Tullian Tchividjian and Chris Bird: Stop Condemning Abusive Pastors

Over the past five years, we have seen more Christian leaders (including ourselves) exposed for their sin and deposed from their positions than at any other time in recent history. Allegations (and in some cases, admissions) of adultery, addiction, and various forms of abuse have rocked worlds, shattered lives, broken hearts, ended marriages, and split churches. Each case is distinct, but all of them are tragic, scandalous, and destructive in one way, shape, or form.

Note the inclusion of both adultery and abuse in the same category. This is not accidental. In the evangelical world, adultery, rape, and sexual abuse are wrong for largely for the same reason—they all involve sexual contact outside of marriage. But these things are not all the same. We don’t put people in jail for cheating on their spouses.

Pastors who have extramarital affairs with other adults may be engaging in an abuse of power—for example, with a parishioner or with someone who comes to them for counseling. Other abuses, such as rape or child sexual abuse, tend to be viewed as more serious offenses. Yet Tchividjian and Bird group all of these things together—any kind of abuse or offense a pastor can commit—as though such distinctions are unimportant.

We’ll get to some of their reasoning behind this later. First, though, there are other things to be addressed.

Obviously we can’t speak to the incidents themselves (except for our own, which we have done elsewhere), nor would we want to. We don’t have all the facts. And we definitely don’t believe everything we read online (and neither should you). In some severe cases, illegal offenses such as sexual, physical, or financial crimes have taken place. In those criminal situations, it is up to the state to prosecute and punish. But what we do know is that these things happen inside a complex framework of falleness that only God can fully know and understand and that in all of these situations, real people are involved—children, churches, families.

These real people include the leaders themselves–both men and women. And, in this article, it is their struggle with the aftershocks of their sin that we want to discuss. The ones that dominate media coverage are so-called “celebrity pastors,” but most are largely unknown outside their communities. Famous or not, however, when they have been “found out,” most now live isolated and ashamed inside the consequences of their self-inflicted wounds.

We know this all too well. We’ve bled from those same self-induced injuries. And, because our stories are relatively well-known, many of these former ministers have reached out to us. Now, on their behalf, we reach out to the church.

I know little about Bird’s background, but I know something about Tchividjian’s. You might think, on reading this piece, that when his affair came to light Tchividjian he was immediately fired and then ostracized. This is not what happened. Tchividjian resigned from Coral Ridge citing “ongoing marital issues.” He began his official statement with this gem: “As many of you know, I returned from a trip a few months back and discovered that my wife was having an affair.”

No, really.

His wife fired back, stating that the statement “reflected my husband’s opinions but not my own.” Regardless, he was immediately hired as Director of Ministry Development at Willow Creek Church Winter Springs, Florida. He was fired less than a year later after joining the staff there, after it came out that he had had a second extramarital affair—one that predated his first affair, but one that he had continued to hide. In other words, he was lying. 

Add to this the allegations made against Tchividjian by the woman with whom he had the first affair (in order of when the affair was revealed). The woman, Rachel, claims that she came to Tchividjian for counseling while struggling with her own marriage, only to have him pursue her and initiate a relationship with her. This makes Tchividjian’s offense more egregious than simple adultery—the woman he had an affair with was under his pastoral authority.

There’s more. Rachel alleges that Tchividjian borrowed money from her to hire a private investigator to investigate his then-wife, Kim, based on his claims that she was cheating on him. She says he told her he had hoped Kim really would have an affair, so he could divorce her. Rachel also alleges that Tchividjian counseled her husband privately to divorce her, while making her believe in her own private counseling sessions that the breakdown of her marriage was her fault.

Tchividjian denies much of this, but Rachel has receipts.

After news broke of Tchividjian’s second affair, GRACE, a nonprofit organization founded by his brother Boz to fight sexual abuse in the church, released a five-page statement condemning his affairs and lies. “The GRACE board is deeply disturbed about the revelations of sexual misconduct by Tullian Tchividjian,” the statement read. To the women Tchividjian preyed on, the GRACE board had this to say: “You have suffered and we do not want to add our silence to that suffering. Once again, one of God’s shepherds used his position of authority, his gift of words, his intellect and personality to draw you in when you were vulnerable and in need of care.”

Despite all of this, Tchividjian portrays himself as a victim. He believes that people have harmed him. He contends that he was suffering too.

Sin, as Cornelius Plantinga put it, is “the vandalism of shalom.” It corrupts things. It breaks things. It separates things. It toxifies things. It twists things out of shape and unravels the fabric of our lives and the lives of others. In this sense, every individual act of sin has communal repercussions. This is why when one person sins, every person suffers—including the one that sinned. Of course, everyone experiences a different dimension of suffering. The ones sinned against experience the suffering of betrayal and injustice, hurt and confusion—just to name a few. The one who sinned experiences the suffering of guilt and shame and regret and, oftentimes, ostracization. Both experience loss at various levels.

