yes; 77 percent no. The “inappropriate” behavior was left undefined-possibly ranging from unguarded words to flirtation to adultery. Subsequent questions were more specific.

Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone other than your spouse since you’ve been in local church ministry? Yes: 12 percent. No: 88 percent. And of that 88 percent, many indicated their purity had not come easily.

“I don’t believe any of us, especially emotionally charged preachers, are chaste by design nearly as much as by the grace of God,” wrote one respondent. “Numbers of times, only God has prevented me from acting out my designs in this area.”

Have you ever had other forms of sexual contact with someone other than your spouse, i.e. passionate kissing, fondling/mutual masturbation, since you’ve been in local church ministry? Yes: 18 percent. No: 82 percent.

To lend some perspective to these figures, CTi researchers also surveyed almost one thousand subscribers of Christianity Today magazine who are not pastors. Incidences of immorality were nearly double: 45 percent indicated having done something they considered sexually inappropriate, 23 percent said they had had extramarital intercourse, and 28 percent said they had engaged in other forms of extramarital sexual contact.

Those pastors who acknowledged having had intercourse or other forms of sexual contact were asked about who the other person was. The responses:

A counselee (17 percent);

A ministerial staff member (5 percent);

Other church staff member (8 percent);

A church member in a teaching/leadership role (9 percent);

Someone else in the congregation (30 percent);

Someone outside the congregation (31 percent).

These pastors were also asked about the major factors that led them to this relationship. The most frequent answer: “Physical and emotional attraction” (78 percent). “Marital dissatisfaction” was a distant second (41 percent).

Among professional counselors and those who work with pastors, these figures were cause for both concern and relief.

Gary Collins, a professor of counseling at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, was concerned that those entering the ministry “know the biblical, theological world, but they don’t know the real world in which we live. We’re living in a Corinthian age, but we’re preparing students for the Victorian age.”

His words mirror a statement by a pastor answering the survey who acknowledged having had extramarital sexual contact and who wrote, “When I was a younger pastor, I did not take the temptation seriously. Only after I fell into it once did I become aware.”

On the other hand, David Mace, a counselor who, with his wife, Vera, has written several books on marriage, including What’s Happening to Clergy Marriages, said that if the survey findings held any surprise for him, it was “that the proportions are so small, that for every pastor who has slipped on this icy surface, there are so many who have kept their balance.”

When asked about the personal consequences of their sexual contact, 6 percent said it had resulted in divorce, 16 percent said it led to other marriage difficulties, and another 6 percent said it caused loss of job. However, 31 percent claimed it had had no consequences. Only 4 percent said their churches found out about what they had done.

But Gary Collins wondered about some of the internal and intangible consequences of inappropriate sexual behavior: “What are these people doing with the guilt and the fear that they’ll be found out?” Such fear, he said, tends to push pastors toward one of two extremes. “It either makes them tentative, holding back even from healthy involvement with other people, or it leads them to preach strongly against sexual sin so the congregation won’t suspect what they’ve done.”

The Unresolved Questions

The survey also revealed some unresolved issues for ministers, especially in the areas of fantasizing and masturbation.

When asked how often they find themselves fantasizing about sex with someone other than their spouses, 6 percent said daily, 20 percent said weekly, another 35 percent said monthly or a few times a year, while 34 percent said almost never.

If you fantasize about someone other than your spouse, do you find that these fantasies are: Harmless (39 percent) or Harmful (41 percent). Of the 20 percent who did not give an either/or answer, a common response was that harm depends on the circ*mstances. Fully 85 percent, however, said they consciously try to avoid situations that may lead to sexual temptation or fantasizing.

These figures evoked the greatest surprise from those asked to analyze the survey results.

“I wouldn’t have expected so many to say that sexual fantasies about someone other than one’s spouse are harmless,” said Gary Collins. “Whereas an accountability relationship with a friend can help keep behavior under control, we need to be even more careful what we let our minds dwell on, because there can be no outside accountability there. Only the person knows what he’s thinking.”

He added, “I have to be careful I’m not dwelling on things that till the soil of my mind and make me open when a temptation is planted.”

Larry Crabb, a psychologist and professor at Grace Theological Seminary, said, “I don’t think those who consider sexual fantasies harmless really understand the deeper, compulsive nature of sexual sin.”

The question of masturbation was also one that seemed to divide respondents. Whereas 30 percent considered it to be wrong, 35 percent said it’s not wrong. And the remaining 35 percent said “it depends,” for example, on such things as whether the masturbation involves fantasizing about someone other than one’s spouse, whether it is done at the expense of a full and healthy sexual relationship with one’s spouse, whether one’s spouse is able or willing to be an active sexual partner, and whether or not it leads to an addiction.

Where to Turn

When asked whether they have close friends or family members with whom they are able to discuss sexual temptations, 57 percent said yes, 43 percent no.

“We have no one to turn to,” wrote one pastor. “We are afraid to go to a counselor for fear that word of our problems will somehow leak out.”

Wrote another: “I wouldn’t dare tell a fellow minister my problems in this area. My denomination would forgive murder, but not impurity of thought!”

Pastors were divided on whether to disclose temptations to their spouses. If married, do you talk to your spouse about the sexual temptations you feel? Fifty-one percent said yes; 49 percent said rarely or never.

Larry Crabb was concerned that pastors aren’t allowed to admit their vulnerability: “It’s rare for a pastor to feel comfortable as anything other than a model Christian. Most churches require their pastors to live in denial.”

One pastor, when asked what resources pastors have for resisting temptation, wrote simply, “Few to none.” The survey responses indicated that pastors feel a fuller, more open discussion of the subject is needed.

Describing the attitude in their homes as they were raised, 76 percent said “sex was never talked about.” Yet as one pastor said, “We need to be talking about sex. The school does and people on the street do and TV does, but Christians don’t. Address the issue! Just don’t tell me to act like I don’t feel these things.”

In response to the request for help on the troublesome topic of sexual temptation, the articles in this issue of LEADERSHIP are an attempt to address some of the tough questions.

The topics, at times, are painful. As one pastor wrote, “This survey covers the greatest agonies of my life.” If nothing else, this survey affirms once again the reality of temptation and the need to renew commitments to personal purity.

– The Editors

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

She was my twenty-first client. An overall-clad toddler was attached to one hand, and a mini-cart was in the other. This young, slightly overweight black woman seemed ordinary enough as she requested a bag of groceries from our cooperative emergency food pantry (operated by forty churches). I was one of the afternoon volunteers entrusted with this sacred duty.

“Hello,” I offered without looking up from my work pad. “My name is Jim.”

Number twenty-one replied with a quiet, defeated “Viola.”

Unusual name, I thought. I once knew a Viola. Twenty-five years ago, in Arkansas, my family subcontracted most of our game cleaning to a thin, tobacco-chewing woman named Viola. For good luck, Viola had tied around her ankle a Mercury-head dime that I would have loved to add to my coin collection. And she would have given it to me if I’d asked. She was that sort of woman.

Viola’s claim to fame, though, was her gift: She could clean, dress, and fillet black bass faster than any person alive. Her hands moved like wild birds.

Her gift generally unappreciated, Viola lived in poverty. Her house was a plyboard shack, absent of indoor plumbing or electricity. She had never ridden in a car, never been ten miles from where she lived, and had no hope of doing either in her lifetime. She ate cornbread, mustard greens with a little lard, and great northern beans. She had never visited a dentist or a medical doctor, and she never would.

Viola had a shy granddaughter, whom she affectionately called her “grandbaby.” Every summer this child visited her grandmother, and for six days a week, she chopped Old Man Smith’s cotton. With expertise and enthusiasm unmatched anywhere in the South, the girl single-handedly massacred whole acres of crabgrass and Johnson grass that threatened the tender cotton. With her six-foot hoe, she effectively equalized the equation. Old Man Smith knew he owed his cotton-growing success to a wiry little chopper from Marianna, Arkansas, who happened to visit her fish-cleaning grandmother every summer.

On Sundays, while Viola decapitated bass, the child tugged at her braids and suspiciously stared at us.

After one particularly successful fishing trip to Possum Fork, the cotton chopper and I stood alone and enjoyed Viola’s performance. Soon the braided girl disappeared. Before the screenless back door closed, she returned with a pathetic, sickly beagle puppy. “His name’s Cornbread,” she proudly announced. “And my name is Viola, the same as my grandmammy’s.”

Cornbread immediately took to me. Even now, I can remember wondering how he could survive at all; my father’s prize beagles ate better than Cornbread’s mistress. Or so it seemed. How could she feed poor Cornbread? Of course Cornbread ate very little, usually only fish guts. His coat was shiny enough, but he obviously suffered from malnutrition. When I thought about my father’s spoiled puppies and Viola’s Cornbread, for the first time I felt guilty about having so much. I wanted to help, but I didn’t know how.

