The Pastor and Purity

Matt Smethurst

Hey, thanks for tuning into this episode. This is Matt, given the nature of this conversation, some of the material we’re discussing is going to be a little sensitive, maybe too sensitive for young ears, so depending on where you’re listening, we just wanted to make you aware of that, and we hope that this episode will be encouraging to you.

Garrett Kell

And let’s talk about what could it look like for us as pastors to live more honestly? Like to be honest. I love you guys. None of you in the past two years has asked me if I’ve looked at pornography. So I think you want to be able to have those kind of conversation with your elders and tell guys, listen, we’re just going to be honest here. Nobody’s here to impress anybody. We’re here to help each other. Love Jesus.

Matt Smethurst

Welcome to the everyday pastor, a podcast on the nuts and bolts of ministry from the gospel coalition. My name is Matt smitherst and I’m Luke Duncan, and today we are joined by one of my favorite pastors in the world, my longtime friend Garrett Kell. Garrett is the pastor of Delray Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. He’s a host of another podcast called counseling talk, produced by nine marks, and is the author of a couple really helpful books, specifically on the topic we’re going to be thinking about today. He’s written a booklet called How do I fight sin and temptation and a longer book titled pure in heart, and today, we’re going to be talking about the perennially important issue of the pastor and purity. So let’s just start with you. Garrett, why is this such an important conversation for pastors?

Garrett Kell

Yeah, great to be here with you guys. Love you brothers for lots of reasons. Yeah, when you think about what a pastor is, right? So we are first and foremost Christians who are to love the Lord and are we’ve been called by God to help others, to love Him and to follow Him. And I think when it comes to purity, the very heart of is that we want to see God. Matthew five, eight, blessed to the pure in heart, for they shall see God right? So we are as pastors to be people who see the Lord, know the Lord, follow him from the heart and help others to do the same. And sin wants to, wants to dim that view. Right? When you look through the Scriptures, you see Satan is prowling, and he keeps showing up everywhere that elders and pastors do. And you look through the qualifications everywhere that a pastor is, it seems like Satan is not far behind, because he knows that if he can, if he can, sabotage our sight of the Lord through sinning that we are, we’re not going to be able to lead well from the heart with a clear conscience and everything that kind of goes with that. So something positively holiness is we we love the Lord and we want to help others. Love him. That’s going to be dimmed if we’re not. And then just practically, the longer that I’ve been a pastor and walked with the Lord, the more I’ve seen I’ve seen dear friends who started well and didn’t, didn’t finish well. I remember when I was in seminary at Dallas, we had Professor, Howard Hendricks, the prof, and he had him for a number of classes, one of his leadership class, and in that class, he did a study of some 246 men who were pastors, who had all fallen into adultery within about a two year span. As far as you could tell, they were all born again, men who loved the Lord but had all compromised in serious disqualifying ways. And he wanted to do kind of a post mortem, so he met with those guys, and he asked them a bunch of questions. And there were, there were four characteristics that he found were common. Number one, none of the men were involved in any kind of real personal accountability. They were around people, but nobody really knew them. They knew how to, you know, put on the front but nobody, nobody knew behind the mask what was really going on. Number two, each of the men had all but ceased having daily time of personal prayer, Bible, reading and worship. So they were in the word all the time because they were giving it to other people. But they weren’t like Mary sit at the feet of Jesus, right? Just loving Him that had grown cold. Thirdly, more than 80% of the men became sexually involved with the other woman after they spent significant time with her, often in counseling situations. So they weren’t they weren’t thoughtful about guarding their heart or other people’s hearts and their relationships. And maybe we could talk about that later, about how do we how do we pastor well and love our sisters, but, but they weren’t careful in their relationships, and people didn’t know what was going on. And then the fourth one was without exception, each of the 246 men had been convinced that this sort of fall would, quote, never happen to me. They just, they just thought of this would never happen like Pride goes before the fall. And brothers, I mean, y’all, y’all know me well enough if you know a bit of my story, like this is, this is part of something that marked my early ministry.

