Educators want churches to be aware
___By Laurie Lattimore
___Baptists Today
___NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) --A group of Baptist educators is seeking to move sexual misconduct by clergy out of the gossip mills and into the open, so churches and seminaries can deal with it more honestly.
___Meeting last fall in Nashville, nine church leaders discussed proper responses to the all-too-common occurrence.
___Organized by the Christian Educators Network, the two-day session was led by Marie Fortune, director of the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence in Seattle, and Bill Sapp of Cornerstone Counseling Center in Louisville, Ky.
___Because of their profession, ministers face both higher expectations of their conduct and more severe consequences when they fall. But the common response of keeping wrong behavior a secret only exacerbates the problem and postpones, if not prevents, healing, experts say.
___"It is very hush-hush, yet everybody knows and is wondering if anyone is going to say anything," said Frank Granger, minister of education at First Baptist Church in Athens, Ga. "We fool ourselves into thinking silence protects the victim. Ultimately it hurts them."
___Whether or not the minister initiates the intimate relationship, Sapp said, the minister is always at fault. Speaking from the pulpit or being in a counseling relationship puts the minister in an environment of power. That power is abused, Sapp said, when it is used to meet emotional needs of either party.
___"People come to ministers for help by virtue of their office, so there is automatically a power imbalance, it is always their responsibility," Sapp said.
___Ministers sometimes feel flattered to think a parishioner finds them attractive, Sapp noted, but he insists the affair has nothing to do with physical attraction. Church members come to the pastor for ministry, not for sex.
___David Matthews, pastor of Christ Community Church in Orlando, Fla., resigned First Baptist Church in Greenville, S.C., 14 years ago after the church discovered he was having an affair with a member. The four-year relationship started with both people seeking needs that were not being met in their own marriages. Matthews said he didn't think he could be vulnerable sexually, but he was in complete denial about how he could be vulnerable emotionally.
___"It was basically a failure to be honest with myself about needs," Matthews said, adding that the pressure among ministers to keep up a wholesome image often prevents them from admitting problems in their marriage or in other areas.
___One step toward prevention, he suggested, is for clergy to have a mentor outside the church who can keep them accountable. "Every minister needs to have one or two people to whom they cannot lie and can talk about the deepest issues of their lives."
___Michelle McClendon, minister of Christian education at First Baptist Church in Greenville, S.C., said it took the church about 10 years to heal after Matthews resigned. Although McClendon didn't come to the church until a few years later, she has watched the church struggle to move on.
___Sapp believes helping churches develop policies on clergy sexual misconduct in advance would go a long way in helping damaged congregations heal after the fact. "First it's important to inform everybody so they have the correct information to process it and deal with it," Sapp said. "But churches must also seek to do justice by survivors. It is easy for survivors to feel re-victimized."
___And while forgiveness is an eventual goal, Granger believes there should be policies in place that state the church believes certain behavior is wrong and will result in consequences. "It's not that forgiveness and restitution are not possible, but there are consequences."
The Baptist Standard
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