Number of Days Since a Prominent Christian Leader had Their Private Sins in the News

 

"In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, he began to say to his disciples first, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops." Luke 12:1-3

It's not that surprising really that Jesus warned His disciples of becoming like the Pharisees.  Nor is it surprising that He called out the Pharisees' hypocrisy.  What's interesting about this passage is not what Jesus warned about but rather when He warned His followers about these things.  

Let's just say that calling out a Pharisee was on the daily. There was always a reason to confront the religiosity of the day.  There was always an opportunity to expose their self-advancement, error and attempts at lording over the people of Israel.  There was a perpetually waged war between Jesus and the Pharisees.  If Jesus had come to this modern era, His war with Pharisees would look much like the typical day on social media between the right and left.  An inescapable, ever-simmering, pot being stirred that would eventually boil over in Someone's the death.

The battle was not unusual. 

The battlefield was. 

Jesus chose to address the hypocrisy of the Pharisees against one backdrop - their crowds were growing. The One at the core of Creation was finding ways to manipulate that creation for maximum acoustics to be heard - the natural amphitheater of a hillside, a lake whose waters would resonate - all leveraged so that everyone who cared to attend could hear the truth, The Truth Himself - Jesus Christ. So many people were coming at the risk of harm, the risk of being trampled!

Then looking at "so many thousands" of people clamoring to hear what Jesus would say, Jesus turned to the twelve with a stern warning. A warning about leaven - the rising agents of bread.  Pride and hypocrisy - the rising agents of what could have been good men who would instead be fill of themselves, beautiful mausoleums full of dry bones. 

Be careful about that... especially when crowds start to form, when there's a waiting list, when it's stand-room-only. Beware of the pride associated with success.  (As one pastor said, 'success is intoxicating, and intoxicated people rarely make good decisions.") Beware of in-authentic faith - one that looks differently behind a closed door than it does behind a pulpit. 

I like to have a tote board of "Days Since a Prominent Christian Leader had Their Private Sins in the News", but I fear it would rarely be higher than 0 Days.  It's exhausting.  But what's the cure?  

Get real. 

We'll explore what that means for those who lead in the next part of this teaching. See you there?

Any Question, Comments or Snide Remarks?

Phil With the Girls Ensemble 

It was the kind of conversation every single person hates - the "when are you getting married?" conversation.  I was 17 in a new youth group with a single youth pastor who was fun and easy to get along with.  All the girls were grilling him and most of them likely for selfish reasons.  "When are you getting married..." *whispering* "to me?"

Our family changed churches between my junior and senior year of high school.  From a church we dearly loved, but that had drastically changed and could no longer hide its dysfunctions, and a church school that had no teachers who could help me with upper classman subjects to another church with a school that would allow me to graduate in the same curriculum under teachers who knew what they were doing. 

[And if that sounds snarky, it's not. It's just the truth. It was the best drastic change of my life, and I'll always be grateful for it.]

I came from a youth group where the youth pastor was decent, but his wife was appropriately referred to as "Ms. Hell". (Her name was Helen, so it was a convenient abbreviation.)  So, when grilling our single youth pastor, my plea was simply that I'd never had a good youth pastor's wife and I came to this new church and still didn't have a good youth pastor's wife.  

In a frustrated yet polite response with a touch of exasperation in his voice, Phil looked at me and said, "Will YOU marry me, Lisa?" and I said "NO! cause then I still wouldn't have a good youth pastor's wife, I'd be a good youth pastor's wife." And with that the bell rang, and we all went back to class. 

As much as that brutally awkward conversation still makes me laugh, I've regretted for 40 some years.  I'm single and often I reap what was sown there.  

Phil did eventually marry a good youth pastor's wife, and while Wendi was never my youth pastor's wife as a student, I was able to serve alongside them after returning from college.  I look on those days with fondness.  Those long weekends taking teenagers to Dawson McAlister youth conferences were where I first tasted of the deep well of authentic worship - something that forever changed the trajectory of my life.  Those days set me on a path from song-singer to worshiper and I can't express what that's meant to me in the decades since.  We took that music home with us, and on Sunday nights we'd put down our hymn books and Phil would stand beside the pulpit and lead us in those songs.

From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, 

the name of the Lord is to be praised. 

From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, 

the name of the Lord is to be praised. 

So praise ye the Lord.  

Praise ye the Lord. 

From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, 

the name of the Lord is to be praised. 

Phil decided to go Home to Jesus last week.  I picture him today next to the Throne of Jesus just like he was next to that pulpit worshipping the God he loved and served his whole life. What a remarkable man, faithful friend, the only good youth pastor I ever had - the only one it took to forever change my life. 

And if I've ever ended a meeting or rehearsal with the remark, "Any questions, comments or snide remarks?"  You can thank Phil for that too.  May his memory be a blessing. 