Tchividjian and Bird are doing a terrible job covering this subject.

1. I’m not particularly interested in the suffering of child molesters. Tchividjian and Bird lump any kind of sexual transgression pastors can and have committed together and treat it as though it’s all fundamentally the same thing. Consequently, when they write that “when one person sins, every person suffers—including the one that has sinned,” they are referring not only to pastors who cheat but also to those who sexually abuse children.

2. Tchividjian and Bird claim that “the one who sinned experiences the suffering of guilt and shame and regret and, oftentimes, ostracization.” This is manifestly not always the case. There are many pastors who commit abuse and then bend over backwards to justify their actions. There are many cases, too, where the congregation sides with the pastor.

3. The loss experienced by perpetrator and victim are not at all the same thing. “Both experience loss at various levels,” Tchividjian and Bird write. It is absurd to put the loss experienced by a person who makes bad decisions and harms others n the same category with the loss experienced by victims who have harm done to them.

4. Sin, for Tchividjian and Bird, is something that happens to both the victim and the perpetrator—not something the perpetrator does to the victim. Note that the active agent in the above paragraph is sin, not the abuser.

Tchividjian and Bird continue:

But, and here is the uncomfortable kicker: the Gospel is for both parties. The good news of God’s unconditional love and outrageous mercy has always and forever been for sufferers, regardless of whether the suffering is self-induced or caused by someone else. If the good news of God’s forgiving and restorative grace isn’t for everyone, then it isn’t for anyone. In fact, it bears noting that the scandal of Christianity is not that its adherents sometimes commit atrocious acts, but that the founder of Christianity willingly died for them. Yes, Christ’s forgiveness includes the worst offenders you can think of. And, consequently, so should ours.

Point of order—Tchividjian’s beef isn’t whether a person is forgiven. It’s how they’re treated. He feels like an outcast—he feels ostracized—but forgiving someone does not always mean taking them back. We can forgive someone for what they’ve done and still stay away from them—that’s not a contradiction. Tchividjian doesn’t want to be forgiven. He wants people to go back to treating him the way they did before he abused pastoral power and lied to people.

Despite the fact that we are told “everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” (James 1:19), when a Christian leader takes a dive, people comment, people speculate, people report, people talk, people tweet, people blog. But people also watch. How will a group of forgiven sinners handle a fellow sinner who needs forgiveness? Is the Christian community a safe or scary place to bottom out?

Actually, Jesus put it like this: “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” How would he have reacted to pastors who abuse their authority and lead their parishioners into sin, say, by initiating affairs with married women who come to them seeking counseling in an effort to repair their struggling marriage?

But more to the point, does Tchividjian really think that that is what people are watching for? To see whether Christians forgive pastors who abuse their authority and harm their parishioners? Really? Tchividjian is absolutely right that people watch, but from where I’m sitting, they watch to see whether Christians believe victims and hold abusers accountable.

To be clear, we’re not talking about Christian leaders being restored to his or her position of leadership. In each of the cases that we’re aware of, these leaders have needed to step down and step away from leadership in the church—maybe for a time, maybe forever. Again, we can’t say. That’s God’s business, not ours.

There’s that “who are we to judge” bit again.

What we are talking about is how a community that is built on the reality of grace and forgiveness can be a place of grace and forgiveness for even the most disgraced Christian. Because if there’s no mercy afforded to leaders by their fellow sinners, then there won’t be any for you either—at least not here and now.

Oh, threats! That escalated quickly!

And by mercy and grace and forgiveness, we’re not talking about being soft on sin, sweeping bad behavior under the rug, or minimizing the consequences. Sin is not theoretical. It happens in real time with real people and real consequences that must be really dealt with. No vertical condemnation (Romans 8:1) does not mean no horizontal consequences. But, and this is even more important, the inescapable reality of horizontal consequences does not mean the presence of vertical condemnation.

Sadness, grief, and prayer are understandable responses to a scandal in the pastorate, but surprise or shock is another matter. Shock reveals the fact that somewhere along the way we’ve come to believe that there is a fundamental difference between church leaders and church goers—that somehow leaders are less sinful. … The idea that congregants and clergy don’t struggle with the same things is a misconception. Pastors are human beings with all of the same flaws, fears, and sinful tendencies that the rest of humanity has. They don’t live outside the bounds of reality or human nature.

While it is true that pastors are human like everyone else, they are placed in a position of leadership and authority and as such are held to a higher standard. There is a difference between an offense perpetrated by a pastor and one perpetrated by a layperson. Consider even Tchividjian’s own affairs—many people have affairs, but the fact that he was a pastor and the woman he had an affair with was a parishioner who came to him for help makes his transgression substantively different. It is concerning that Tchividjian and Bird don’t seem to realize that pastors should be held to a higher standard.

And it’s only downhill from here:

It is anti-Christian to remember people primarily by the scandalous things they’ve done.

Oh boy.

