Ministry Is Not Safe. But It's Good.

When I was welcomed into the ministry as a young, male pastor, I was warned that it was not safe. To minimize the danger and to avoid all appearance of evil, I was counseled never to meet alone with a woman.

This counsel was well-intended. Landmines are scattered all over the pastoral landscape. Just this week I was told of a pastor who had carried on a long-term affair with his church’s choir director. Another pastor recently told me of a member of his church who was convinced he was in love with her. And under radar but still real are the dark struggles with sin in pastors’ hearts.

Ministry is dangerous.

But in our zeal to make ministry safe, we have made it weird.

I was told that if I met with a woman I, being a man, was to take my wife. Not all pastors, of course, have a wife to take. And I didn’t have one who could, at the drop of a hat, leave off homeschooling our six children to accompany me. But the difficulties are more than practical. To pastor is to be admitted to regions of someone’s life that are only opened through a hard-earned trust. To bring another person into that pastoral relationship, even one’s wife, alters that dynamic. It’s no longer the same.

An alternative, I was told, was to meet with a woman in the church office with the door open and someone else present in the building. I therefore met with women in my office at a time when either my secretary or bookkeeper was on site. Overlooked and winked at was the reality that when I was not meeting with someone, I was alone with either of these two women for hours each week without any voiced concern of impropriety.

Either way, adding these layers of rules to ministry to women made weird what the rest of the world seemed to manage just fine without such rules. Business associates would meet as business associates for lunch. That one was a man and the other a woman was immaterial. When a real-estate agent lined up viewings with her male client over coffee, no one expected her spouse be present lest evil be perceived. And it worked. These others are not unaware of things such as sexual or relational misconduct. We weigh such things down with a concern for the appearance of evil and in so doing we hamstring ministry.

I care about the integrity of the pastoral office, and I care about the holiness of the pastor. But we need to care about more than just those things. A young female parishioner once told me that she was tired of being perceived in the church as a threat just because she happens to be a woman. We’ve told women that as a class they are so dangerous that we must restrict ministry to them, and so we’ve created a church culture unfriendly to women whose need for pastoral care is no less than that of men.

To give pastoral care equally to all members of my congregation may mean at times that I quit caring about how that might look to others. I can’t give pastoral care equally to all members of my flock if I can only trust myself to meet with, to speak with, and to listen to half of them. The appearance of evil is in the eye of the beholder alone, and we need to stop letting that control us.

Instead of rules, we need wisdom. There will be those we meet with and those we don’t meet with. The decisions need to be made based on what we know of our people, our spouses, and our own hearts, and not on over-generalized rules.

We need to know our people. We will always make judgments between those for whom a private meeting would be of value and those for whom it would be an unnecessary risk. We need to measure the risk based on what we know of the individual, not whether one is a he or a she.

We need to know our spouses. We will be married to those who have different comfort levels with what we do, sometimes based upon our own past behavior. We need to respect that and together find a way to minister commensurate with their level of trust. In my case, Barb has complete access to my schedule. She knows those with whom I meet, male and female, and she can, if need be, on an individual basis, speak into that. I trust her judgment. I know her. She knows me.

And we need to know our hearts. We must be those committed to holiness and the mortification of sin. Ministry will be shaped by the weaknesses of our own hearts, not the gender of others. Rules are poor barriers to sin. A better foil is a pastor’s vibrant hatred of all that brings dishonor to Christ such that we flee evil itself and not just its appearance.

To provide full ministry to my entire congregation, I can’t worry about how my actions might play in the imaginations of others.

Is such ministry safe?

No, it’s not safe.

But it’s good.