By ginning time in the fall, Viola-the granddaughter-disappeared from my life.

“Viola. That’s V-i-o-l-a,” said the woman seated in front of me. “Do you have any ground meat today?”

I was lost in a remembered cotton field.

“Mommy, when can we go?” said her restless baby. My mind was racing.

“Viola, do you know who I am?” I asked anxiously.

She wisely ignored my question. But I knew this Viola had been there. The young mother sitting across the table was my cotton chopper. Number twenty-one was my old friend.

Suddenly I was embarrassed. She only wanted my crackers and pinto beans, but I desperately needed to give her so much more.

“Viola, this is Mr. Jim! Your grandmother cleaned my fish!”

She did not remember.

“Viola,” I urged, “remember your grandmammy? Cornbread? Cotton chopping? Remember? Remember!”

Viola stared at me with tired eyes consumed with the present and not inclined to contemplate the past, no matter how glorious. Finally, though, she closed her brown eyes, and, when she opened them again, I had my little, braided chopper with me again. Her eyes were suddenly bright and alive.

“Viola,” I laughed, “you were the greatest.”

“I was good, wasn’t I? I really was. So very, very good. None better.” The overall-clad toddler reached up and touched her mother’s face.

Our day was suddenly full of remembered joy, which is what any pastor hopes for, we who presume to shepherd God’s people. We hope for moments when we share something special with our folk, when we really understand how they feel, when we discover forgotten feelings and fears in ourselves and in them.

But the moment soon passed.

“They don’t need choppers down home anymore,” Viola said quietly. “And they sho’ don’t need choppers in Pittsburgh.”

Cornbread, grandmother Viola, and my father were dead. Possum Fork was permanently contaminated by a fifty-five gallon DDT drum thoughtlessly discarded by a farmer along its willowy banks. But gentle Viola, cotton chopper par excellence, sat across from me. Or, at least what remained of the Viola I knew.

Her life once consisted of ten hours of honest labor, a refreshing RC, and Necco Wafers. Now she was one more struggling urban mother who had not had a job or an RC in fifteen years. Once the Desha County Cotton Chopping Queen, she was now an unwed mother who would eat generic peanut butter and spaghetti sauce for the next two weeks.

“Can you slip me a few extra peanut butters?” she asked as she gathered her child in her arms and started to leave.

I was ambushed by a longing for things to be better. That afternoon at the food closet, it occurred to me that I was tired of merely watching these human dramas helplessly. I had known Viola much longer than I’d known anyone in my congregation, but each person has his or her own personal joy or tragedy, good or bad memory, that I am alternately blessed or cursed to enter. I am forced to give a jar of peanut butter or something. I am rarely able to do much to affect the outcome one way or another.

If each life is a play, I rarely see the beginning or the ending. I think I understand the plot, and then I meet an old friend on the streets of Pittsburgh and it seems that someone switched theaters. And I sit, limited, in the audience.

I wanted to be the script writer that afternoon. I wanted to rewrite Viola’s story, to erase her past hurts, to author a happy ending. But I am not the author. I am not God.

My life is written into certain people’s scripts-like Viola’s-but the responsibility for each person’s story rests ultimately with God, not me. My responsibility is actually very simple: I am called to be a pastor.

I can give her only a loaf of bread today. But in our touching-even for a moment-I am called to point out that the final chapter has not yet been written. She has a future in God. And this profession of faith is the only real and lasting hope for Viola, and for my congregation.

-James P. Stobaugh

Fourth Presbyterian Church

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Five years ago LEADERSHIP published "The War Within" (Fall 1982), a candid description of one Christian leader's fierce, protracted battle with p*rnography and lust. The article generated more mail than any single article, before or since, in the history of LEADERSHIP. Though responses were diverse, their sheer volume showed how troublesome the problem is for many Christian leaders. Since then, much has happened.

p*rnography became the focus of national attention with the Attorney General's Commission and its landmark report last year, which among other things, documented the rapid spread of p*rn in recent years.

Technology has made sexually-oriented material much more easily available. Sales of hard-core p*rn videos, for example, more than doubled from 1983 to 1986.

This trend has not spared pastors, according to a LEADERSHIP survey (see How Common Is Pastoral Indiscretion?). Of the pastors responding to the survey, 20 percent said they look at sexually oriented media (in print, video, or movies) at least once a month. And 38 percent said they find themselves fantasizing about sex with someone other than their spouse at least once a month.

All this prompted us to seek out a pastor who knows how intensely difficult the war against lust can be-yet also knows God's grace and strength applied in that situation. Who better than the author of the previous article? Here then, is an update from the anonymous writer of "The War Within," and the lessons he has learned in the intervening five years.

I was sitting in an aisle seat on a cross-country flight when the passenger across the aisle, one row ahead, pulled out a magazine from his briefcase. I recognized something familiar in the furtive way he looked around, nervously adjusted his posture, and opened the magazine. He held the pages open just far enough to see inside, but from my angle I had a clear view of various women spreading their legs for the camera.

It seemed incongruous, even bizarre, for a man dressed in a business suit to be studying some anonymous woman's private parts in the artificial setting of jammed-together airplane seats and plastic folding trays. But after the sense of the bizarre had passed, I felt another twinge, this one a mixture of pain and sadness. Five years ago, I was that man in the business suit, addicted to lust. I wrote about my struggle in the Fall 1982 edition of LEADERSHIP, in an article called "The War Within." After the sadness had passed, I felt an enormous sense of relief, for I realized that my initial sense of bizarreness was a sign of the healing God has accomplished so far.

Not long after the airplane trip, an editor from LEADERSHIP asked if I would do another article, recounting what I had learned about lust in the five intervening years. At first, I didn't like the idea. It seemed an unnecessary probing of old wounds. The article had been for me a means of catharsis, a deliverance. Why dredge up the past? Finally, however, I agreed to consider the request.

I reread the original article for the first time in five years. Its passionate tone startled me. I had forgotten how completely sex had dominated my life. I found myself feeling compassion for the author of the article, momentarily forgetting his identity! Again, I breathed a prayer of thanks for God's healing. In the same file folder as the article, I also found an envelope from LEADERSHIP containing several dozen letters from readers, and I proceeded to read each one.

Some readers felt a sense of shock and betrayal. They criticized the article for being prurient and disgusting. The author had been far too explicit, they said; he dwelt on lurid details as if he still enjoyed his memories of lust.

"The author cannot possibly be considered a Christian," concluded one reader (I hope this person never encounters Augustine's Confessions). Others claimed the article had caused them to distrust their pastor and all Christian leaders: "Who knows what might be going on in their minds?"

I pray and hope that my article did not lead anyone astray. I must admit that, at a distance of five years, the article seemed somewhat overwrought. Does the issue of lust merit such a long, involved treatment? But I also know that the article was true, every word of it. I lived it. War raged within me for a decade.

Five years ago some people were scandalized that a Christian magazine would print such a blunt, realistic confession by a Christian leader. But in recent days we have read far more explicit accounts of Christian leaders' immorality in Time and Newsweek.

Not all the letters were negative, however. More than half expressed deep gratitude. I have a whole stack of letters that begin like this: "I thought I was the only one with this problem. Thank you so much for having the courage to bring it out into the open." Some go on to describe agonizing personal battles with lust and immorality. At least one reader said the article permanently cured his lust problem by frightening him away from the temptations of bare flesh.

The most moving letters, however, came from people who have not been cured. "Please, tell me how to solve my problem!" they wrote. "You said that God 'came through' for you, but he has not come through for me. What can I do?" It was this group of letters that ultimately convinced me to write about what has happened in the past five years.

The Road to Freedom

I begin with humility and gratitude to God for breaking my addiction. I came to see the problem of lust as a true addiction, much like addiction to alcohol or drugs or gambling. And I can truly say that I have been set free of, in Augustine's words, "scratching lust's itchy sore." For those still caught in the web of that addiction, I bring a message of hope.

Ironically, I am most grateful for two things I normally try to avoid: guilt and fear. Augustine records rather candidly that, except for the fear of God's judgment in the afterlife, Epicurus would surely have lured him even deeper into carnal pleasures. A similar kind of fear and guilt kept me on edge during my long struggle with lust.

Psychologists use the term "cognitive dissonance" to describe the battle inside a person who believes one way and acts another. For example, a woman will normally feel intense cognitive dissonance if she secretly carries on an affair with another man while pretending to be happily married to her husband. Even if her husband suspects nothing, her own mind will constantly remind her that she is living with contradictions. Because the mind cannot sustain too much cognitive dissonance, it will seek ways to resolve the contradictions. Perhaps the wife will unconsciously let slip certain clues about her affair, or maybe she will accidentally call her husband by her lover's name. In such unexpected ways the mind will attempt to bring together her two lives.

