Yea—I’m A Winner

Mar 1, 2006

I saw a question posted on a blog the other day regarding pastors and their willingness to be transparent with their congregation. There are two sides of this argument…

The first side is that a pastor needs to be an example of righteousness and holiness to the people in the church; therefore, his struggles with sin should NEVER be brought before the attention of the people who attend, less they think he is an imperfect person.

The other side is that the people in the church need to be able to see the pastor is real—that he has issues that he struggles with…that in his past maybe there has been a sin that he has had to work through and overcome.

Just in case you might be wondering…I fall in the camp with the pastor being real.

Here are the facts—I am trying my best to seek the Lord with all my heart. There is nothing more that I want for my life than to do His work His way. However, reality is that I fall short many times. I lose my temper. I say stupid, insensitive things to my wife. I want to yell at little old ladies in the checkout lines who insist on counting out change so they can pay the EXACT AMOUNT!!!

I can see where some may think this may be a weakness when it comes to ministry; however, I view it as a strength. I think that it allows me to relate to people in a way that many pastors often miss. I feel like I need to be real—to let people see that I am trying…but that I miss the mark…and through that communicate that instead of being an admirer of a particular person that we should all learn to “fix our eyes on Jesus!”

Don’t get me wrong—I do not do confession every Sunday…but, for example—this past Sunday I spoke about Christians who may deal with sins that seem to, for some reason, dominate them. I spoke about accepting Christ in 1990 but not overcoming my addiction to pornography until 1999. That relates to people—they think, “wow—I am not the only one.” And this, in my mind, does not give them permission to sin…but rather it challenges them to strive to overcome their issues!

I remember a dude who attends our church saying that the reason he kept coming back was that on a particular Sunday I shared about my previous struggle with pornography…and that he had never heard a pastor share something along those lines…and it made him realize that everyone has struggles—but that those struggles are not to hold us down—that we can overcome them.

Saying all that to say this…I am a winner! Hold on—that isn’t a cocky statement…but the dudes from triple “x” church called a couple of days ago (relax—it is an internet site dedicated to helping men overcome their pornography addiction…I actually have their software on my computer now as a means of accountability) and were going to give a free I-pod nano to the first pastor they actually spoke with.

I was able to speak with them…you can listen to the podcast here if you would like…and shared about my previous problems with porn…and the e-mails from people all over the country have been coming in and thanking me for sharing that I did have a problem…but I overcame it…and through that there is hope.

AND…the I-pod did arrive a few days later—yea!

That’s about it for the day…and I FORGOT the stupid cake recipe AGAIN! AHHHHH! Sorry. :-)