George Bush agrees, nepotism is the worst thing he has ever seen.

Hillary Clinton thinks so too.

Nah, I mean, she only has a degree from Annenberg… I can’t imagine why she’d be qualified to be a documentary filmmaker, obviously they just gave her the go ahead to get the ol’ Pastor in a partisan move… Her’ 2000 documentary on GWB’s campaign was probably just setting this up. Gosh Ronnie Schreiber, you’re so smart!

My theory about pastors and priests who get caught in same-sex scandals is that their homosexual orientation is the actual reason they went into the ministry in the first place. They felt their orientation was a sin and that they needed to be super-godly to overcome it. How better to put aside temptation than to lead a life fully devoted to God? And for Catholic priests, how better to avoid dealing with sexual impulses than to embrace celibacy–never have sex, never have a problem with sex. Except the energy it takes to put up a false front takes away the energy needed to resist sexual temptation, and next thing you know you’re in the news for being a scandal.

Anyway, I would agree with Newton that anyone going into the pastorate should have a plan B. As myth buster’s comment indicates, the expectations of your parishioners will be completely unrealistic, and you’ll never live up to them. Even if you’re just a basic, vanilla heterosexual living faithfully with your spouse you may end up on the street for not being dynamic enough, not bringing the crowds in, not connecting with the youth, or just becoming boring to the people in the pews.

Yes, I’m a devout Christian, but after nearly half a century, I’ve seen that members and clergy all bring their brokenness along with them into the church. That wouldn’t be so bad, in fact it’s what the church should be about, but we seem to have this drive that we have keep pretending everything’s wonderful because we’re Christians, until we just can’t keep up the pretense anymore and the performance falls apart. Then the world looks at us and says, “What hypocrites.”

A backup plan?!?

Yes. I have met pastors in my lifetime who have been, generally, totally dedicated to their ministries and churches, and I totally commend that. But I know at least of two who earned secular degrees. The pastor at my last church (I moved to a different location, so we have to look for a new church) has a bachelors in Engineering, but he was Youth Pastor for years before he became the full-time pastor of the congregation. No, nothing wrong has happened to him. Hope nothing bad happens to him or his family. But at least he has something to fall back on if something happens.

There was also another pastor that I knew when I was a teenager. He had arrived to my church (a different one) after it had endured a couple of years without one, after a nasty congregation split-up. He was young, married with one toddler son, very interested in our youth group, and a great guy to get along with. He also had earned a master’s from Bob Jones University, after having earned a bachelors in Business Admin. elsewhere. He was with us for only two and a half years. What happened?

The “official story” was that he had a falling out with the elders of the congregation. At least, that’s what I heard over the course of several years, even from my grandmother. Imagine my shock when I found out, years later, that the true reason for leaving our church was that he had a sexual affair with the (young) wife of one of our deacons… the same deacon who had befriended my now husband when he was yet single and “unsaved”! Surprisingly, that couple never divorced: I guess he forgave her, then had yet another child, and left the area for a different post in Japan. (The deacon was an Army officer)

And believe it or not, neither did the pastor and his wife. The last thing I heard of him was that he is now a respected banker. At least, he had something to fall back on when things went sour pursuing the ministry.

Ted Haggart, however, never thought that his life could go terribly wrong. That was his biggest mistake. Nowadays, without a career to fall back on, he’s as errant as a pilgrim, with his wife as his only source of solace. He can’t even get a job at a supermarket without being background-checked and then tossed out like a rotten cabbage. I believe he knew he had some serious demons to deal with before he ever entered the ministry, but he chose not to deal with them before he was deeply into church matters. His failure was so spectacular that those people he thought would support him and help him during his recovery have abandoned him. If he had a secular degree to fall back on, he would have done a lot more for himself and his family, and perhaps helped him gain some forgotten self-respect, not to mention a better and cleaner relationship with God.

I have heard over the years that those involved in the ministry should “live off the ministry”. But the reality is that not everyone involved as ministers or pastors have that one job exclusively. Some have other jobs apart from it, some of them full-time and even influential. Even the Apostle Paul worked as a tent-maker while preaching around the Mediterranean.

Yes, if you feel that you should go into the ministry full-time, by all means go ahead. God will bless you. But consider the “minor” to your “major” also. God will not mind you doing that. In fact, He will probably want you to do that anyway, since not everyone who enters into the ministry lasts a lifetime in it. And yes, the higher you fly, the farther you fall, if you fall into the sin of pride.

(Full disclosure: I never heard of Haggard before that scandal of his. Never heard anything he preached or said. He may have been influential at some time in the past, but I don’t follow men, not even big-time pastors or preachers. I rather follow God instead.)

That she DIDN’T ask the hard questions, and DIDN’T try to bore her way into the core of the man’s psyche is a credit to her and NOT a negative.

Sure…we may have all WISHED she would have…for then we could either condemn the man as being so “not like us” and/or be so revolted as to see Haggard as the disgraced pervert we knew he was all along…that it would satisfy our inner sanctimonious nerve to finally see it in black and white.

But, alas…life is not so simple, and neither are human beings.

We ALL struggle with some sort of inner demons, things we wished we didn’t do or things that control our actions or inaction. Addictions or “diseases”, call it what you want…it’s only when it’s revealed in a man who was supposed to be “above all that” that we are shocked and revolted.

But we shouldn’t be all that surprised. There’s a part of a Ted Haggard in all of us…we just aren’t up there preaching and railing about it. So in that sense, yes, Haggard IS a bigger failure…but then…

A wiser man than I said it best:

“Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”