A sense of cognitive dissonance haunted me during my addiction to lust. I believed one set of things about Christian ethics, the dangers of separating physical appeal from other aspects of sexuality, and the irrationality of an obsession with body parts. But I acted contrarily. From the pulpit I preached that a person's worth is measured internally, and that ugly people and fat people and the physically handicapped can express God's image. But, like much of male America, I spent my time drooling over shapely women with well-formed legs.

Most urgently, I experienced cognitive dissonance in my marriage. I had roped off large areas of my sexuality from my wife, which I cultivated in private, usually on trips, in visits to adult movie theaters and magazine shops. How could I expect to find sexual fulfillment in my marriage when I was nurturing a secret life of sexuality apart from my marriage?

Guilt and fear finally forced me to deal with the cognitive dissonance. Guilt made it feel dissonant in the first place; it constantly reminded me that my actions did not coincide with my beliefs. And fear, especially the fear I experienced after I learned how sex had utterly destroyed my Southern pastor friend, forced me to face my own sin. It led me, kicking and protesting all the way, toward repentance.

I mention this because guilt and fear do not often get good press in our liberated society. Had I sought help from a professional counselor, that counselor may well have dealt with the symptoms of guilt and fear rather than with the root problem. I have come to believe that the guilt and fear were wholly appropriate; they were, in fact, the prods that led me to resolve the cognitive dissonance in my life.

Today, I hear cries of outrage against anyone who, like President Reagan or Jerry Falwell, conveys a tone of judgment. President Reagan simply asks that sexual abstinence be taught as an option, possibly the best option, for young people who wish to avoid the health dangers associated with sexual promiscuity. "Don't lay a guilt trip on us!" many people respond. "Don't try to scare us." But I have learned that guilt and fear may serve us well, as warnings against the direct dangers posed by a disease like AIDS, or against the more subtle dangers represented by an addiction to lust.

Yet guilt and fear are such powerful forces that they may also deceive. In my case, they deceived me into seeing God as my enemy. Now as I read "The War Within," it reminds me of a testimony delivered at a revival tent meeting: "For many years I wallowed in the stench and filth of sin until finally I reached the end of my rope and in desperation turned to God." Typically, as I did in the article, the testifier spends most of his time on vivid descriptions of the smells and sights of that sin.

I now view my pilgrimage differently. I believe God was with me at each stage of my struggle with lust. It wasn't that I had to climb toward a state of repentance to earn God's approval; that would be a religion of works. Rather, God was present with me even as I fled from him. At the moment when I was most aware of my own inadequacy and failure, at that moment I was probably closest to God. That is a religion of grace.

The title of one book on my shelf, He Came Down from Heaven, summarizes the gospel pretty well. Immanuel: God is with us, no matter what. He calls us to heaven but descends to earth to rescue us.

I wish we in the church did a better job of conveying God's love for sinners. From the church, I feel mainly judgment. I cannot bring my sin to the church until it has been neatly resolved into a warm, uplifting testimony. For example, if I had come to the church in the midst of my addiction to lust, I would have been harshly judged. That, in fact, is why I had to write my article anonymously. Even after the complete cycle of confession and forgiveness, people still wrote in comments like, "The author cannot possibly be considered a Christian."

Having said that, however, I also recognize that many people who struggle with addictions have been greatly helped by counselors or other mature Christians to whom they have made themselves accountable. They testify that knowing there is someone to whom they have to report honestly and regularly has been a key factor in resisting temptation.

I have attended a few meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, and they convinced me that we in the church have something to learn from that group. Somehow they require accountability and communicate the "Immanuel-ness" of God. He is with you when you succeed and when you fail. He does not wait with folded arms for you to pick yourself out of the gutter. His hands are stretched out toward you, eager to help. Where are the hands of the church?

Bearing Scars

So far I have given mostly good news: the good news that an addiction can be broken, that God's love extends to the uttermost, that even guilt and fear can work for our good. But in honesty I must bring bad news as well.

In Sunday school we learn simple illustrations about the long-term effects of sin: "God will forgive you for the sin of smoking, but you'll always have spots on your lungs." Damage from sexual sins is rarely so easy to detect, but such sins do indeed have consequences.

I bear scars from my addiction to lust, even though the addiction seems broken. First, there is the scar of "spoiled innocence." Sex has a certain "you can't go back again" quality. p*rnographers understand this well: They know that what titillates this month will only bore next month, and they must constantly search for new and exciting sexual variety in order to hold a viewer's attention. p*rnography feeds on our fascination with the forbidden, but as the rules of what is forbidden change, our fascination changes as well. We want more.

I don't know exactly how to describe this long-term effect, but I definitely feel a sense of spoiled innocence. My sexual fantasy life far outstripped my sexual experience within marriage, and I have not been able to bring the two together. I was a voyeur, experiencing sex in loneliness and isolation. But sex is meant to be shared. To the degree that I indulged my voyeurism, I drifted away from my wife and our shared experiences.

And of course my years of deception undermined trust. Eventually, I told my wife everything about my addiction to lust, and she accepted it with astonishing grace and forgiveness. Still, though, she must wonder: When I travel without her, am I trustworthy? I sometimes wonder if I can even trust myself.

By living in a state of cognitive dissonance for a number of years, I developed a great ability to live falsely. As I ignored the early warning signs of guilt, I opened up even greater possibilities for self-deception. Perhaps I have seared my own conscience. I continue to pray for the Holy Spirit's healing of my receptivity to him.

These are some of the long-term effects from my experience with lust. Surely similar scars form as a result of adultery, divorce, or a decision to abort a child. God will forgive such actions and grant repentance and restoration. But healing does not come free of long-term cost.

How do I respond to sexual pressures now? I am still a sexual being, a male. That has not changed. I still experience the same magnetic force of sexual desire that used to pull me toward p*rnography. What do I do with those urges? What do any of us do? As I see it, we can respond in three possible ways: indulgence, repression, or reconnection.

The Way of Indulgence

"The War Within" described in detail-some say too much detail-a process of indulgence, of following my sexual desires wherever they might lead. Our society seems strangely schizophrenic on the wisdom of that approach. On the one hand, authors advocating "The New Celibacy" appear on talk shows, and Time features articles on the new ethic of intimacy. On the other hand, you need only flip through the advertisem*nts in a magazine like Vogue or Glamour to realize our society's approving attitude toward lust.

"Lust is back!" heralded an article in Esquire a few years ago. The sexual revolution of the sixties stemmed from an overall assault against tradition and authority. Soon feminism put a damper on anything that treated women as sexual objects. But now it seems perfectly acceptable to treat either women or men as sexual objects. Today's sexual revolution is fueled not so much by a reaction against authority as by The New Paganism that glorifies the human body (witness the incredible boom in bodybuilding, fitness, and exercise).

Cable television and videocassettes now make p*rnography available to nearly everyone. The recent book Vital Signs reports that of Christian households hooked into cable television, 23 percent subscribe to p*rno channels-the same percentage as the nation as a whole.

What harm is there, after all, in displaying a little skin? Christians tend to be so uptight about sex; why not experiment with p*rnography to help loosen us up? There are many answers, I suppose, but one especially seems to fit my experience: p*rnography radically disconnects sex from its intended meaning.

Human sexuality, a gift from God, was designed to express a relationship between a man and a woman, but p*rnography separates out one aspect of that gift-physical appeal-and focuses exclusively on it.

The specialists like to remind us that sexuality reveals our animal nature. It is a matter of biology, they say, of glands and hormones and physical maturation. Sex is technique; it can be learned, and mastered, and perfected. And perhaps p*rnography can assist you in mastering the technique.

But certain facts about human sexuality still puzzle the experts. While it resembles animal sexuality in some ways, it also expresses fundamental differences. Human beings possess disproportionate sexual equipment: Among mammals, only human females develop enlarged breasts before their first pregnancy, and among primates the human male has the largest penis. In contrast to virtually all other animals, human beings engage in sex as a year-round option rather than limiting intercourse to the time of estrus. Behaviorists puzzle over these anomalies. What evolutionary advantage do they offer?

Perhaps the answer does not lie in "evolutionary advantage" at all. Perhaps it lies in the nature of human sexuality as an expression of relationship rather than as an act of instinct for the purpose of reproduction.

The most telling difference between human and animal sexuality is this: all other animals perform sexual acts in the open, without embarrassment. Only human beings see any advantage to privacy. "Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to," said Mark Twain. For us, sex is different. It has an aura of mystery about it, and instinctively we want to keep it separate, to experience it in private. We treat it as we treat religion, with an aura of apartness, or "holiness."

As free creatures, human beings can, of course, rebel against these natural tendencies that have characterized all human societies. We can treat sex as an animal function, separating out the physical act from any aspect of relationship. We can tear down all the fences that societies have traditionally erected to protect the mystery surrounding sexuality. That, in fact, is precisely what p*rnography does. And it does so at our peril.

