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burberry outlet london Disgraced pastors who repe
One of the major problems is that many cannot humble themselves in a three-stage process that involves repentance, reconciliation and restoration, Johnson said. The process takes them back to where they began, before they built their congregations into megachurches, wrote books, spoke at conferences. Before all the love and adoration of those who filled the pews and the collection plates.
“Their drug of choice has been the adulation they receive from people, their adoring fans,” said Johnson, who counseled the Rev. Sam Hinn after the Sanford, Fla., minister admitted an affair.
Mental-health professionals say pastors, especially those of large nondenominational churches,burberry outlet london, often bring into counseling the same personality traits that caused their problems in the first place.
For some, counseling is the first time they have had to confide in others. In their churches, they are the ones who listen, advise and bestow grace. Now they are having to answer to someone other than God.
“It can be difficult for them taking advice,burberry outlet,” said Gary R. Pickering, a Bushnell, Fla.-based mental-health counselor and Presbyterian pastor. “It’s hard for pastors to see through the fog and take the blinders off for their own behavior.”
Along with this is an inability to surrender control. Being a pastor means assuming many different roles: spiritual leader, administrator, counselor,burberry online outlet, fundraiser. It’s a job for a take-charge person who can’t always let go.
This is especially true of pastors elevated by the adoration,burberry outlet store, love and applause from their congregation. In some ways, in some churches,burberry outlet uk, the Sunday service is like a rock concert, and the pastor is the rock star. They are celebrities as much as ministers.
It’s what some counselors call the “ecclesiastic ego” and others call the “God complex.”
“The God complex is hard to give up,” said the Rev. Jeff Cinquemani, a pastoral counselor with the Florida Hospital Seventh-day Adventist Church. “’I don’t want to give up the side of me that brought me here. I don’t want to give up that part of me that was fun, that was great for my ego. I don’t want restrictions put on me.’”
For some ministers, feeling they have been chosen by God feeds the same kind of narcissism found in athletes,burberry online store,burberry outlet london Memorial Day Ceremony honor, celebrities and politicians who act as if rules were made for everyone but them. In their eyes,burberry outlet online, they can do no wrong because every mistake they make is someone else’s fault, said Vicki O’Grady, a Maitland mental-health counselor.
“A narcissist won’t be able to see anything they are doing as wrong,” O’Grady said.
But with pastors, O’Grady said, narcissism goes along with self-applied forgiveness: “If God forgives us, we can justify anything.”
Loveless follows other Central Florida pastors who have resigned or stepped aside after admitting affairs: Zachery Tims, Isaac Hunter, Hinn. Each asked for forgiveness, each professed repentance, each embarked on restoration.
True restoration means starting all over, Johnson said. The pastor is no longer a man of God, no longer a spiritual leader, no longer a minister. He is, as Loveless confessed, a broken man who needs to be rebuilt from the foundation up.
“When you talk about these kinds of failures,burberry online store NYPD Stops of People of Col, these are foundational issues in a man’s life,” said Johnson, who was a building contractor before joining the ministry.
Too many fallen pastors want to slap on a fresh coat of paint, remodel a room or replace the flooring when they need to be thinking of building a house from scratch that might take the rest of their life to finish, Johnson said.
“Most men who walk through this,” he said, “it really is for them a lifelong process.” |
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发表于 2013-5-15 06:49:11
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