Matt Smethurst

Yeah, tell us about that.

Garrett Kell

So I became a Christian. Have kind of a wild, wild background. Quickly it became clear that I think I was supposed to help other people follow Jesus. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but put me on the track to ministry. And I, I think maybe too quickly got put on stage. I didn’t learn how to how to live openly and transparently. And over time, I developed a secret struggle with pornography where I was both as an evangelism pastor and then as a lead pastor at a church plant. Just had I was ensnared. I mean, I would, I would look at something, and then I would, I would hate it, and I would say, Lord, help me. I never want to do this again. And it just became a pattern of once a week or once every other week or once every couple months. And then that went on for some three years, and eventually, by God’s kindness, I was honest with a friend from another church, and he just sat me down and said, Brother, I love you, but you’re not you’re not qualified to be a pastor right now, and you need to go back and you need to tell your elders. And that was 2007 and it became one of the hardest years of my life when I went back and shared with them what had been going on, which began a process that ended up me standing before the congregation and sharing with them everything that had happened. It was the hardest and best year of my life. I remember thinking I would never get I’m never going to be able to stop doing this. And part of the problem was that the Lord was blessing the ministry. So he was blessing His Word. And so I had this Solomon complex. The kingdom’s thriving, everything’s good, all this compromise, I guess God’s overlooking it because I’m special, or I don’t know what it was that pride is so deceitful, right? Well, I I just remember getting the place where I thought I’m never going to be able to get out of this unless I die. And that’s what happened that night on the stage when I stood in front of the congregation and told them that I had been a hypocrite, and asked them to forgive me and began walking a new path of restoration. So I think it means a lot for a lot of reasons.

Matt Smethurst

Thanks for sharing that. And like not only were you a senior pastor for nearly 20 years, but you now are training the next generation of pastors. Why is sexual temptation? And of course, the category of purity is bigger than sexual sin, but we’re kind of focusing on that in this episode. Why is it a particular occupational hazard for ministers?

Ligon Duncan

Well, I think let me start with men first and then and then ministers. I think at our our sexual drive is so much a part of what we are that attendance to godliness in that area is absolutely essential. Because you you know, if you want to love God more than anything else, you’ve got to have a desire for God that is greater than other drives and desires in your life. And we can’t help but realize the hypocrisy from time to time, even even if we’ve tricked ourselves into pretending like it’s not there, that hypocrisy rises up. We recognize it, and Satan certainly puts it before our eyes. And he says, You don’t love God more than you love this. You don’t love God more than you love her. You don’t love you know what? And so for men in general, we cannot help but attend to this area of our lives, if we want to see God, if we want to follow God, that’s it. John Piper has been helpful to me in this area, because he’s he’s utterly realistic about about this, and he’s fought so hard to be pure. Now pull back to ministers. Our people need to know that God is more important to us than anything. And if we can’t walk in integrity in this area, we can’t serve them. And it’s now, you know, I’ve often pondered because I’ve seen, very frankly, more men wreck their lives and ministries through things like pride, envy, greed than I have by sexual sin. But I will say, as a chancellor and as a Presbyterian minister who has served on what we call credentials committees, or training for the ministry committees. And way back when I was being examined to come into the presbytery of Mississippi Valley, there was a godly pastor named Carl calver camp that really, really emphasized brothers. We do want to know what your doctrine is. Do want you to know church history. We do want you to know your Bible. We do want you to know church government and polity, but we especially want to know your godliness. And he examined me, he he probed into areas of my life that were just uncomfortable in that process, and I was so thankful for that. And he he really started our presbytery attending to that in a better way than we had done before. But in those days, I would have said I saw more struggles with alcohol, with potential candidates for the ministry, than I did pornography, it is. It’s not that way anymore, sure, pornography and sexual sin is, for sure, the most prevalent struggle amongst candidates for the ministry, and part of that is in even as late as 1990 you had to go looking for pornography. Now it comes looking for you, the algorithm has it come looking for you because of phones, communication, access to pornography and privacy, slash secrecy. All conspire to wreck your life the

