The Continuing Problem with Restoring Pastors

Jonathan Brink, on his blog, makes some terrific points. See what you think:

I still love Ted Haggard.

Out of Ur recently posted the announcement that Ted Haggard is starting a church. And some people are not happy about it. It seems we’re still wrestling with the same problem. We don’t really know how to restore our leaders. If Haggard has done one thing it has been to expose the fallacy of our “restoration” process for fallen leaders.

It’s interesting to listen to those sit in positions of power and question what Ted is doing, even calling it stupid. But what if this is really exposing the tension we have with grace. If the church (and I know I’m generalizing) has done one thing it is ignore the reality of grace. It’s hard. We don’t like it. We hold onto the insane notion that pastors are super people. And it ends up killing them. When they fall, it requires years to build them back up. But what if the reality is that what takes years to build back up is not the pastor, but our willingness to trust?

So I love Ted Haggard because he’s forcing us to wrestle with our own sense of grace.

How do you feel?

{AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)

While I wish he had ended his post by asking us what we "think" instead of how we "feel" (that's a HUGE pet peeve of mine), I must say that I think Jonathan is dead on. Most of the time, the church sucks at grace. Most of us are better Pharisees than the Pharisees ever were.