Confessions

Christian psychologist Henry Cloud asks an important question about openly acknowledging personal problems in our churches.

“In the church it is unacceptable to have problems: that is called being sinful. In an AA group it is unacceptable to be perfect: that is called denial. Which stance is more biblical?”

I met with a pastor this week who confessed to his congregation an ongoing and serious struggle with pornography and then resigned from his position. I imagine it took quite a lot of courage to do so. He wondered if confessing his sin would be equivalent to ministerial suicide. He wondered if he would be blacklisted from ever serving as a pastor again. He wondered about the kind of job he would be able to find and how he would support his family financially. He wondered what people would think. He wondered about the effects on his family. And yet, he believed that God was directing him to resign. So despite his fears, he was true to the conviction and guidance of the Holy Spirit and resigned.

I wish more church leaders were as transparent. I’m obviously not suggesting that pastors, deacons, Sunday School teachers and other leaders should sin more, just that they demonstrate more brokenness and confession for the sins they are already committing. (And, by the way, as a teacher of a Sunday School class, I include myself in this category.) As it is, very few Christians today fully know the power of confession and it may be due, in part, to our lack of models who demonstrate the need for and power of confession.

Mark McMinn, another Christian psychologist, describes the relationship between spirituality and confession this way:

“Spirituality often becomes a source of secret pride. When churches are filled with people nursing spiritual pride, the blessings of community are overshadowed by ugly competition. Rather than being a place where Christians confess to one another, the church sometimes becomes a place where we compete with one another, trying to impress others with our spiritual maturity. Confession is difficult in this context because to confess is to shatter our fantasized persona of perfection.”

I wish we were able to be more transparent with each other in our churches. I wish we weren’t plagued by spiritual competition and pride. I wish there were more pastors like this one who was sensitive to the conviction of his sin by the Holy Spirit and taught his congregation about confession and repentance by his own example. I wish I were more like that.