Garrett Kell

illusion of secrecy. Yeah, the illusion of somebody’s always watching. That’s right, but yeah, so

Ligon Duncan

that that conspires to wreck your life as a man and as a minister. So I, I want guys to be able to equip to be equipped to fight that fight. I want them to fight the fight. I want them to be equipped to fight the fight. And so I mean, Garrett, your your story has been a huge encouragement to me, just your integrity to face it publicly, because it it all of us are ashamed of the impulses that we have to fight. We don’t want to talk about them with our best friend in a private conversation. As ministers, we’re be we are public persons. We just don’t get to decide what’s not going to be talked about in a larger, less private setting, about us. And so you’ve you’ve been a huge encouragement and help to me, Garrett, I’m so thankful for you, and you’re a person that I can point my young guys to. Here’s a man who dealt with this with integrity, and God has blessed it in his life and the blessed in his ministry. Don’t think you can’t not address this in your

Matt Smethurst

life, right? Well, the qualifications in first, Timothy three and Titus one for elders, pastors, yeah, they can seem like mere boxes to check, but in reality, they are gifts and kindnesses of God to us. The fact that we are called to be above reproach doesn’t mean perfect, but it does mean exemplary in the ordinary we’re called to be one, women men, these things are not mere obligatory afterthoughts. These are the life and blood of so much of what we’re called to be and do as examples to the flock. Garrett, how can practically pastors pursue purity in constructive ways.

Garrett Kell

Yeah. I mean, I think it begins with remembering that you’re first always a sheep, like, so the most important thing about me is not that I’m a pastor. So I’m a Christian who’s a husband, a father, a member of Delray Baptist Church who happens to serve as a pastor. Like, when I think through my identity, that’s who I am. I think there’s a real pressure sometimes for all of that to get switched where I’m a pastor who’s a Christian, yes, but then like, and I just think if we get it twisted. So the longer I do this, I just want to make it home to glory, like I just so my the I think the first thing is to never lose your first love, and you want to love him more than everything. I don’t have to be a pastor, but I have to follow Jesus, and I think that’s got to be the number one thing. Secondly, surrounding yourself with people who love you and are not impressed with you, those are the safest people. So the elders that I get to serve with my soul feels safe with them because they don’t care if I’m on a podcast with you guys. They don’t care if I’ve written a book. They don’t care if one of

Matt Smethurst

them has accompanied you today. He’s off camera, but he’s nodding right now.

Garrett Kell

Great, great elder. But like we came because we want to spend time together, we’re gonna talk about important things. And these guys, they know everything about me, right? My soul is safe with brothers who love me enough to ask me hard questions. I’m on a, you know, I’m going to text thread with a couple of brothers who are on staff with Ben and Jason and Chris. These three guys, they know everything about me. And it’s not just my sexual temptations. Like this is the thing, one of the illusions of. Out the struggle with pornography. It’s just this, well, like all the roots of sin grow together and feed our flesh. So as you mentioned, some other sins, there’s lots of things that are going on in our life all the time, stress and pressure and envy and jelly, all of this. So we want to these brothers help me. So we’re like, when I’m like, Hey, I’m about to go home, guys, I’m feeling tired and lazy. I do not want to talk to my family. I want some me time. Pray for me to go home and be a servant. Send them a text like those. We have that kind of normal. So how do we do this? You create relationships that are safe for your soul, where it’s normal to talk about the ways that you need brothers to help you to go to the throne of grace and get that grace and keep your eyes on Jesus so that you’re, you’re, you’re strong, and then, and then they’ve got to know your areas of weakness. So for instance, like, my wife’s going out of town this weekend. So those brothers are going to know, hey, Carrie’s going out of town this weekend. Ask me how I’m doing. Here’s, you know, I’m going to give you some remote controls, all that kind of stuff. My phone’s locked down. My wife has a My wife has a password. So I want to download an app, like, I give my wife my phone. I’m like, sorry, you married a 13 year old. Can you put in the code so I can download an app and all like, I mean, but it’s inconvenient, but I want to go to heaven. Jesus says, better cut off your hand and pluck out your eye. So you got to figure out, what are the ways you’re temptable. That’s going to look a little different for everybody. I want to put barbed wire up everywhere to make it really difficult to get there, to meet for me, to get to pornography. Right now, the amount of work that I have to do to get there is a is a lot, just because I put so many safeguards. And then I’ve got to have brothers who are checking in and asking how I’m doing, and taking, like, taking, you know, stock of my soul. And then, most importantly, you want to stay close to Jesus. There’s lots of other things in there, but those are some of the basics. You