Once Upon a Truth - Consider the Lilies

Once upon a time, back in the day, "when I was a kid"... use all the verbal equivalents of the good old days and drop a pin in the timeline of my life.  I'm officially that age when there are good "old" days upon which to reminisce.  Yes, I walked to school. No, I didn't walk up hill both ways. 

The good old days center around the church for me.  I started serving at 14 by keeping the nursery on Wednesday nights, then playing piano for services, all anticipating the ultimate... turning 16 when deemed old enough to join the choir. 

Church music was obviously different then. No fog machines, no orchestras or even background tracks yet. (Background tracks are the church version of karaoke without alcohol.)  No, it was just a singer and a pianist or piano with organ and choir.  I love modern church music, but I also loved that we really leaned into the full scope of "songs, and hymns and spiritual songs."  Every service the choir opened the service with a rousing chorus meant to get everyone on hyped for what was about to happen. There was congregational singing out of a book (where my mom taught me how to read notes and sing harmony). Another choir song and at last "special music" right before the message to prepare everyone's hearts for the hearing of the Word.  The musical version of dimming the lights for the main event, if you will.  For a family of gifts musicians and singers, it was an opportunity to use your gift and minister to the church family.    

My mom was part of several music groups, and often a soloist right before the message.  One particular Sunday, she was the soloist before the message and had worked on a song called "Consider the Lilies".  It suited her alto voice perfectly and would have been a comforting encouragement to a church family currently looking for a pastor.  Would have been... 

It was a Saturday night, the chores were all done, laundry put away, tacos belly-fied, and the family began the usual Sunday prep. Dad studying a lesson or polishing his shoes, girls doing their nails, and Mom getting her solo ready. But we couldn't find the sheet music anywhere.  She'd worked on it all week memorizing the lyrics, but now at eight o'clock on a Saturday night the music was nowhere to be found.  We had a small and very tidy house so there weren't many places the small spiralbound music book could hide but hide it did.  Very well. 

Eventually Mom grabbed a different book and prepared a different solo which was nice, but we were so disappointed she couldn't bring the song "Consider the Lilies" to our church family to remind them that God was in control of our pastoral search. 

We were so disappointed until we got to church the next morning. 

We were not disappointed - we were quietly relieved that Mom's original choice Consider the Lilies didn't work out because that morning, our smalltown church had a family in town and "candidating" to be our next Pastor. Yes, the sermon following "Consider the Lilies" would have been preached by a pastoral candidate whose last name was Lilley.  The church would literally be considering the Lilley's for our next pastor. The song would have lost all its meaning and just been a joke.  

When we got home from church without even looking for it, we found the lost music book in a most obvious place. The Lord had hidden it in plain sight.  

Here's the truth - God is the God of our inconveniences, of all our disrupted plans, of every pivot and or drop back and punt moment of our lives.  Don't despise them. Don't let them stress you out. The extra five minutes changing your blouse because you dropped coffee on it, might have kept you out of a serious accident. That lost item you have to replace likely put you in contact with someone God wanted you to encourage.  The car that hit you on your way home was driven by someone who needed you to pray for them because there are no real accidents.  And sometimes a lost music book sets up the right message by the right pastor for the church and saves you mom some serious embarrassment.  

Consider the Lilies (or the Lilleys) and know that God is in control.  

Location, Location, Location - Elijah

Why are you here? 

Horatio Spafford's biography is one of multiple tragedies, heartache upon heartache.  A prominent lawyer and real estate investor in Chicago in the early 1800s Spafford lost it all in the great Chicago fire.  Among the losses, the son born to him and his wife Anna.  

He and his wife began rebuilding their lives and their wealth and family bloomed.  But the pressures of the rebuilding drove him to the edge.  The family needed a vacation to get away from it all and planned a trip to Europe aboard the SS Ville du Havre. At the last minute, Horatio was detained by business, so his wife and four daughters went without him anticipating he would join them as soon as he could.  

But the Ville de Havre was struck by another vessel on its voyage killing 226 people on board including all four of their daughters - Annie, Maggie, Bessie and Tanetta. When the remaining passengers finally reached Wales, Anna sent Horatio a simple two-word telegram, "Saved Alone".  On his voyage to meet his grieving wife at the point where his daughters had perished and the cobalt waves of the Atlantic belied its watery graves, he penned the words to the hymn "It Is Well with My Soul".   

If that's all you know of the Spaffords, you would be surprised to know that poem is displayed in the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem. Following their life of losses, Horatio and Anna left the life of prosperity and its wanton pressures to pursue a life they loved. They and several friends built a meaningful life of philanthropy together in Israel including humanitarian relief to Muslims, Jews, and Christians after World War I.  