A few years ago in major cities like San Francisco, you could find certain establishments that catered to the sexual interests of gay men. Some of these reduced sex to its most basic nature. A man could enter a stall and insert his genitals through an opening in the wall at crotch level. He could thus have a sex act performed on him without ever seeing his sexual partner. Such parlors offered efficient and anonymous sex, free from the trammels of relationship. In 1970, at the height of the gay sexual revolution, Kinsey Institute researchers found that 40 percent of white male hom*osexuals in San Francisco had had at least 500 sexual partners and 28 percent reported over 1,000 partners. (The hysteria over AIDS has greatly reduced those statistics, although now "safe sex" is being touted as a way to enjoy such pleasures without the risk of infection.)

What does all this frenetic sexual activity prove? It demonstrates, of course, the enormous power of the sexual drive in human beings, who are capable of indulgence at a rate without precedent in the animal kingdom. And it also shows that sex can be reduced to an utterly anonymous act, disconnected from relationship. The San Francisco statistics make that point most dramatically, but our society offers many other, more subtle reminders. "What's love got to do with it?" Tina Turner bellows into a microphone. Surely you can have great sex without the complications of love.

As I look back over the lessons I have learned, this seems the most important. Lust, and its expression in p*rnography, led me away from relationship toward raw desire. It enticed me with the promise of relationship: Cheryl Tiegs and Madonna and the monthly Playmates would remove their clothes and smile at me from the pages of magazines. But the photos lied. I was developing a relationship with ink dots printed on paper, not with real human beings.

Gradually, at a deep level, I was learning to view sex as mere technique, an exercise like gourmet dining. I was forgetting the crucial distinction between gourmet dining and gourmet sex: I have no human relationship with the food I eat, but I must have some sort of relationship with a sexual partner. p*rnography attempts to abolish that distinction.

The magazines, especially the soft p*rno magazines, convey the message that sex is merely a physical act, a matter of technique. Television soap operas, in their own way, express much the same thing: only 6 percent of the sex depicted on them occurs between a husband and wife. Through them, we learn that we can disconnect the sex act from normal social mores.

And yet society can never sever the connections completely. Inconsistencies continue to surface. Consider two examples:

-Every society on earth acknowledges incest taboos. The United States, if anything, has recently become even more sensitive to incest and the sexual abuse of children. But why? If sex is merely a physical act, a matter of technique, what difference should it make if parent and child have sex together, or brother and sister? The taboo against incest shows that human relationships are a part of sex at its most basic level.

-Movies very often depict an affair that begins "just on a physical basis." But rarely can the characters continue the affair on that basis. It grows, dominating the characters' emotions and gradually undermining their marriages. The old cycle of cognitive dissonance sets in, and what began as a physical affair soon blossoms into a full-fledged relationship. Linda Wolfe, a feminist author, wrote a book called Playing Around: Women and Extramarital Sex, in which she expressed amazement that so many physical affairs begun "to preserve a marriage by giving me a sexual outlet" ended up destroying that marriage.

I have come to realize that the greatest danger of p*rnography lies in its false depiction of sexuality. It focuses exclusively on physical appearance and technique, without recognizing sex as an expression of relationship between two human beings. Because p*rnography begins with a false premise, the more I follow where it leads, the less able I will be to find a well-integrated, healthy experience of sexuality.

Gay men in San Francisco with 1,000 partners may be light years beyond me in sexual technique and proficiency. But I doubt whether they have found a high level of mature sexual satisfaction. They have addressed the "animal" aspect of their sexuality, but at the expense of developing relationships. We are more than animals: that is the basic Christian contribution to sexuality. (And, in fact, as the anomalies of human sexuality show-disproportionate sexual organ size, the need for privacy, the constant availability-in sexuality we may be least like other animals.) Whatever leads me to emphasize exclusively the "animal" side of my sexuality will likely lead toward confusion and dissatisfaction.

I have learned that my addiction to lust probably expressed other human needs. What was I searching for in the p*rno literature and movies? The image of the perfect female breast? More likely, I was searching for intimacy, or love, or acceptance, or reinforcement of an insecure male ego, or maybe even a thirst for transcendence. I was searching for something that could never be satisfied by two-dimensional photos printed on slick magazine paper. And not until I recognized that could I begin to turn toward a more appropriate sexual identity.

In my search, I "de-mystified" sexuality. I made the female body as common as a daily newspaper, rather than as rare as the one woman I had chosen to spend my life with. I destroyed the fences around sexuality, chasing away any remnants of "holiness." Nudity became not the final mutual achievement in a progression toward intimacy, but the very first step. These are the results of my choices toward indulgence. From all of them, I am still trying to recover.

The Temptation of Repression

Some people writing in response to my original LEADERSHIP article could not identify with my struggle at all. They offered me stern advice, mostly consisting of admonishments from the Bible.

Wrote one pastor: "Nowhere does the Bible say to pray for victory over lust. It does say to flee immorality (1 Cor. 6:18). It does say to saturate our minds with Scripture (Ps. 119:9, 11). It does say to make a covenant with our eyes so that we do not gaze on a virgin (Job 31:1). It does say to take every thought captive to Christ (2 Cor. 10:3-5)."

Several people also cited the apostle Paul's statement about the perversions of Ephesus, "It is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret."

Reading so many of these letters in one sitting, I had to question my own experience. In my struggles with lust, was I making complex something that should have been very simple? I had written page after page about "the war within" and the forces that pulled me toward lust. The letter writers seemed to think the solution to lust was the same as the solution to the drug problem in America: Just Say No!

But then I read the letters of people who had felt every moment of my struggle. These, among them godly men and women, had succumbed to temptation. A firm resolution to say no did not seem enough.

What is the difference between "fleeing immorality" and simple repression? By automatically turning away from any impulse toward sexual desire, will I dam up a reservoir of repression that will one day overflow? I don't know, but I do believe that we who learn to practice repression at an early age may be woefully unprepared to face real temptation.

I think of the classical distinction between virtue and innocence: virtue, unlike innocence, has successfully passed a point of temptation. Perhaps a person who grows up in a Christian subculture, attends Christian schools, watches Christian television, reads Christian books, and listens to Christian music can survive the 1980s in something like a state of innocence. But there is a danger also: a person reared in such a hothouse environment may wilt once he or she steps into the broader society.

I grew up in a sheltered Christian background, where I learned to rely on simple, black-and-white, just-say-no repression as the best defense against all forms of temptation. But that defense failed me in the matter of lust. I was utterly unprepared for the force, the almost magical force, of human sexuality.

Since those days of innocence, I have read thinkers like Wilhelm Reich, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Sigmund Freud, each of whom explains almost all human behavior on the basis of the sexual instinct. I do not agree with them, but they do underscore the enormous power of human sexuality.

"I feel as if I had escaped from the hands of a mad and furious master," said Sophocles when old age finally quelled his sexual drive. Sex cannot be reduced to neat, rational formulas and explained away. And I wonder whether any degree of repression can withstand its force. Will any amount of repression ever prepare us for virtue?

Yet I must confess that in the past five years, I have often used pure repression as a response to temptation. Once the back of my "addiction" to lust had been broken, I was able to repress temptations in that direction. But just saying no became possible only after I had dealt with the nature of the lust impulse.

Different people develop different ways of controlling their sexual impulses. I recently read of the French Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain, who together with his wife took a vow of celibacy. Both in their early thirties and having been married ten years, they kept the vow the rest of their lives. Maritain revealed his secret only after Raissa's death: "We decided to renounce a thing which marriage fulfills, a deep need of the human being-both of body and spirit. … I do not say that any such decision was easy to take. … It implied no scorn for nature but a desire to follow at any price at least one of the counsels of the perfect life." Maritain also reported that "one of the great graces of our life was that . . . our mutual love was infinitely increased." I stand in awe before such a decision, even as I choose another way for myself. But whatever you think about the Maritains' choice, it hardly seems like repression. They made the choice in full awareness of their sexuality, in full commitment to their relationship. It sounds more like virtue than like innocence.

I ultimately came to reject repression as the best response to my sexuality for the same reason that I rejected indulgence: it fails to satisfy the underlying human needs. Indulgence meets temporary needs but disconnects them from the underlying needs of intimacy. Similarly, repression may give me an escape from an immediate temptation toward lust, but it will not satisfy the state that made me susceptible to lust in the first place.

Reconnecting the Sexual Self

The only ultimate solution for my sexual needs, I am convinced, will involve finding a balanced and mature way of expressing the full range of my sexuality within my marriage. I experienced sex in its "disconnected" form, as a voyeur of other people's bodies, apart from a relationship. My healing process will surely involve reconnecting that sexual power and energy with the growth toward intimacy it was designed to accompany.