Matt Smethurst

mentioned, the inconvenience of it. That reminds me of when I was in college at a campus ministry retreat, and the speaker was Randy Newman, who went to be with the Lord think about a little over a year ago, and he was doing a men’s time at that retreat and taking questions. And one college student was was asking him about his relationship with his with his college girlfriend, and how they were struggling with purity. And Randy said, Well, when is this happening? When are you guys falling into sin and and the guy said, Well, I mean, it’s usually late at night in my room when we’re studying, you know, and you can kind of hear the troubles study, the kind of chuckles And Randy says, what many of us are thinking as well. Have you considered maybe studying at a different time, in a different place? Yeah. And the guy responded, not trying to be funny. He was actually very sincere, he said, but that would be really inconvenient for our schedules, and I’ll never forget how Randy responded. He just looked at the guy with with deadly serious love in his eyes, and said, Son, righteousness is almost always inconvenienced, and I’ve never forgotten that good word. It’s like, how can pastor so Garrett has already talked a little bit about the importance of meaningful accountability, not just symbolic accountability, theoretical accountability, but the real thing in a pastor’s life. When you were at first pres Jackson, what did that look like for you? Oh, let me

Ligon Duncan

Garrett’s actually put his finger on the first step, and that is, if there is no structure of accountability that you can put into your life that will help you, if you don’t have that kind of relationship with your wife, if you can, if you can lie to your wife, you can lie to an accountability group. So Garrett’s relationship with his wife is that? Mean, that’s that is front line, that is the most important thing in the world. When you know a woman has your back and loves you and cares about you, there are a lot of hardships that you’re ready to undertake. So a wife is your greatest asset and partner in this area, and so that that’s thing number one. Thing number two is, if you are setting up the accountability structures, you don’t have accountability. So I one of the things I love as a Presbyterian, and you have this as a Congregationalist in different ways, is that I don’t choose my elders. God chooses the elders through the congregation there that’s my front line. I don’t pick my accountability. I’m accountable to the elders. And then the elders at first pres had what was called the pastor’s Advisory Committee, and those three elders were in my life every week in a tremendously helpful way. And I still have a Chancellor’s Advisory Committee. Now that I’m under a board of elders at the seminary, and they see my entire schedule. They make decisions about what I do and what I don’t do. They help me say no, which I’m terrible at, but the first thing that they want to talk with me about when we get together. Other is not my schedule and not seminary issues, but how my life with God is, how my family life is. They they know things about my family life, about my relationship with my wife, about my kids that very few people in this world know, and it’s because they love me and they care about me and I’m not simply a tool for the promotion of the mission of Reformed Theological Seminary or at church, a tool for the promotion of the local congregation. I’m a Christian. I’m a brother in Christ. I’m a pastor in God’s church. They care about my soul, and I cannot thank God enough for that. Now, friendships, you and I’ve talked about that friendships mean a lot. Mark Deborah is checking on me regularly. Mark always asks awkward and uncomfortable questions to me because he knows, again, Mark knows a lot about my life. He knows a lot about the areas where I have struggled, and he has this way of jabbing me at unexpected times and asking me about that, Derek Thomas has been that way in my life. Derek and I, when we worked together for 12 years, ate lunch at least once a week, and we were in one another’s lives and knew our heart breaks and our struggles, and we still continue to check on one another. So there is this web of relationships that keep me from living an anonymous life or living off by myself, but it does start with your wife. And I would say

