letter from America
The trouble with writing an article about scandals is that it is essentially impossible to be specific without risking being scurrilous.
I’m sure there’s a place for the freedom of the media to write exposés. But as a pastor, not a journalist, my responsibilities differ. In any case, it’s a dangerous business writing about someone else’s scandals.
Any time I have had inside knowledge of a matter that has garnered wide public attention, I have been surprised by the far distance between the reporting of the facts and a true picture of the facts that would be provided by all the context, usually invisible to those on the outside.
So I don’t want to give any more click bait, or trouble, to anyone who is reading this who may be involved, or have been involved, in any of the many church/Christian leader/evangelical scandals by listing them. I expect most readers of en would have a file in their mind of such things that they can call to attention if need be. There have been some more recently that have surprised me, hence this column.
In that regard, I was drawn again to read parts of S. Pearce Carey’s well-known biography of the great William Carey. What I didn’t know, or had forgotten, was that Carey’s famous ‘deathless sermon’ that launched the Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Heathen – which later became the Baptist Missionary Society – was at least partly contextualised by (then) well-known scandals among God’s people. Carey employed the historic context of his text from Isaiah 54, to resonate with the trauma of God’s people in his own day, not to wag fingers at the accused or broken, but to call all to repent of their heartlessness with regard to the lost, and short-sightedness in terms of the power of God and His gospel. Carey’s message was, according to S. Pearce Carey, ‘that the divine way out from failure and disgrace was a wider vision and a bolder programme.’
The same is true today. The way forward is not to wallow in the failures. It is to move forward with gospel aggressiveness, taking the gospel to our needy Jerusalem, Judea, and the ends of the earth, expecting God to do great things,.
So, the next scandal you read about, do this: tell someone about Jesus, and do all you can to motivate others to do the same.
