Youth pastors gone wild

Another former youth pastor in town charged with child seduction. What is going on!?

This time it’s a sexually mature foster daughter instead of a a sexually mature step-daughter – i.e., not “pedophilia” strictly speaking. I don’t mean to trivialize it by that “excuse” or by my post title. The “excuse” means simply to say that it’s something any “red-blooded man” could fall into with the wrong conjunction of circumstances.

But we’re not entirely the victim of circumstances. We have some control over them. One common thread here is a man with a biologically unrelated, sexually mature girl-woman under his roof. Divorce and remarriage had a role in the stepdaughter case. Voluntary foster parenthood had a role in the other.

But here’s another hypothesis (suggested by my wife): maybe there’s something wrong with the model of “youth pastoring” that goads a man to immerse himself in pop culture (e.g., MTV, R-rated movies) for the sake of “relevance” — or that gives him cover for indulging in such things as guilty pleasures that are pleasures from “Day 1.”

C.S. Lewis noted that if your will and your imagination do battle long enough, your imagination will eventually win. Its strength and stamina are superior.

But our imaginations don’t just happen, either.

Keep that crap out of your head, dude. Don’t “read Playboy for the articles” (wink, wink) or watch MTV to get edgy sermon illustrations. I’m talking to you, Mr. Evangelical — you who fancy yourself “conservative” and built on a “firm foundation,” but who in fact chases after cultural fads like a madman.

But if not edgy “relevance” in pastoring, then what? It’s no secret where I think the fullness of the Christian faith is to be found. It’s in a Church whose critics typically offer inanities like “they’re stagnant — haven’t changed in a thousand years.”

Darn right. “All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.” (Lewis again, bless him.)