Garrett Kell

one thing about like the creating that culture. I hear a couple ingredients there home, the elders that you serve with regularly, and then some outside friends. So like Ed Moore sends me a text with tomorrow. You get it tomorrow from from Ed Moore, and he’s gonna say, How did you do this month? Did you look at anything that you should not and he’s more explicit. What he says, Yeah, did you look at anything sexually explicit this month? And he’ll say, I did or did not. I did not, by the grace of God, I commit to another month. How about you? And and then he’ll say, Don’t lie to me. And then he’ll, he’ll still send that out to group of guys. And I know that’s coming from him. But then in house, our elders, part of, part of what I’m what I’m doing, is as a leader in trying to be honest. I’m also training them how to be honest with one another. Most of them don’t know how to do that from the beginning. So some, some people might be serving in a church where, like, I couldn’t talk to my elders about this, to which I would say, it sounds like some things need to change then, because what kind of culture are we creating? Because then that culture is what’s happening in the homes and in the discipling relationships. If you can’t with your elders talk about these sorts of things, how are they going to talk to members about it? So I think you want to create a whole culture of a church where every nobody struts in on Sunday, because everybody’s a debtor to grace. And we’re there’s a there’s a an expectation of transparency, authenticity, and you know, everybody’s there for one reason as to see Jesus and get grace from him. And I think that begins with with us in our own walks with him, and that’s going to filter out to the entire congregation.

Matt Smethurst

In order for that to work, though, you clearly have established a culture in which it’s obvious that every one of you is a struggling sinner. Meaning, yes, there are these objective qualifications, and it is possible to become disqualified, but I would imagine in a lot of churches, the reason it can be so terrifying for a pastor or an elder to come clean is because there’s not a culture of transparency, and therefore he feels like if he comes clean, he’s going to immediately lose respect or lose his job and and though sometimes that’s necessary, how do you walk that line between expecting and even demanding honesty, while also understanding that this is a safe place to struggle, even if it’s not a safe place to sin. Yeah, that’s really good.

Garrett Kell

I first you want to pray because you can’t. There’s no, like six ways to do this. God has to make this happen. God has to create this sort of culture in the leadership. You need to pray and plead for that. I think you want to pray with them. Be honest with the guys. So let’s say this is not let’s say you’re in a church where you’re an elder board with a few other guys. This is not normal. I think you want to come to the guys and say, hey, I want to be really honest with you. I feel like there’s something missing here. And I think, I don’t think I’ve led well in an area. I just listened to this, this little conversation. Let’s, let’s watch this conversation together, and let’s talk about, what could it look like for us as pastors to live more honestly? Like to be honest. I love you guys. None of you in the past two years, has asked me if I’ve looked at pornography. Yeah, I want you to do that. None of you have asked me how my wife is. You’ve asked me, Hey, how are things? And we have kind of a whatever the situation, just

Matt Smethurst

be honest. Or you’ve asked me before, I think it was a question along the lines of Matt, if Satan were to ruin your ministry, how would he do it? What’s the question? What. Is it’s something like If Satan