We love to whittle an entire life-story down to a single season. … But the truth is, all of us (including disgraced Christian leaders) are more complicated than the singular narrative by which most people identity us. We have done very bad things, very good things, and plenty of cocktails of them both. Sadly, most people remember only the bad. Thankfully, we have a God who remembers only the good. And the only good he remembers is the good that Christ has done for us, in us, and through us.

One could hardly imagine a greater discrepancy between the typical response to “fallen” Christian leaders and what we saw in that Charleston courthouse just over three years ago. The world stood slack-jawed as members of the Emanuel AME church lined up to speak forgiveness to the white man who murdered nine of their fellow black church members in cold blood. And not just lip service forgiveness either: people were speaking both law and gospel to the killer. As Nadine Collier, daughter of Ethel Lance who was gunned down, said, “You hurt me, you have hurt a lot of people. But I forgive you.” You’ll notice that these ladies didn’t wait for a display of repentance or sorrow to issue their statement. Grace came first. As our friend David Zahl has said, “Unconditional love doesn’t wait for the correct response; it produces it.”

Funny, I don’t remember the world standing “slack-jawed.” I also don’t remember members of the Emanuel AME church refusing to condemn the shooter, or sympathizing with the shooter’s suffering.

Tchividjian and Bird don’t get it. They don’t get it at all.

Tchivdjian and Bird write that there need to be horizontal consequences, but they can’t see that the ostracization they write about is a part of those consequences. You hit the other kids and take their toys and they won’t want to play with you. It’s that simple. Tchividjian and Bird want to be the ones to pick what the horizontal consequences should be, but that’s not up to them. They think what they’re experiencing is too much. ave they tried walking a mile in the shoes of those they hurt, who found their lives destroyed as a result of Tchividjian and Bird’s actions?

Forgiveness is separate from consequences. Tchividjian and Bird think they know that, but they don’t. Yes, members of the Emanuel AME church forgave the shooter. But they sure as heck didn’t let him out of jail, and they sure as heck didn’t invite him to dinner. Tchividjian and Bird seem to think that their ostracization means people haven’t forgiven them—but that’s only the case if they gets to define forgiveness as completely forgetting that the wrongdoing ever happened, and that’s not what it means.

If you can believe it, the article gets still worse as it goes on.

This unconditional love is purposefully blind. It’s blind to whether its recipient stood in the pulpit or sat in the pew. It’s blind to whether the sin hurt many or only a few. It’s blind to the fake hierarchy of big sins and little sins that is the working assumption in many religious circles. Unconditional love is blind to everything but the ones who stand there—or lie there—broken, shamed, guilty, and dying to hear even a single voice that says, “I love you. I forgive you. I see you as one for whom Christ died.”

I know there is an aspect of this that is just standard Christian theology, but this is a mess. One thing I like about Catholic theology is that it distinguishes between “mortal” and “venial” sins. Sure, what ends up in each category is sometimes messed up, but this whole “all sins are equal” bit is just so toxic. Lying to your mom about whether you were in by curfew is not on par with being a mass murderer. This matters, because if all sins are equally bad, we can’t single out specific people (and I’m going to Godwin myself and mention Hitler) as being especially bad, because they’re not.

…the Gospel knows no gradations of sin, no categories of clergy and lay, no scales of fat and skinny wrongs. All the Gospel knows is Jesus crucified and risen for everyone.

I don’t like this Gospel. It removes the consequences for wrongdoing by treating all wrongdoing as the same.

If the church truly wants to stand apart from the world, it will stand alongside those who have been disgraced.

And their victims? Who will stand alongside them?

It will risk being falsely attacked as “soft on sin” because it knows how hard life is when guilt and shame are one’s only companions. Rather than shooting its wounded, it will pick them up and carry them to safety, to rehab, to repentance, to whatever it takes to make them whole again.

Do the victims actually exist in this world? Tchividian and Bird seem to think that abusive pastors who misuse their power and harm parishioners are the victims. We have entered the upside down.

When a leper approached Jesus to ask for healing, our Lord did an astonishing thing: before he spoke, before he healed, before anything else, “he stretched out his hand and touched him” (Matthew 8:3). He touched the untouchable. Solidarity with the unclean preceded anything else. That’s the church’s calling. Before we preach, before we teach, before we do anything else, we stretch out our hands and touch the sinner. Embrace the outcast.

Ho-lee-crap.

The leper didn’t do anything wrong. Tchividjian and Bird’s use of this verse to argue that Jesus would have reached out to religious leaders who abused those in their flock makes their entire claim to knowing the Bible laughable. And these men were pastors? What did they do in seminary, doodle in the margins?

Let the world shake its head and walk away in disgust, but let the community of God gather round the disgraced and become friends of that sinner.

And, who knows, by doing so, the church might also come to realize that the one who is touched, who is welcomed, who is healed, bears the exact same image as ourselves. We and they, along with every single person in this wrecked and fallen world, are the same: we’re all gasping for that rare mercy of unconditional love.