G. K. Chesterton once likened this world to the desert island site of a shipwreck. A sailor awakes from a deep sleep and discovers treasure strewn about, relics from a civilization he can barely remember. One by one he picks up the relics-gold coins, a compass, fine clothing-and tries to discern their meaning. According to Chesterton, fallen humanity is in such a state. Good things on earth still bear traces of their original purpose, but each is also subject to misinterpretation or abuse because of fallen, "amnesiac" human nature.

Evil is a kind of subverted echo of goodness and spirituality. Power, a wonderful human gift, can be used for great good or can through violence be used to dominate others. Wealth may lead to charity or to exploitation; delicious food may inspire gratitude or gluttony.

Sexual desire, one of the most powerful "relics" we find on this earth, invites obsession. When we experience sexual desires, it seems only right to follow where they lead. As the modern song puts it, "It can't be wrong when it feels so right."

John J. McNeill, the Jesuit psychotherapist who was expelled from his order for his teachings in his ministry to gay people, wrote, "I was convinced that what is bad psychologically has to be bad theologically and that, conversely, whatever is good theologically is certainly good psychologically." McNeill then concluded, "Every human being has a God-given right to sexual love and intimacy."

McNeill's philosophy sounds very appealing. Who could argue against our psychological good corresponding to our theological good? His philosophy has only one basic problem: If I am the one determining my psychological good, there will be no end to my rationalization. A bulimic teenager may, for example, determine that vomiting will make her feel better psychologically, and thus starve herself to death. An alcoholic may determine that one more pint of Scotch would provide oh so much psychological relief.

The problem is that we are the problem. The good things on earth-food, drink, sex, recognition, power, wealth-are not spoiled; we are. They are relics of Eden. But our amnesia affects our very ability to determine their proper use.

Christians, of course, believe that we have a message from the one who designed the relics, the ship, and the sailor. That message teaches us that sex is tied to relationship, and desire finds its best and most satisfying fulfillment within marriage. It's a message I do not always like, and one I have often rebelled against. But I am convinced it is true. And thus the only hope for me to find balance and maturity in my sex life is to pray and work toward a healthy marriage relationship, which includes sex.

The authors of the best-selling book Habits of the Heart reported that, of all the people they interviewed, only evangelical Christians were able to articulate a reason for continuing to believe in marriage. We have been given a message from God that connects and gives meaning to such things as physical desire, gender differences, reproduction, love, and mutual sacrifice.

I now see the challenge before me as a process of reconnecting what, during my addiction to lust, I had so tragically separated. Can my physical desire for my wife develop along with my desire for union with her emotionally, and even spiritually? Can our experience of union, interpenetration, and shared pleasure convey the very deep spiritual-more, sacramental-significance that lies at the heart of a Christian view of marriage?

I would like to conclude with a glowing profile of how that has been accomplished in my marriage. I cannot, not yet. My wife and I are both committed to that goal, and we both seek it. We will continue to seek it even as we recover from the distrust and distance that entered our lives during my addiction to lust.

Easy Lie or Hard Truth

I tremble to say this in an age when anyone who focuses on the differences between the sexes is held up to ridicule, but I am convinced that the experience of lust is one in which gender differences stand out strongest. The same Kinsey Institute survey that discovered almost half the male hom*osexuals in San Francisco had more than 500 partners also revealed that more than half the gay white women surveyed had had less than ten sexual partners. Most of those women rarely had casual sex and tended toward monogamy with one gay partner.

The striking difference in statistics might shed light on this whole issue of lust. Wives wrote to me confessing that my article had touched on an area of great conflict in their marriages. When their husbands had admitted some acquaintance with p*rnography, the wives found that disgusting and perverted.

I would not attempt a theory on why sexual aggression and lust seem more of a danger to men than to women. But the picture comes clear if you simply compare the number of p*rno magazines directed toward men with those directed toward women. Or, simply stand outside an adult movie theater and count the number of men and women who enter. The compulsive thirst for sexuality that leads to the voyeurism seems to fall more within the male domain. It contains within it an element of sexual aggression that seems foreign to most women.

What does a man want in sex? What need was being met in the days when I would fawn over photos of women I would never meet? What lay behind the appeal? Pastors' wives wrote to ask me the question, and in turn I have asked it of myself.

Here is the answer that seems closest to me. In sex, I want to feel welcome. I want to feel accepted, not rejected. In some primal sense, I want to feel like a conquering king, like a warrior (and I know how out of fashion those images are in this liberated age).

Yet, ironically, sex combines aggression and insecurity in a precarious balance. I think most women would be surprised to learn how intimidating, even terrifying, sex is for many men. p*rnography lowers the terror. It's an easy form of arousal. And the key to the arousal is the illusion of welcomeness. Miss October arches her back and spreads her legs. Beautiful women from around the globe smile at me, beckon me to enjoy them.

Real life is never so easy. Sex comes, for most of us, after months or years of courtship. There is romance, yes, but there is also conflict, and boredom, and incompatibility. The woman I desire is busy asserting herself, seeking her identity, fending off a culture that tends to treat her like a sex object. She has kids around the house, a career to juggle with her other chores, and financial hassles. Unlike Miss October, she doesn't spend all day preparing herself to look appealing and available.

So I am left with an easy lie or a hard truth. The easy lie is the illusion of p*rnography. It offers its own rewards, and I would be dishonest if I said its appeal eventually vanishes. It doesn't. I miss the thrill that lust used to provide me, just as a recovered drug addict misses the highs he once experienced. How can sex in marriage, complicated by real-life commitments, intricacies of compatibility, and the inconveniences of children, possibly compete with the illusory thrills of Playboy women?

But there is a hard truth suggested by Chesterton's analogy of the shipwreck. Why are we here? Are we on earth primarily to experience pleasure, to have fun? If so, Christianity, with its offer of a cross and sacrificial love and concern for the weak and the poor, seems pretty thin. If we are here for no real reason, why go through all the bother of trying to connect glandular desire with lofty goals like intimacy and marriage?

Or are we here on a mission? Are we indeed creatures who will best find fulfillment by living up to the demands of the Creator? If the latter, then the thrills offered by the easy lie of p*rnography will not permanently satisfy. Indulgence is not an option for me, and neither is repression. I have only one option: to seek God with all my heart, so that God may continue his process of healing and bring me to sexual fulfillment-at home, with my wife, where I belong.

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Some time ago I counseled a church member who felt trapped in a cold, nonsupportive marriage to an alcoholic husband. She had come feeling hopeless, looking for comfort and suggestions. I tried to help her sort the options, hoping to open up some new ways of thinking about her problem.

“Do you think marriage counseling might help?” I asked.

“Oh no. My husband would never go,” she answered.

“Have you thought about a trial separation?”

“I have no way to support myself, and we can’t afford two homes.”

“Have you ever been to an Al Anon meeting?” I pressed.

“I couldn’t bear the embarrassment of going to a public meeting like that.”

For every new avenue I tried to travel, she had a quick detour.

Years of living with emotional barrenness had made her rigid. Despair had become such a constant condition of her life that she could no longer see beyond the pain. Finally, she apologized for taking up my time and began to gather up her purse and her wet tissues. I felt so inadequate. I had been unable to give her the comfort of even a glimmer of hope. Other than providing her the catharsis of telling a sympathetic human being about her plight, I felt I had accomplished nothing toward changing either her life or her attitude of helpless despair.

I asked if we could pray together before she left. Sitting on the edge of her chair, she obviously expected this to be a short and formal conclusion to our time together. But as I began to pray, I sensed her relaxing for the first time.

I suddenly realized we had never talked about her spiritual life. What an oversight! What had this long-term problem done to her relationship with Christ? Had her misery made her unable to formulate any but the most rote prayers for deliverance? And how long had it been since she had felt the forgiveness and loving acceptance of the Lord?

I prayed for God’s comfort to surround her and his peace to fill her. I prayed slowly and left spaces of silence, hoping to allow her to feel God’s presence as deeply as she was able. When I finished the prayer, she was weeping again.

“I think I had forgotten that God can work in my life,” she said. “I haven’t been able to pray in such a long time.”

My friend’s problem was by no means solved, buts somehow the act of prayer had opened her heart a little. Somehow it had lowered the defensive barriers that served as a protection from the pain of many years. Often, I’ve discovered, prayer has become the most productive and comforting part of a counseling session, the means by which God enters into a difficult human problem.

The Uniqueness of Pastoral Counseling

As I considered the profound effects of prayer in counseling, I wondered if I needed to redefine my role as pastoral counselor. Had I let the secular definitions and forms of counseling set the rules by which I guided those who came to me? Instead of a therapist, were they really seeking a pastor, a spiritual guide?