Garrett Kell

were coming after so one of the things we have our pastoral interns do is we have them read the screw tape letters, and then they all have to write their own screw tape letter. Like, if Satan were coming after you, how would he do that? And I think it helps you to think through here’s all the ways that I’m vulnerable. So I think you want to be able to have those kind of conversation with your elders. That might be a good exercise, you know, like, if you’re doing elders retreat, maybe you, maybe you do something like that, and then all the guys just come and be honest and tell guys, listen, we’re just going to be honest here. Nobody’s here to impress anybody. We’re here to help each other love Jesus. And you guys come you confess your sins together, because an elder, yes, is to be above reproach. There to be examples of resisting sin, but they’re also supposed to be examples of resist of repenting, of it. So the lead repenters, the lead repenters, and so, so it needs to start among us. Let’s be honest. Let’s let’s lay things. And if some of us need to take a sabbatical because there’s some things out of order, praise the Lord, it’s coming out. The worst thing is that it wouldn’t come out. Yeah, and God, God will meet you in the midst of all of that. But I think you want to cast the vision for what that looks like. And then there’s other resources that you can can kind of try to navigate that, but I think it’s the heart to heart, and then you telling them, here’s, here’s the questions I need you to ask me, here’s the things, man,

Ligon Duncan

I think, I think there’s probably some pastors listening to us saying, though I don’t have elders like that, and I, and I want to be sympathetic to that, like not everybody has elders like that. And I think there will be pastors thinking, Okay, I’ve got I’ve got elders, I’ve got leaders that would leverage this against Sure, yeah. So, you know, Garrett’s talking about a healthy leadership culture, and I recognize that there will be a lot of guys listening to this that do not have a healthy leadership culture. So I think, you I think that elders that are listening to this need to know one, you know what? That’s why we need to aspire to a healthy leadership culture, or that’s one reason why we need to aspire to healthy leadership culture. Number two, if we’re really going to help the pastor, we need to have our godliest guys that are around him on this not not the guys that we think you got. You got some growing to do before you’re able to be a real help to the pastor in this area. So that’s one of the tricks when you’re trying to get to a place like this when your eldership isn’t what your eldership ought to be. And I

Garrett Kell

would say, if you feel isolated, like, Yeah, I mean, I’ve been, I mean, at the church, I’m at Del Rey. I mean, I got there, there was you starting from the right, the ground up. So I think find a friend somewhere else, yes, who don’t wait and be like, Well, okay, I’ll create that. And then I’ll be honest, they’re like, right now, who’s the person? Who it is, you know, and you want to, you want to get them, and you want to, you want to stay well, and then lead patiently toward that, and the Lord will help. But it’s a scary feeling when you’re like, I don’t know if I can do this, these people. Yeah, I think so,

Matt Smethurst

yeah. What about interacting with sisters in our congregation in a way that dignifies and honors them. So we don’t want the sisters around us and among us to just feel like threats to our qualification or our purity, you know, just kind of feel like temptresses. On the other hand, we want to be on guard. We want to give no appearance of impropriety, and we want to be above reproach. And so how do you how do you walk that fine line? Yeah,

Garrett Kell

I think it’s gonna look different for every brother and what every, every brother and his his wife feel comfortable with, right? But I think one of the primary ways we do this is just even from the pulpit when we talk about sexual temptation. Yes, maybe uniquely for men, but this is something brothers and sisters are all struggling with, some all of my applications for sexual temptation and that kind of stuff brothers and sisters, because they’re, I mean, everybody’s struggling, everybody’s sexually broken, everybody’s gonna be tempted in different ways. So I think we just want to create the the awareness that this is not something that’s just men, because then then sisters can feel isolated and extra shame for not being honest, all that kind of create your

Matt Smethurst

book pure in heart. You do a really good job at the beginning of establishing that fact. Yeah, I

