Pastor fired for inappropriate images on church computer, hired by a crosstown church

Displaced Bama Fan said:

Praise the Lord!

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/he...-a-pastor-in-fort-worth/ar-AAxnsGT?li=BBnbfcL

Click to expand...

he was just doing research. he's definitely got the bro church look.

I think there is a difference between a pastor being a fallible human being and being a cretinous low-life.

To me, this is just a man being prone to human foibles. I'd be willing to bet a large portion of male pastors struggle with this sort of thing, but I wouldn't lump them into the same category as deceitful mega-church pastors or ones committing offenses like predatory sexual behavior against children or embezzlement or something....not that you are claiming they are the same.

I just think it's important to distinguish a pastor being a mortal human who occasionally errs (like we all do) and being a pile of human garbage who consistently abuses power in pursuit of glory and wealth.

As an aside, I think our expectations of pastors is a large reason why many turn from the church. Just because these men and women have an education and vocation in the church does not minimize their susceptibility to the pitfalls of life. When we place them on moral pedestals we set ourselves up for failure and ultimately we allow their failings to reduce our faith in their biblical teachings. Just because someone is hypocritical or suffer a moment of weakness doesn't ALWAYS invalidate their teachings. But often I find Christians taking the failings of their pastor out on the bible personally or using it as a way to delegitimize the religion itself.

Saint Augustine asserts,

Never judge a worldview/philosophy by it's abuse

Click to expand...

It's important to always judge a religion or philosophy on it's core tenets and beliefs and not by how it's followers pervert, fall short of, or abuse those teachings. That goes for all religions, not just Christianity.

I'm sure this was an unnecessarily long post, but there it is.

I would need to know exactly what he saw and how long he was looking at them.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Intl.Aperture said:

I think there is a difference between a pastor being a fallible human being and being a cretinous low-life.

To me, this is just a man being prone to human foibles. I'd be willing to bet a large portion of male pastors struggle with this sort of thing, but I wouldn't lump them into the same category as deceitful mega-church pastors or ones committing offenses like predatory sexual behavior against children or embezzlement or something....not that you are claiming they are the same.

I just think it's important to distinguish a pastor being a mortal human who occasionally errs (like we all do) and being a pile of human garbage who consistently abuses power in pursuit of glory and wealth.

As an aside, I think our expectations of pastors is a large reason why many turn from the church. Just because these men and women have an education and vocation in the church does not minimize their susceptibility to the pitfalls of life. When we place them on moral pedestals we set ourselves up for failure and ultimately we allow their failings to reduce our faith in their biblical teachings. Just because someone is hypocritical or suffer a moment of weakness doesn't ALWAYS invalidate their teachings. But often I find Christians taking the failings of their pastor out on the bible personally or using it as a way to delegitimize the religion itself.

Saint Augustine asserts, It's important to always judge a religion or philosophy on it's core tenets and beliefs and not by how it's followers pervert, fall short of, or abuse those teachings. That goes for all religions, not just Christianity.

I'm sure this was an unnecessarily long post, but there it is.

Click to expand...

Well taken, and I agree.

But isn't this the epitome of the "Saul Alinsky" style attacks on faith so common in our culture today?

I've seen this kind of "argument" (or some variation) raised almost constantly most of my adult life. It typically seems to go something like this:
"IF you profess to follow this supposed Jesus Christ, who you claim was perfect, but if you (or for that matter, if ANY other professing Christian) are/is Not perfect, then you are a hypocrite AND all of Christianity (and by extension ALL faith of any sort, but ESPECIALLY Christianity) is all bunk and hokum, pure superstition and unworthy of any consideration by any "Logical" and "Rational" person like me."

That's pretty much the "argument" being made (if only by implication) in the linked article and here in this thread, isn't it?

Now - beyond that, there's a lot that could be discussed here from a theological perspective, but I've gathered in my few visits that this forum isn't very welcoming to people of faith, so I'll just leave it there.....

"Inappropriate images" could be anything.

Crimson1967 said:

I would need to know exactly what he saw and how long he was looking at them.

Click to expand...

DzynKingRTR said:

"Inappropriate images" could be anything.

Click to expand...

$5 says it was pictures of soy boys engaging in unspeakable acts at a saul alinsky appreciation party.

92tide said:

he was just doing research. he's definitely got the bro church look.

Click to expand...

Dude was just trying to research for his Song of Solomon series.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

There are probably some churches that would hire Acton Bowen right now.

Google his name if you don’t know him.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Crimson1967 said:

There are probably some churches that would hire Acton Bowen right now.

Google his name if you don’t know him.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

dang, y'all are giving jawjuh a run for our money. just based on what i've seen skimming the ajc somewhat regularly, we have had quite a few youth ministers getting busted for that type of thing in the past couple of years.

92tide said:

dang, y'all are giving jawjuh a run for our money. just based on what i've seen skimming the ajc somewhat regularly, we have had quite a few youth ministers getting busted for that type of thing in the past couple of years.

Click to expand...

I had a youth director as a kid that got fired for inappropriate relationships with girls. This was in the early 1980s and I was around 14 or so and didn’t really believe it. I thought he got run off for being an “outside the box” kind of guy who did zany stuff to build the program.

A number of years later I learned he married one of the girls from my youth group.

He (or someone with the same name who kind of looks like him) is now a high school drama teacher.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

92tide said:

$5 says it was pictures of soy boys engaging in unspeakable acts at a saul alinsky appreciation party.

Click to expand...

:biggrin:

I don't think my church growing up ever had an issue with our youth director but I'm almost 100% convinced that there were some issues with the summer interns we would hire. We would often hire undergrads who ranged from 20-25 one female and one male and there were very obvious flirtations between the interns and some of the teens at the time (I'll admit I'm not completely exempt from this).

Bamabuzzard said:

"Youth leader" was one of the worst staffing positions the evangelical church ever embraced. Granted, I have no clue where, when or who the "youth minister" position originated. But the idea of putting a barely out of college guy (and sometimes still in college guy) in charge of teenagers who aren't that much younger than he is, is about as smart as giving a toddler a kitchen knife to play with. What could possibly go wrong?

Click to expand...

Although "youth ministry" goes back to the earliest days of secondary education in the early 1800s, this more recent thing with youth ministry came in part out of young troops returning from WW2 but still being "youth" (e.g. you have a 17-year old who goes to war and comes back 19 or 20 and still isn't old enough to vote or be an adult for the most part by the standards of the time but has immense world experience). Some got a volunteer opportunity to help, it also became a way for a young just out of seminary pastor to either intern while he was there or to get his feet wet in ministering to almost adults. And the whole drive behind it in a lot of cases was missionary zeal and the fact that about 70% of the involved youth in church leave upon HS graduation and never come back. The youth leader in many cases did the planning for the trips/functions to keep the young folks busy and out of the back seats of cars (at least that one night a week).

And the other thing that happened was at one time about 80% of churches DID have a paid (not enough to live on) youth minister and you have pastors just out of seminary where the youth pastorate was the first job so they could (presumably) get to work on paying back them student loans God inspired them to take.

I took a course on this whole thing in seminary and one of the big things was that the problem with youth ministry is that many times the person who actually WANTS to do youth ministry is the oversized kid who never grew up and likes to go play putt-putt or paintball with the folks about five years younger. It's a sort of if he WANTS to do it then he's likely immature.

A lot of churches used to require them to be married for the very reason you cite.