Fallen Pastor: The Book, Part 3 - The Men Who Fall

Before “Fallen Pas­tor: Find­ing Restora­tion in a Bro­ken World” releases, I’m try­ing to give my blog read­ers some extra insight to what went into the writ­ing process and the expe­ri­ence behind it.

One of the sin­gu­lar joys I had was inter­view­ing the men for the book. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started look­ing for fallen pas­tors to share their story. It’s a tough thing to do. We’re talk­ing about one of the most dev­as­tat­ing chap­ters of their lives. A time when they made a con­scious deci­sion to sin which in turn led to a set of con­se­quences that caused pain to their fam­ily, their church and many in their family.

I knew how hard it was because I had to write my own story and lay it out there for all to read. I decided to keep everyone’s story, name and loca­tion anony­mous. I inter­viewed about 15 men and we only used 11 of the stories.

One of the state­ments fallen pas­tors hear after they sin is, “How could you do this? What kind of man does this?”

I can tell you the answer to that. Each of the men I talked to was at least three years out of their expe­ri­ence. Some were as many as 15 or 20. All of them took full respon­si­bil­ity for what they had done. Each had been severely hum­bled by the expe­ri­ence and all had expe­ri­enced God’s restora­tive grace.

It’s easy to look down on fallen pas­tors in soci­ety. It makes for great head­lines. They are the stal­warts of moral­ity. They pro­claim the mes­sage of God each week. But when they stop walk­ing the walk and get caught between the sheets with some­one other than their wife, it’s very easy to judge them.

Not many peo­ple reach out to them. Most peo­ple who once loved them or looked up to them turn on them. They feel shame, hope­less­ness and some­times anger. There are no excuses for them, they sinned.

When I lis­tened to each of these men, I learned from them. We shared a com­mon bond and a com­mon expe­ri­ence. They were hum­ble, kind and despite the fact that they hardly knew me, they opened up imme­di­ately. They shared out of the hope that their story would keep some­one from doing the same thing. They shared out of the joy know­ing that God had given them grace after their fall, despite their sin.

After the inter­views, pat­terns emerged. These men sinned out of their own deci­sions. But their sins did not occur in a vac­uum either. There were exter­nal pres­sures, inter­nal pres­sures, mar­i­tal issues, min­istry prob­lems, and a lack of sup­port in each case. I was astounded at how dif­fer­ent each man was, how sep­a­rated they were by dis­tance, but how sim­i­lar each story was.

That’s what the book seeks to do. Link together each of these sto­ries to build a com­mon frame­work, to under­stand the bro­ken cul­ture in which we live and attempt to mend it.

I’m in admi­ra­tion to each of these men for being so open and I owe them much.

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Fallen Pas­tor: Find­ing Restora­tion in a Bro­ken World is avail­able for pre­order at Civ­i­tas Press. It will be avail­able soon at Ama​zon​.com and will also be avail­able for the Kindle.