Garrett Kell

wrote that for our church. I never knew if anybody else would read it, but I wrote it. I wanted to have one resource I could give to brothers or sisters, people struggling with same sex attraction or whatever, whatever is going on. Meet them there, and let’s talk about this. So I think that it begins there, where we’re all brothers and sisters, and we’re all here to help one another, to follow Jesus. And then from there, you know, there’s different brothers who can have different things. I always want to treat sisters, though not in ways that make them feel. So I want to be as, you know, think about, how do you show affection? I’m a high five. Or I’m like, Hey, sis, how we doing? Give a high five, or if we know each other and like it’s, I don’t know, it’s you want to, you want to help that you want to. There should be a warmth, brotherhood, sisterhood there. I think having people in your home regularly where hospitality is normal, I think that helps to break down some of the we can’t be near one another, those kinds of things. I think with your counseling sessions, you want to be you want to be wise. Guys. So, you know, it’s, I think it’s normal for sisters who want to meet with their pastors, and they should be able to do that. I’m not going to have an ongoing discipling relationship with with a sister unless there’s another sister who’s joining us that’s just going to be going to be a wisdom issue, and it’s going to help her, it’s going to help this other sister. It’s going to help everybody there. My office. You know, I have a glass door. My My wife has all access pass, and the people who work in administration, they all have all access pass to my calendars and my phone and like, I’m just, I live, live openly, so I’m not hiding anything. So I think conversations, personal, personability, hospitality, willingness to meet, invitation to get together, but then having real one of the things has been beneficial for our congregation is having sisters who are trained up to be able to say, Hey, listen, thank you for sharing. Sounds like there’s some things going on. Would love to walk with you. The best way we do that is we have some sisters here and be able to point them and pray for them and that kind of stuff. I just think just normalizing discipling sort of atmosphere. I think it goes a long way. My

Ligon Duncan

boyhood pastor was the head of the pastoral theology department. The first day I’m on campus, he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says, Boy, you’re going to be my assistant. And I said, Yes, sir. And so I was his assistant at Trinity Church when he left, the guy that came was a guy named Mike Ross. He’s now retired in ministry, living in Columbus, Ohio, and Mike had had a mentor say to him, don’t approach your sisters in Christ as someone that you’re trying to get something from, whether it’s respect or feeling wanted or needed or and certainly not an object of of you know affection in the in the sense of marital affection and sexual desire. And that was a good word, that I’m the way I’m going to relate to the women in the congregation is I’m here to serve you. I’m not here to get something out of you for me. And I want to say, for a lot of men, though, we are driven by our eyes and bisexual desires. Just as powerful a gateway drug is the sense of being respected. If we feel like we’re being respected by a woman the way we want to be respected and we don’t feel like we’re being respected that way. Gateway drug if we feel like we’re being needed or wanted by a woman in a way that we don’t feel like we’re being needed or wanted. Gateway drug, you know? So, yes, we we are often boy, she’s pretty in ways that women are not. You know, women tend to be the women that I’ve seen fall into affairs in a church. Typically, it’s not boy, he’s good looking. It’s, it’s, there’s usually an emotional pathway. Their ministers, though, can be vulnerable because they feel respected or because they feel needed, and in counseling, you just have to be on guard in counseling relationships and then just normal relationships with women in your congregation.

Garrett Kell

You even think back to number three on that study, that most of them were in relationships, and if you get a guy who’s not, things aren’t well at home, right? And he’s missing something, things aren’t well with the Lord, things aren’t well at home. And then here’s somebody who’s listening and all this kind of stuff. You can just see Satan. He’s crafty, right? And you’re gonna, you’re gonna use somebody that you should be serving, right? It’s just the opposite of the gospel, right? So in

Matt Smethurst

Thomas Brooks’s great book, precious remedies against Satan’s devices. Near the very beginning, he talks about how Satan does not tempt everyone in the same way that it’s like he puts up his sail to go with the wind of a particular person’s inclination. In other words, he custom designs his snares. So I just think that’s a good reminder that the way of wisdom may look different for us and in different churches and different seasons, but we have to be vigilant. We have to be willing to take steps of accountability and steps of Holiness that will look radical and inconvenient in the eyes of the world. Garrett, elaborate on what you mentioned about interacting with sisters in your church in a constructive way. What does that look like? It’s