I had learned techniques of guiding people to psychological maturity with models similar to those used by secular counselors, and I felt reasonably proficient with them. Yet often I felt I had missed the mark in a counseling session, that I had been more of a professional and less of a pastor. Perhaps I had undervalued what I as a pastor am specifically called to do for people-to pray for them and with them.

As I thought back over many of the people I had counseled, I realized there were particular situations in which my counseling techniques were not achieving what the time of prayer was. These situations involved relational logjams, difficult decisions, anxiety about family members, anger and frustration about things done to them, and the inability to forgive. Attitudes and hardened hearts appeared to be a large part of the problem.

Many times prayer cut through the difficulties that pragmatic and problem-oriented forms of counseling only stumbled over.

As objective observers, we’re often more able than counselees to see where healing is needed and that healing is possible. Frequently a sense of hopelessness overcomes people faced with a crisis and prevents them from dealing with it.

A young couple came to me separately, both in panic because they had experienced their first serious argument. They were terrified that their marriage was doomed. “I don’t see how things can ever be the same again after the things we said,” moaned the young husband. “She’ll never be able to forgive me, and probably God can’t either.”

He needed to pray not only for forgiveness (which in his saner moments he truly understood), but also to thank God for his wife and his marriage and for God’s power to heal the rift between them. That second part of the prayer needed my formulation, because he couldn’t see past his own fear to God’s love and power. After I prayed with him, he left my office in much better shape than when he came in.

Of course, this isn’t always the case. Prayer is no magic formula that causes problems to vanish. Some deep wounds in lives and personalities need long-term, sensitive care. I can never consider prayer a Band-Aid to patch a deep hurt, nor is it an easy way to disclaim responsibility and end an uncomfortable or unproductive counseling relationship. Yet as I thought about the effect of prayer on some cases, I couldn’t escape the fact that it was often the prayer that opened someone to healing.

I once listened for nearly an hour to words of anger and bitterness from a woman who had been abandoned and divorced by her husband of twenty years. She knew in her mind that the anger would destroy her, yet I couldn’t advise or argue her into peace, even by the words of Jesus from the Scriptures. She had tried to pray, but every time she tried, she found herself hardening her heart to hold on to her anger.

“I don’t really want to stop being angry,” she finally confessed, “and that frightens me the most! Would you pray for me? I think I’ve forgotten how to pray.”

I prayed. Eventually she would need serious counseling to work out her anger and find a way to remake her life, but at this point in her journey, she first needed to reestablish her sense of God’s continuing love for her. Fortunately, she understood this need, and thus her request for me to pray for her until she could once again pray for herself.

This woman’s intuitive understanding of her own need reminded me again of the importance of keeping my pastoral function in the forefront of my counseling.

The Power of Prayer

Prayer is powerful. All of us would readily agree. Yet don’t we sometimes speak of prayer and counseling as if they were separate activities with different goals? We counsel, and then we pray that the counseling works. I’m growing to see prayer and counseling as two strands within the single fabric of God’s work. It’s my job to weave the two together.

Most counseling problems we face involve a large element of wounded spirit caused by a damaged relationship with God. This prevents some people from fully receiving God’s love or having healthy relationships with other people.

In all of us reside guilt and anger, sometimes growing out of past experiences and the imperfect child-raising practices of our parents. Many people project the human imperfections of their parents onto God. Many blame God for the trouble in their lives, believing God is giving them trouble as a punishment for some unremembered wrong of the past. More often than not, people don’t realize consciously that they hold these attitudes, but their lives and relationships are infected by them anyway.

George was a hard-working leader of the church who came to me because his extensive church activity was becoming a source of tension at home. As we talked, I sensed a drivenness in his attitude, a fear that he must never let up. He wanted “things to be done right.” He didn’t enjoy relaxing with his family; he tried to avoid “nonproductive activity” because he was sure God was displeased with “less than our best.”

The church had become not a sanctuary of solace but an arena of inner tension. His service grew not out of love but out of an unconscious fear of God as a harsh, demanding authority figure. He seemed to feel God was looking for some reason to deny him the fruits of Christ’s sacrifice.

His fear and guilt were deeply embedded in his personality and would not be eliminated by any simple or short-term counseling, nor by some quick prayer techniques. George was not the kind of guy I could just look in the eye and say, “George, relax. God loves you and created you to enjoy him!”

One thing did, however, begin to break down his fear of God: praying before the loving Creator-Redeemer. Had I tried to tell him he demanded more of himself than God did, I surely would have invited his contempt for “sentimental pastors who peddle cheap grace.” So I asked if I might pray for him.

I wanted my prayer to make George aware that he was in the presence of a loving Father who cares for him and delights in him just as he is, a unique and valued person. In formulating the prayer, I wanted to express for George his unspoken-perhaps even unconscious-plea. My words would be addressed to God, but they would also reflect the needs of that person sitting across from me. In this case I concentrated on God’s grace, which demands nothing but to be received and accepted. I hoped George would relax and just enjoy being a child of God for a few moments.

When we finished, George’s eyes were moist as he said in his characteristically low-key way, “It’s nice to have someone else pray for me.” George’s problem certainly didn’t end there. Lifelong attitudes don’t disappear easily. He still needed counseling to find the roots of his drivenness and deal with them. But he also needed to learn how to pray, knowing God’s love for him as well as God’s call.

It took many months of both counseling and prayer before I could sense any relaxation of George’s tension, and I don’t know whether listening or prayer helped him most. I suspect it was a combination of the two.

Preparing for Prayer

One sure way to undercut prayer is to forget that the prayer is addressed to God and not to the counselee. All of us have heard manipulative sermons disguised as prayers: “Lord, you know that Joe here has caused his own problems. Help him to shape up before he wrecks his marriage.” Moralizing or problem-solving statements in prayer obstruct the effect of placing the problems into the hands of God. Only actual prayer, growing out of the pastor’s own soul and informed by the understanding gained during the counseling session, can be truly effective.

Likewise, my prayer needs the mental endorsem*nt of the one with whom I’m praying. Only as long as my words actually reflect the prayers from deep within the soul of that person will he or she give consent to my words. If I misread the situation radically, the person will simply shut it out. He or she might listen to the prayer but will not pray it.

Prayer that’s effective demands prior thought and personal preparation during the course of the counseling session itself. I need to do two things: understand clearly what counselees would pray if only they could, and develop a receptive climate in which they will feel safe enough to open themselves to God.

Experience has taught me not to hurry to the prayer prematurely. One time I met with a young couple whose baby had been stillborn. The husband was concerned that his wife seemed unable to get over her depression. Aha! I thought. A situation needing prayer. So after I had heard the basic facts, I suggested we pray. I prayed and the husband prayed, but the wife didn’t. When we finished, she said, both to me and to her husband, “You just don’t understand how I feel.”

Truly I did not. I had missed her need to express anger toward God for what had happened. She couldn’t open herself to God’s healing until she had been given the chance to vent her anger. I should have encouraged her to talk about these feelings before we prayed. That experience taught me the importance of timing, of preparing for the pastoral prayer through careful listening.

As the person tells his or her story, I try to listen with eyes and ears wide open, and without judgment. Many people come hesitantly, expecting my disapproval. They come because they know they’ve done something wrong. Many have built strong defenses to protect themselves against the judgment of others and of God. To find themselves accepted without judgment relaxes those defenses and may open a little crack for God’s forgiveness.

I also pray silently while I listen, consciously bringing God’s presence into the counseling situation. This helps me remember that God is at work here and I am not under the burden of “solving” anything by myself. Under my breath I may pray: Lord, thank you for joining me as we seek to minister to this person. Please help me rein in my own ego and remember that though I may be a channel of your grace, it’s only at your initiative.

Often I’m tempted to point out solutions that seem perfectly obvious to me. Yet just as often, if I wait and pray, the “obvious” also becomes clear to the counselee. When this happens, finding one’s own answer is an integral part of the person’s journey. It isn’t something imposed from without by my overzealous need to be instrumental in someone’s life.

It’s also important to listen for what needs prayer. A woman asked me to pray that her husband would become a responsible Christian and fulfill his obligations to his family. “He just refuses to come to church. Every Sunday I remind him how important it is to go as a family. I bring the printed sermons home and leave them on his chair. I point out other men who take their responsibility more seriously. I’ve tried everything I can think of, but the more I try, the more stubborn he gets.”

Her anxiety had blinded her to the fact that his stubbornness was a direct result of hers. She had forgotten about her love for him in the midst of a marital power struggle that was consuming her energy and attention. When I tried to tell her God could work on her husband without her having to turn life into a battlefield, she defended herself by claiming, “I’m so afraid that if I don’t keep reminding him, he’ll slip further away from the church.”

During our time of prayer, I included prayers of thanksgiving for the love that had brought the two of them together and for the qualities in his life and character that had endeared him to her.

