It's been a rough few weeks in the British church. Multiple different leaders have become embroiled in different types of scandals and investigations regarding their conduct. Inevitably this has been painful to watch, even for those not directly involved. If the leader involved or their wider ministry was in any way part of your journey of faith in the past, such incidents lead to a disturbing kind of reflection. Was what I thought from God what it appeared to be? What price was being paid behind the scenes? What now?
Every leader - indeed every person - is broken and imperfect. We're all also capable of great goodness; we're all jars of clay in whom God can and does choose to place His treasure and use in His work in the world. Brokenness doesn't preclude genuine ministry; nor does the latter excuse or justify the former.
Reading some of the first-hand accounts of people who had suffered under one of the leaders now under investigation was a sobering process. I recognised some of the patterns; I'd seen it in other leaders, this sense of coercive control, manipulation and abuse of power. It's rarely, if ever, illegal - but it's no less dangerous and damaging for that. It's also sobering in that reading such bald descriptions casts an uncomfortable light on my own leadership - looking back through these lenses, the times when I misused power or authority, or was tempted to control and manipulate become all too obvious. It would be easy to distract myself by throwing stones, but the real truths I need to absorb here may be more personal than I care to admit.
There's a difference, of course, between incidents and a pattern. We all drift into unhealthy, damaging behaviours at times. We all hurt people. The trick is in being aware enough to allow yourself not to fall into repeated patterns that become so familiar to us that we no longer see them - that they become so much part of us that we cannot imagine our lives without them. It's also important to recognise that this manipulation and misuse of power can flow both ways - leaders are just as prone to experience it being done to them as they are to perpetrate it themselves. Churches are organisations with necessarily blurred edges and at times hazy rules; in such half-spaces, much influence can be wrought and damage done. A pastor rarely has the capacity to do what would be rightfully done if everyone involved was an employee answerable to their manager; such truth is often the cause of both much thankfulness but also much stress and pain in the life of the pastor.
God's insistence on damaged vessels is a comfort and frustration. Does He not realise how much damage the damaged can do? Would He not be better off finding a better, safer solution? Does He not see that His reputation is on the line here?
If there are definitive answers to this then they haven't yet been articulated in 2,000 years of church history. God's stubborn, persistent, sticking to the plan in all that time hasn't yet yielded a solution that works in this regard. So we're back to the rhyming pattern of dependence on God's work in and through each other; powerfully broken, imperfectly revelatory as it may be. Together with each other and Him we walk the line of graceful forgiveness and calling to account that such a community demands, fearfully willing to cast the same light on ourselves that shines so uncomfortably on the damaging patterns of those walking with us. We call others to account as we submit ourselves to the same, dependent on grace for both forgiveness and healing, rod and staff, grace and discipline.
On this hangs everything: brokenness is everywhere, and grace abounds.