Garrett Kell

gonna look different for every brother in every church. But I know in our congregation there’s sisters. First of all, we’ve prayed, Lord, you’ve given us godly sisters. I mean, there are sisters in Christ, right? You’ve given them gifts. Help us to know how to steward those well. Help us to know how to help train them, build them up. This is part of our responsibility as well. And then, as we’ve identified who are the sisters that that that are wise, mature people are gravitating to I so I meet with a number of sisters who are like that in our congregation, and we talk about some of the discipling relationships they have. And we talk about, okay, hey, how can we as elders, help you, as you’re helping others? And we’ve got just, we’ve got a number of sisters who, over time, have been trained up. They’re reading. They come for like, what resources should I read? What questions should I be asking these kinds of things? I’m learning a lot from them as well, and in those in those relationships. Relationships. I mean, we’re co labors in the gospel. I mean, I often have another brother meeting with me like we’re a team. We’re a pastor team meeting with his sister, talking. And over time, what we found is we’ve been edified to learn how to love our sisters better, and she’s been built up and equipped and multiplying herself and other sisters to be able to be ready, so that when there are somebody who comes and says, Hey, I’ve got this thing, we want to point you in the right direction. And so our congregation kind of knows that if there’s a sister who’s struggling with with pornography or some sort of sexual temptation, they know we’ve identified, Hey, these are some of the sisters you can reach out to. And they become really proactive in that it takes some time, but it begins with prayerful consideration, identification, investing in those sisters, and casting the vision to the congregation of, hey, we all need help, and God’s raising up some sisters to help some of the fellow sisters. Garrett,

Matt Smethurst

as we kind of wrap up this conversation, are there any other either resources that you want to commend to listeners, or just anything that you kind of want to say by way of advice on this topic,

Garrett Kell

I just want to acknowledge that having this conversation for pastors is is uniquely hard. There’s a real pressure to be the one who has who has it together. I mean, your job description is be above reproach the the flocks commanded to watch your faith and imitate it, right? There’s, there is a pressure to lurk the part, and it can feel like performance sometimes, especially when we know ourselves, like I’m a mess, right? And so I think, I think we want to this is why leading as a needy gospel man is the most important thing, like we want to lead from weakness of needing Jesus. I think that’s going to such. That’s going to be helpful, so you’re not trying to pretend as as much. I think that’s, that’s a that’s a huge thing. There’s also the real risk of being honest. It can cost you everything. I mean, I know that was one of the pressures that I felt about stepping into the light. Like, if I tell people what’s actually going on, I don’t know how I’m gonna pay the bills. I just bought a house. I I can’t, like, I have a Bible degree, I don’t know what to do, you know? I mean, so I just want to say for brothers who might be listening and think I know deep down, I need to say something. I just want to acknowledge it may be the most difficult decision that you ever make to step into the light, right, but whatever it costs you, it will be worth it, because whether you stay a pastor, whether you stay married, but Jesus will meet you in your need, in your honesty. And if the one thing God can work with is honesty, like he he will meet you there, and he will help you. And whatever the wreckage is, if Jesus, if Jesus can defeat the grave, he can overcome this in your life. And I promise you, it will be very hard, potentially for some of you, but it will be worth it, because you’ll get him and he’ll meet you there and and you might be surprised by how much he’s able to use you better long term, whether you’re a pastor or not, I’m a better I’m a better follower of Jesus. Because of this. I’m a better husband, father like and I think better pastor, because God’s taught me that I can’t live in the dark, and I just honestly, brother, step into the light. No matter what it costs you, it’s going

Matt Smethurst

to be worth it. Proverbs, 2813, whoever conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy. Doesn’t mean it’ll be easy, but it will be worth it, because Jesus is worth it. He’s worth it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the everyday pastor, we hope it’s been encouraging to you. If the Holy Spirit has used it to convict you in some way, we would encourage you to step into the light to talk to someone else about that. Check out Garrett’s excellent resources on this topic, and please share the episode with others so that we can help pastors find fresh joy in the work of ministry.