I was moved by an article I read : “The Rise and Fall of Carl Lentz, the Celebrity Pastor of Hillsong Church”
A New York Times article b
It’s an interesting title with an interesting picture but not an interesting article in the sense that historically we’ve heard this before. Of course no one wants a title like that, but c’mon, if your going to hit bottom wouldn’t it be nice if it came with a New York Times sensationally dramatic title rather than the slight skid row wanna be celeb-like stench a lot of us crawl in with? Ok.. even thats a little too dramatic.
But most of our bottoms are not the stuff of big news stories. Although bits and pieces or our binge-romps probably would be, especially if you go to enough meetings to hear the variety of escapades addicts of all varieties (sex, drugs, gambling, food, etc) engage in, but for the most part the overall arching themes are just pain-full of broken:
– dreams
– families
– friendships
– lost hopes,
– and fractured bodies, some times ours and some times other peoples.
Just common run-of-the-mill drunks, drug addicts, sex addicts, gambling addicts, food addicts, alanonics, mentalholics, etc. tiny caustic shooting starts burning and fizzling their ways through their lives.
So when I read through this story at first I felt hah! See another mega church star bites the dust! Then I read it with a little more compassion. Then I wondered about the women who got involved with him – didn’t they know he was married? was a pastor if not their pastor? Why aren’t we talking about their fall as well? A lot of times as dysfunction oozes out of us it gets smeared onto other people
So yeah a bunch of things went through my head. Then I thought of AA and how they have made an effort to try and head these kinds of things off at the pass. In 12 Step programs they have a thing they talk about “lest problems of money, property and prestige….”
It comes out of the Sixth tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous:
Tradition Six — “An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.”
But if you venture through their 12 Steps and 12 Traditions as well as their Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous you will find the issues of “money, property” and especially “prestige” discussed at the individual level (a lot) through the steps as much as through the “organization/meeting level through the Traditions. Huge red flag warning signs that could lead to individual as well as the collective destruction.
Most 12 step members are very much aware of the myriad of ways their “disease” tries to rear its ugly destructive head and pull them back into “the life”.
This is not to say that they have achieved perfection. No there are as many stories of destructive behaviors within AA or most of the 12 step programs to fill the Times with fodder for years to come.
But I would venture to say that they have done a unique thing in that they have come to an understanding that 1. AA or whatever program, has saved and is saving their lives and that 2. keeping the Program going is important to their own life (as stated in their 1st Tradition “Our common welfare comes first, personal recovery depends upon (fill in program here) unity.” The members comes to the understanding that not conforming – adhering to spiritual principles, trying to do this alone would eventually lead to death. This they understand through the power of their own stories. This is where I would venture to say that God has taken a selfish thing and made it into a blessing.
So the members – not the “leadership” – because there is no leadership in the traditional sense – which would mean not just Mr. lenz but the people he engaged in “affairs” with are all tasked with measuring their choices against their own pasts as well as the program traditions themselves. – If I do this and it becomes public could it scare away someone who is sick and suffering from getting the help they need that was so freely offered to me? Will this send me back out to a bottle, a needle, a pill powder, potion or bad notion? Is this a step up to heaven or down to hell?
Like I sad earlier we don’t do this perfectly. We slip and fall and stumble like everyone else. But we do do this: More of us than not make those choices – sacrifice that moment of seeming “pleasure”, double check with sponsors whether this is God or my naughty bits talking and say just for today I wont engage in that behavior, I won’t put that person through that, I wont risk my family, my reputation, my friendships or putting this fellowship at risk.
So we offer a prayer for him and those like him. For their friends and families caught in the whirlwind of his stuff as well as their own stuff. For congregation members and those who look up to various authorities struggling with what to do now. And for the people on the fringes in the grips of their diseases who are always looking for an excuse not to recover. That they may come to know that there is hope. There is recovery.
And may they meet someone who can walk them through this mind-field into that light of recovery. Amen
“For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” Galatians 5:13