As the prayer ended, her anxiousness seemed drained. “I guess I’ve been concentrating so hard on converting him that I forgot what a wonderful man he is.” She decided to turn over to the Lord the problems of her husband’s spiritual life.

We’re complicated people, and in some strange sense, she fought against receiving advice from me even though she had come seeking it. But prayer created a space in which she could remember her husband is in the Lord’s care. Because of her prayer, occasioned by mine, God was able to enter into her situation and melt those barriers blocking her relationship with her husband. And now that the husband would need less defensiveness to avoid losing a power struggle, perhaps God could begin to work on him, too.

Caution: God at Work

When I offer the pastoral prayer, I try to keep two basic assumptions in mind.

Though we can point the way to God, it is God who does the healing. My job is merely to create an open space in the person’s life where God can work. If I become too involved with solving the problems with my own skills, I will probably do no more than add to the accumulated layers of errors and false solutions. The “answer” must come from within the person, and God is quite capable of dealing directly with each person. The apostle Paul was very firm about this: “We are not competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of the new covenant” (2 Cor. 3:5, 6).

God is already at work in this person’s life. Each person has a past and a future, which are known to God. I have to resist the tendency to see only that which is presently troubling.

Helen and Bob came to me upset and confused by the attitude and activities of their 15-year-old daughter, Doreen. “We used to be so close and do things together,” Helen said. “Now she spends all her time in fast-food places with her friends. I don’t like the way she dresses and wears her hair. She has become so different, and I’m afraid of what it might lead to.”

We can’t minimize the dangers that face those passing through adolescence, yet often the dangers loom so large that it’s hard for parents to remember that God is also working in the child’s life. We did talk about how to monitor Doreen’s adolescence and what signs would indicate the need for intervention. But it was clear that Helen and Bob were concerned not so much about what was happening as about what might happen. Their fear was contaminating the communication with Doreen at just the time when she needed them to be most open and receptive to her struggles to become a separate individual.

After we talked, we prayed together. I thanked God for the gift of Doreen, for her creativity, her intelligence, and her bright, happy spirit. I thanked God that she was growing into womanhood with strength and independence. I thanked God that Helen and Bob had given her courage and freedom to try new things in the security of their love and support for her. I asked God to protect her as she lived through these difficult years so that passing fads would not endanger the true person God had created her to be, so that she might emerge from this transition period strong in faith, with her character formed as God would have it be. I also prayed for Helen and Bob, that God would give them both wisdom and patience, a vigilant awareness of her progress, and the fearless love to let Doreen find her own way to Christ.

Afterward Bob thanked me. “While you prayed, I was reminded that we aren’t going through this time alone and that Doreen is God’s child, too.”

Prayer sets problems in the context of God’s presence and power. It’s easy for people to forget that God’s love and presence encompass their immediate problem; they forget they are part of a larger reality.

In prayer God has given us a unique gift to draw people to him. Pastoral prayer helps us look past the problem to the Solver of problems. It shifts the focus from self to God. When I’ve used it with humility, sensitivity, and love, I’ve found prayer opening hurt and rigid people to God’s healing. And that’s what I want to accomplish in counseling.

Nancy D. Becker is pastor of Ogden Dunes (Indiana) Community Church.

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

I couldn’t have painted a better scene of missionary life. Small, native children ran alongside, urging me to take their picture. Scraggly dogs yapped in rhythm. The air was heavy with rain, the smells rich and primordial. We walked a tree-lined road that was overgrown yet stately. As we walked, the pastor of the local church was explaining the move of God’s Spirit in his country.

Then he unconsciously broke the marvelous mood. As a show of affection, this African pastor took my hand and firmly held it as we walked. The action took me by surprise. Every nerve in my arm screamed to my head, “Pull away. Fast!”

I looked around to see if anyone could see us-two men holding hands on their way to the next village. I hoped my sweaty palm would make further hand holding impossible, but the pastor ignored the squishiness and retained his warm grasp. In my discomfort, I learned something about myself: I am a child of my culture.

Even though all of us are learning to break through “macho” stereotypes, which prevent many men from showing much affection at all, on that African path I forgot all notions of the liberation of the changing modern male. As the seconds collided together, I planned my escape.

“Look at that!” I said, pointing my sweaty hand at a child holding a scorpion by the tail. It happened to be the hundredth one we had passed in the last mile, but it gave me an opportunity to slip my hand out of his and firmly embed it in my pocket for the rest of the trip.

I was safe from my hangups for that day, yet the incident began a trail of thought that I would walk many times. Why had I reacted with such alarm? Why is intimacy such a dark closet in my mind, while others have acquired such holy freedom to express emotions outwardly?

Several years have passed, and I have tried to answer those questions in the context of my own ministry. As a pastor, I have also noticed the dilemma as perceived by men and women in my congregation: To hug or not to hug? It’s a haunted house with many rooms and few guides.

A Time to Refrain from Embracing

I notice a secular world fidgeting more and more at the idea of being close to others. Back in 1984, Ms. magazine was calling intimacy a “turn-on,” and Harpers was warning society of “Enemies to Intimacy.” But since affection and sexual attraction are rarely divorced in the secular mindset, sexually transmitted diseases are closing the door to intimacy, public or private. Now the world feels it will survive only if it shows the cold shoulder. And by its definition of intimacy, perhaps rightly.

However, the fidgeting is not restricted to singles bars. It’s also found behind the pastor’s desk. I can recall a half-dozen tragedies that involved pastoral colleagues’ being removed from ministry for adultery. Each one of those moral failures steels my resolve to avoid the situations that wreaked such havoc.

But what is improper affection? And how do I avoid it? I’ve encountered several situations where I’ve decided strictly to avoid any show of affection.

When my emotions are unstable. Affection is proper under certain emotional conditions, but when I am emotionally unstable, a powder keg of problems is lit.

When my dad died close to my sixteenth birthday, I suffered an emotional letdown of mammoth proportions. I began to respond to dates in uncontrollable ways. The emotional strain was leaving me vulnerable to the dark side of affection: attachment without self-control. That, of course, was not good. I needed to still my raging emotional life before I subjected others to my misguided affections.

Several years ago in ministry, I came face to face with another potentially dangerous situation. A young woman came to me with a deep need to be released from alcoholism. We spent several sessions together, which resulted in both the alleviating of her drinking problem and her becoming a Christian.

During that same period, however, my wife and I were struggling through the stress-filled early weeks of having a new baby. We were getting very little sleep and were not as close as we should have been. One afternoon while preparing mentally for a session with the woman with the alcohol problem, I found myself floating into a sensuous daydream-involving her. I realized what was happening and invited a deaconess to join us for that session, which became the last.

I have no idea how close I was to the emotional precipice of infidelity, and I don’t want to know. I do know, however, that I was in no condition to show or receive any affection in relation to that counselee.

When the person pulls away. We’ve all seen the romance movies where the hero pulls the petulant damsel into his arms. She fights him at first but eventually succumbs to his charm, melting into his embrace.

A forced churchly affection, however, will never turn warm someone who doesn’t want it. At times, some people simply don’t want affection of any kind. It comes across as an unwanted commitment to an equally unwanted emotion. They need the security of distance. We’ve all known occasions when an overly familiar touch on the shoulder sends a shock wave of recoil.

When I sense a growing gap between myself and someone in the body, my immediate response is to attempt to bridge that gap with affection. I tried it last year, and I learned my lesson.

The elders had rebuked an older couple for an impropriety. During a particularly warm Communion service some weeks later, I sought to embrace them both during our time of greeting one another, but they decidedly pulled away from me. The wife summed up their feeling: “Pastor, we are no longer that close to you. Hugging us will not solve the problem.”

I realized I was using affection as a quick-fix substitute for the gradual rebuilding of a relationship. The one is not interchangeable with the other.

When it means nothing. A recent article in a well-known women’s publication bore the auspicious title, “Have You Hugged Your Dry Cleaner Today?” At various times in the secular world as well as in Christian circles, affection becomes the latest fad. The indiscriminate hugging of a dry cleaner points out that affection can be emptied of meaning through random and meaningless gestures.

But are there holy hugs that can be dispensed with integrity and surety of purpose? In the face of many emotional needs, let us not shrug off completely the ministry of touch.

A Time to Embrace

How do we know when to express affection in appropriate ways? Some situations lend themselves to brotherly shows of affection. Here are situations in which I’m willing to step out on a limb.

In the face of loss. I often think of the story I heard about a young boy and an old man. A family of three moved into a two-bedroom house. The boy, 5 years old, loved to play outside because his new house was too small. Across the lane lived an old man and woman whom he loved to visit.

The old man and the boy talked and played together every day. One day, however, the old woman died. The old man would not be consoled, and his neighbors left him alone with his grief. The boy’s mother repeatedly warned him to stay away from the old man and under no circ*mstances to bother him.