You may wonder why I would retell this well-known story when the crux of the title is centered on the prophet Elijah. I think we often use the phrase "well with my soul" to imply that we're ok. Life shoves you around or breaks your heart and our resolute response is that "it is well with my soul. I'm alright.  My relationship with God is intact. It'll be ok."  A hymned version of "it's fine, I'm fine, everything's fine" if you will. 

I wonder, kind reader, if the rest of his story has a unique parallel with that of Elijah.   

In the account of 1Kings 19 after the watershed experience on Mt Carmel against the prophets of Baal, Elijah fled. The pressures of Jezebel's threats and Ahab's targets were too much. He slept under a broom tree where an angel came, fed him and told him to sleep. The journey had been too much for him. Elijah eventually went all the way to Mt. Horeb. 

It was there that the voice of the Lord asked him, "What are you doing here?"  Could the underlying inquiry be "Is it well with your soul?"  He had gone a long way, on a little nourishment, against intense pressure and it had driven Elijah a 40-day journey away.  

What WAS he doing there?  Really?

Elijah was living in the fallout of neglected soul care - too much pressure, too high an expectation of himself, too little focus on what really mattered.  Like Elijah, we find neglected soul care will take us everywhere we never wanted to go.  We long for nurturing and peace and comfort, and when we neglect the proper way to receive them - through quiet, solitude, being present, honoring the Sabbath - our souls find nurturing, peace and comfort in illicit ways.  It might look like addiction, or illness, or chaos in our mind or surroundings.  

What are you doing there? 

What I love about the Spafford's story is not the relatable and timeless hymn that we call upon in our seasons of grief and suffering.  It's that following so much tragedy, they turned away from the chaotic life and fed their souls in a life they loved.  A life that was selfless even as much as it was soul-tending.  

Is it well with your soul?  How do you tend to your inner needs?  How do you find nurturing, peace and comfort in the midst of your daily stress?  Look at the landscape of your soul and ask yourself, "What are you doing here?" What are you doing living in a house in disarray, with health declining, thoughts looping, and just.so.tired.  

Take care of yourself.  Tend to your soul.  It speaks far more powerfully than all the poems written in anguish, more loudly than the spectacle of confrontation.  

Is it well with your soul? 

Location, Location, Location - Cain

Where is your brother? 

In the plethora of biblical stories that mirror our current culture, surely one seems more relevant than other.  If so, I'd like to nominate the story of Cain & Abel.  The story of two brothers in the same family, each unique and each in relationship with the Creator.  Both have a heart to please Him, and each chose different means for doing so.  

Abel offered a sacrifice of the firstborn of his flock. Cain brought a sacrifice of his harvest here and there.  God accepted Abel's offering. Cain's He did not, and Cain didn't take that very well.   

Some well-respected Bible scholars will tell you Abel's was accepted because it was a blood sacrifice where Cain's wasn't.  I believe the truer principle here is with regard to a first fruits offering. Abel gave God the firstborn, his first fruits offering, and Cain gave "in the course of time" - a little here and there.  

We all know how the story goes - Cain kills Abel.  Even after a stern and understanding warning from the Creator to master sin rather than be overtaken by it, Cain just couldn't separate his own responsibility to God from his need to be right or better than his brother.  

Sound familiar?  Disagreeing people acting disagreeable, angry, ugly, unholy, full of self-promoting violence?  It's our world.  We live in an age when it is not only fully acceptable to sacrifice people over our opinions, it’s expected.  Cutting people out of your life is applauded. But scripture is still true, hating someone is the same as murder.  Hating someone is the same as Cain and Abel - sin, my friend, is still "crouching at the door." (Genesis 4:7)  

As followers of Christ, we don't get the luxury of ostracizing anyone we do not walk in lockstep with.  And here's why... they are a soul that God deeply loves and wants to enjoy fellowship with. They are a life, and every life has in its core eternity. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)  Their soul weighs in the balance, and so does yours.

If I had a dime for every person I know with a family estrangement or heartbreak, I could retire.  I have my own that, for the life of me, I don't know how to repair except through prayer.  So when God comes to me and asks, "where is your brother?" as He did with Cain, I know my responsibility is before God to love and not hate, to be open to reconciliation not continue estrangement, to value life and pray for their soul.  

Where is your brother? Is there an amends that needs to be made or a prayer that needs to be said?  Romans 12:18 encourages us this way, 

"If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all."

And when it's not possible, we value life.  We pray.   

PS - If we are estranged, I'm sorry it came to this, but the door is always open, dialogue is always welcome.  You're loved and missed. 

Location, Location, Location - Adam

 Where are you?

