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Rich

I made another terrible mistake.

I am very sorry for the Goldens (including Brian) and for DeeDee’s family. But, ugh, does that word make me sick! A mistake is dropping your soup spoon off the dinner table. Killing your wife is not a mistake.

It’s bad enough when secular society classifies wrong as a “mistake”, but when the Church does it? Jesus didn’t die for my mistakes.

To add to some of what has been written and to possibly even shed some light.

I am a fellow A/G youth pastor here in Georgia. I knew Brian and am deeply shocked by the recent events in Brian’s life. I spent several weeks with Brian at camp, and did not know him well, but I knew him and his son. (We meet two years ago at summer camp.)

What Brian did, there is no excuse for!! NONE!!! So what I will continue to write I do not want to be thought of as trying to make excuses for him, or for any other minister.

Satan will attack us in any way possible. He will use our weaknesses and some times even our passion to help people. What do I mean: if Satan can not reach us through sin he will us our passion for the lost to crowd into our family time and even God time. we’ll become so busy we even run the chance of forgetting who we’re even doing this for. We’ll lose track of our relationship with God, we’ll quit spending quality time with HIM, and then we lose sight of HIM. Before you know it, like Samson, the spirit has left us and we haven’t even noticed. This then effects our family time at home.

How come at church no one noticed? Well we’ve done such a good “Job” that all the people see is the JOB. they see people coming to church because of what we’re doing and not because of Jesus. But our people in church today are to busy looking at numbers, not at souls. We are all guilty of it. Its not about the Job though its about the souls.

How can we change this growing trend of unrighteousness amongst the body of Christ? I can in no way tell you what was going through Brian’s mind over the last few years–I can tell you what goes through mine though. If I have something I am struggling with there are very few I can go to to seek help or prayer. It seems to be part of the hazards of my calling. If I admit to a fellow church member a weakness, I am all of a sudden not “fit” to do my job, becouse I’m expected to live a perfect Holy life. Church people are not very forgiving it seems. Pastors are not allowed to make mistakes.

But we are humans, we are sinners, we are in need sometimes for just as much prayer as the average church-goer. Satan attackes us just as hard as he does anyone else. But when we are hurting, who can we go to?

I fortunately have a network of Godly men I can go to without fear of judgement. Men that can and will lift me up if need be, and I in return to them. I have an outlet of prayer warriors. A lot of ministers do not have this. They feel isolated and alone.

When they get so involved in others they forget about their families, often not noticing until it is too late. of course, this causes problems at home, and because they’re held on a pedestal they don’t seek help for fear of losing their family income. And so the problem grows. Their home life is now a wreck, so they begin seeking satisfaction in other areas, and you have a snowball effect. Before they know it their life is completely out of control and “BANG,” “EXPLOSION,” their life as they knew it has come crashing down–and no one noticed till it was too late.

How can we change this? “If my people would humble themselves and seek my face…” Our congregations need to seek God not man, we need to lift our Pastors up and their families up. We need to be armour bearers to them instead of throwing spears at them. We need to put them on a pedestal of Prayer, not a pedestal of perfection. We need to help them find other Godly men that can pour into them just as they pour into the congregation.

What happen to Brian is a tragedy of the highest degree. We need to, as pastors, start asking each other the hard questions. We need to start “prying into” each others personal lives. We all, as believers, need to start doing this with each other–it is our duty as believers and fellow followers of Christ!