However, children have insatiable curiosities, and the boy eventually crossed the lane to talk to his elderly friend. When the mother looked out the window, she saw the old man weeping uncontrollably. She urgently called her son home. As he came in the door, she scolded him. “What did you say to the old man to make him so sad?”

The boy lowered his head. “I didn’t say nothin’,” he stated. “I just climbed on his lap and helped him cry.”

I cannot hear that story without thinking of my friend Joe. Although he is a well-respected member of our church, at times he can be an enigma, for he is sometimes caustic, sometimes comical. He loves the Lord Jesus, and he loved his wife, Edie.

She died one night after a lengthy illness, and I fought with myself over what I should say to Joe. I hate sounding insincere with words of comfort, especially to a good man like Joe. The moment I came into the room, however, his posture helped me know what to do. He sat slumped in his chair and looked ten years older and six inches shorter than he was.

I walked over, helped him up, and embraced him for twenty minutes. He cried and then talked till late evening. It’s been over a year now, and every time we greet it’s with a warm embrace.

When someone is hurting, affection is much more than a warm fuzzy or a mild turn-on. Intimacy is the bonding of comfort, the balm of closeness, the first and greatest expression of understanding. There are very few who will misunderstand its intentions, and fewer still who will misappropriate its vulnerability.

Remember when all cameras were turned to a small-town school in 1986? The space shuttle had exploded, and a beloved teacher was dead. How would the school kids react? The television cameras revealed a disheveled group of kids holding one another, embracing each other’s hurt. In the face of loss, genuine affection is definitely needed.

Yet even the embrace of comfort is not automatic. God’s people need reassurance that intimacy is not an enemy. Unless people have been trained to do so, most will not react to sorrow with physical closeness. More likely, they will speak some awkward, ill-chosen words. As a pastor, I take responsibility for bridging the affection gap.

I recall a delicate situation where affection was helpful. The man of the house had been killed in a plane crash. Since there had been very poor communication in the house before his death, the family had very little they could say to one another. In the middle of a visit to their house, I decided to instruct them about affection.

I voiced their inner anxieties about putting their grief into words, and I suggested they skip the words and enter into the intimacy that heals. I started it all by raising the oldest son to his feet and hugging him. Almost immediately they began to embrace one another and share their mutual hurt.

I left at that point, but I heard later that the affection had opened the floodgate of speech. Today, the family is closer than ever.

In the face of discouragement. Our denomination requires that each candidate for pastoral ministry complete a stint as a parish intern. I arrived on the scene of my internship with excitement and plans. This would be where I would cut my pastoral wisdom teeth! However, my enthusiasm was no match for my inexperience. I had to deal with a string of ideas that never developed. That’s when God brought into my life a strange type of affection meted out by a beautiful human being.

His name is Bob. God gave me healthy injections of Bob just when I felt my spiritual reserves reaching empty. Bob would saunter over in my direction after a worship service and place his firm arm around my shoulder. Then he would grab someone and say to him, “Tell me something nice about my friend Mike.” As forty other people listened, I had something nice said about me. All the time, the ever-present arm of Bob lingered. I couldn’t have survived without those times of encouragement.

It’s tough to define discouragement accurately. A slumped shoulder, a shattered voice, or a war-worn smile may be the only clues of a friend’s discouragement. But we pastors know that discouragement can be a killer, draining the last vestiges of personal goals and dreams. Warm, bear-hug affection can cut through discouragement faster than anything else.

We have an exercise in prayer meeting that we call “the filling station.” If someone is discouraged, we invite him or her to stand in our circle. Then we all lay hands on that person and begin to pray in turn. We thank God for this person, for the person’s Christian life and testimony, for past, present, and future ministries. The prayers ask God to fill the person with encouragement, but one of the keys to the exercise is God’s working through the laying on of hands.

Jesus loved to touch those who labored under discouragement. Touch became the signature of his healing ministry. A woman whose body had been tormented twelve years with hemorrhaging reached out to touch her Healer. As he asked who had touched him, the woman fell at his feet in fear that she had violated some law.

People in churches today also hesitate to touch lest they break some law about showing their affection. I picture Jesus raising the woman to her feet and holding her hand gently as he speaks a word of comfort: “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”

Caroline, a woman I know, has suffered for years from kidney disease. She had undergone months of preparation for dialysis, and her kidneys were giving her immense pain. Yet insensitive people had chastised her for lack of faith. Just months after dialysis began, she was rushed to a nearby hospital for a kidney transplant. Her heart was full of hope and praise. The kidney was rejected by her body, however, and had to be removed.

I came to her bedside not knowing what to say. She lay there despondent and worn out. All my words of comfort sounded hollow. I asked if I could hold her hand. She took both my hands in hers and held on tight. Then I began to sing songs of worship to God.

I was singing on behalf of her wounded spirit. For two hours I sang like that. My hands were holding hers, my spirit responding to the low condition of her spirit. As I left, her eyes caught mine. “God touched me through your hands,” she quietly told me.

In the face of rejection. I read a newspaper advertisem*nt that totally caught me off guard. They were advertising for people who could work as deodorant testers. Every morning the testers would be expected to put on a prescribed amount of deodorant, work up a sweat during a one-hour workout, and then report to the laboratory. A paid “sniffer” would bury his nose in their underarms to see if they-and the deodorant-passed the test.

I could never be a tester. I’m sure the sniffer would flunk me, and I couldn’t handle the rejection.

The pews are populated with burdened believers. Many Christians feel so frustrated and inadequate because of past sin, failure, and doubt. And to finish them off, there are always plenty of “spiritual sniffers” to let them know when they aren’t making the grade. Therefore, to avoid rejection, people retreat into a world of don’t-touch-me-because-it-hurts-too-much. They are afraid to be touched, and they won’t touch.

A good way to bring people out of this cocoon of rejection is to show them through affection the warmth of unconditional acceptance. God’s people, however, must be subtle and sincere with this kind of warmth. Few things are more distasteful than a Christian who goes around handing out affection insincerely. People instinctively know when they’re victims of a spiritual cheerleader.

Ted had two qualities that made him as popular as fungus. In conversations, he did all the talking. But people could have accepted that quality if the other weren’t so obvious. Ted weighed 360 pounds. He had tried every diet and was on the mailing list of every weight-loss clinic in the Western Hemisphere. Even an amateur psychologist could see that Ted was carrying around a ton of rejection, which he tried to hide with food and words.

I tried to show affection to Ted, but he wasn’t easy to get close to (no pun intended). He kept pushing me away.

One day he phoned me and he was frantic. I rushed over to his house to find him in a pool of water. His pipes were leaking, and he knew nothing about plumbing. He couldn’t afford a plumber. And to top it off, he was too big to get under the sink himself.

I’m no plumber’s apprentice, either. But I asked the Holy Spirit for some Noah-like advice and then rolled up my sleeves. I got the water turned off and the tap disconnected. Ted and I drove with the cracked faucet to a local plumbing supplies store, and we returned with a new faucet, which I paid for. A mere four hours later I had it installed, like a true professional.

At the end of this ordeal, I put my arm almost around Ted’s shoulders and said I was glad to be of some assistance. At that, Ted began to cry like a baby. He said, “No one has ever cared enough to put an arm around me.” We spent the next two hours in talking and healing, crying and hugging. That day, Ted gave his life over to the control of Jesus Christ.

When I saw Ted a month later, he had lost sixty pounds. My embraces became increasingly more effective as they covered more territory.

Perhaps one reason there are so many untouchables around us is that they’ve rarely been touched by an accepting hand. My spiritual plumbing exercise opened a door to Ted’s heart, which could then accept my heartfelt emotions. I’ve learned I must build a foundation of acceptance first, and then I can erect a structure of affection.

Affection Ambivalence

My closest friend shuffled nervously as we waited in the airport to say good-by. As college freshmen unsure of whether we would return to school the next year, we sensed this could be our final time together. Blaine was leaving for his home, and I would head home in a car later. The terminal was teeming with people, which made our final moments more hazardous. To hug or not to hug?-we both felt the awkwardness of the situation.

“Why do guys find it so hard to show friendship with a hug?” Blaine asked. I didn’t have an answer. All I could think of was the possibility of a thousand eyes focused on us. But as I looked around, I saw many people embracing as a token of a fond farewell. That emboldened us to do the same. We exchanged bear hugs!

Affection reacts to genuine love the same way forgiveness reacts to confession: it’s the suitable reaction. Still, I am cautious, wary of those times when I might be out of line with a warm embrace. But through my friends who have cared enough to hold me close, I am beginning to feel release from the bondage of remaining distant. In the face of my own insecurities, I’m learning to sort out the time to embrace from the time to refrain.

Michael E. Phillips is pastor of Lake Windermere Alliance Church, Invermere, British Columbia.

Leadership Winter 1988 p. 108-112

Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.