The world was new, and the idyllic atmosphere can only be imagined as utopian.  There was life - every imaginable plant in its budding and blooming form, fragrant and beautiful, every creature in its wild diversity and docile demeanor.  But even more than the beauty we can only imagine and placidity we can only dream of, there was connection.  Man and woman in perfect regular fellowship with their Creator.  Creation enjoyed Creator, and Creator delighted in His Creation.  

Every evening after the day's tasks, they walked together, shared with one another on a deep level, maybe even laughed.  I imagine it to be like those hushed tones that used to come from the kitchen as mom and dad began the day while the rest of use slept a little longer - peaceful, purposeful, wedded, one.  

Perfection. 

Then imperfection - namely sin, namely Creation finding its satisfaction in self-promoting, self-directed actions that led away from the Creator. 

It was bad; bad enough that they hid in the shadows of the created haven from the Creator of the haven... as if He didn't know every inch of the Garden intimately. 

The sun began to set, the usual calm and settling of the day began.  Time to unwind with the King of the universe. But everything had changed. Forever. 

God entered for the evening stroll, but they weren't waiting for Him this time.  And in a reverberating tone echoing from empty spaces, God asked, "Where are you?" 

As if He didn't know. 

God knew where they were, but the hiding pair seemed suddenly aware of themselves, unaware of Him, and making every effort to avoid the One Who came to them. What is it about us that makes us hide from God at the moments we need Him most?  It's not always sin and shame that chases us from shadow to shadow.  It's often just an unwillingness to be present with Him, to allow Him to enter into our broken world.  Do we blame Him for our messes or just reluctance to process before Him the details that bring us low? 

As we enter the New Year, we ought to listen for the same voice in the same hushed environment in the same all-knowing, ever-seeking tone.  Dear reader, where are you?  

Where are you in relation to the God Who loves you and continually seeks you out?  Where are you in your regular appointment-keeping with the King of the Universe?  

Time to stop hiding perhaps by first identifying what deed done by you or to you made you vacate God's active fellowship?  What situation is coming between you?  

God, your Father, still comes to you looking for relationship (not perfection.)  Where are you?  

Then One Foggy Christmas Eve...

The morning and most of the day was the kind that made Rudolph famous, as my co-worker quipped.  Fog so thick the driving conditions were treacherous, and that was before factoring in Wichita drivers who always still surprise me with their ineptitude and aggression. (Lights, people! In fog, you turn on your headlights!)  For three days the Wichita area was covered in a blanket of fog.  Not the white Christmas we were dreaming of, as another co-worker pointed out. (I have funny co-workers.)

The holidays would end up being lackluster at best - lots of events that I attended alone, lots of second guessing the gifts I bought, lots of "it is what it is" realizations.  I suppose all of that was part and parcel of the year we were about to put behind us. 

The year had been one of unexpected turns - my family had navigated a heart attack, a stroke, breast cancer, emergency room trips, and the ever-underlying sadness of those who are gone.  None of these had been on anyone's bingo card.  None of the events that brought us to our knees time and again in 2025 were planned nor were they maligned as cosmic cruelty or "why-me"-inducing drama.  Simply life being its unpredictable self in an unpredictable world.  

What was predictable in our year of surprises was this - the foundation laid in our family, in our individual hearts, was sure and strong.  God was present. God was faithful. God came near. 

Now more than ever I know that my faith is not a get-out-of-stress free card. As Toby Mac said after losing his son, we have "no under the table deal with God" that bad things will never touch us. Life can be painful, and our call to prayer when it is, is not a collective bargaining with God that He will always make it all go away.  The prayers offered in the midst of our struggles are not transactional. Do we ask for God to move? Yes. Does He always? No.  Because the blessing of prayer is praying... not always getting what we want.  

(This isn't Wichita, obviously, but what a
beautiful foggy morning in Wyoming that was.)

The perfect world created in the beginning of the Book (and coming again in the end of the book) is and always will be this.  God With Us. Immanuel - a Faithful Friend Who never walks away, a doting and providing Father who knows us inside out and still He loves.  

On Christmas Day, the fog still hadn't lifted.  I drove to northwest Wichita to pick up my beloved aunt for our traditional Christmas morning breakfast at IHoP. (Christmas hits different when you don't have kids. LOL) The farther I got from home, the denser the fog. The good thing was it was Christmas morning, and most Wichita drivers were not on the roads.  

As an unexpected traffic light emerged from the haze nearly too late to be honored, I had a thought.  I can only see so far - literally and figuratively.  I don't know what 2026 holds very much like I could never have predicted 2025 twists and turns.  We can't know everything on the horizon - the horizon is covered in fog.  

What I do know is this - God will be present. God will be faithful, and it's still true when we draw near to Him, He draws near to us. Come what may, whatever emerges from the fog, whatever brings us to our knees.

Happy 2026, yall.