Christian leaders + sex, money or power

I heard the news today about Mike Guglielmucci (a worship leader at a church in Melbourne, Australia), that he’s been covering up for the last however-long his addiction to pornography. The way he’s been doing this is by telling everyone that he had cancer, to the point that he would do ‘worship sets’ with tubes sticking out of his nose and so on to add to the illusion of this sickness.

I can’t help but link this to the recent discovery of Todd Bentley’s affair and come to a (fairly easy) conclusion. If you are a Christian, you are going to come under trial. As a leader, this will most often come in the form of sex, money, or power. These two examples seem to show parts of all three, it would appear.

Should these men have abused their positions in the way they did? Absolutely not. Does it change who God is? Absolutely not! Regardless of what leaders are doing, the biblical truth that everyone commits sins is still true – it is when people allow their eyes to be fixed on the wrong person (e.g. not Jesus) that problems arise.

Are you a Christian leader and reading this? Good. These are the three steps to doing that well:

1. Make sure that you are actively donning the full armour of God at the beginning of, and throughout, every single day to enable God to protect you from the enemy, his servants, their works and effects.

2. Make sure that your focus is only on Jesus, so that you’re doing a good job.

3. Make sure that the focus you are giving to your flock is only Jesus, and not you! We are all fallible, unlike Jesus, who is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Todd Bentley’s divorce

So the actual fact that started the chain of events leading to this blog coming into existence was this: Todd Bentley, he of Lakeland revival fame, is separating from his wife.

I have read two conflicting responses to this news, from John Piper, and from Mark Stibbe – it is difficult to know what the ‘right’ thing to think about this whole episode is.

A couple of years ago I was at an event in which Todd Bentley was speaking; I left feeling uncomfortable, mainly due to the fact that the name of Jesus was only mentioned when used as a ‘magic word’ (e.g. ‘be healed in the name of Jesus’).

From what I have seen of the Lakeland ‘revival’ I have felt more encouraged and challenged in my faith, rather than uncomfortable; what therefore should be made of his divorce?

Would God use divorce as punishment if Todd had been sinning in the way he acted in Lakeland? I think not; divorce is not God’s good idea for when things go wrong, reconciliation is!

Our response therefore should be threefold:

• to pray for Todd and his wife, that they be reconciled
• to focus on our own marriages and recognise that even in great ministry success there is something more important – marriage most certainly is God’s good idea!
• to not look at a man but to look at God – how many may lose faith after putting their trust in Todd, rather than the ever-faithful God?

One final warning would be to always be surrounded by a team – even Jesus formed a team of twelve around him, and he could have coped with anything on his own. Putting too much pressure on one person will have a chain reaction.