Monday, April 30, 2018

10 Practical Ways of Dealing with Depression



Are you looking for ways of dealing with depression? In light of the recent death of Robin Williams, I felt the need to write a post targeted toward people who are dealing with depression and anxiety. I remember my days of depression like they were yesterday. That cold, dark and lonely feeling that I could never seem to shake. And while I witnessed many others find help through prayer, counsel and medication, I couldn’t seem to find that same relief for myself. This battle was not just mental, but spiritual.


I believe clinical depression is an epidemic that is taking the world by storm. While many individuals might overlook this disorder as something minor, the many deaths and suicide attempts that derive from it prove otherwise.

Facts About Dealing With Depression:

1. 18.8 million Americans are affected by depressive disorders.

2. Depression is a mental and spiritual battle that affects one in 10 Americans.

3. Number of patients diagnosed with depression increases each year by 20 percent.

4. 121 million people around the world currently suffer from dealing with depression.

Those statistics are staggering. I can’t help but think about the millions of people who currently feel alone, hopeless and as if their life has no meaning. 

I’ve battled with depression for many years, been on and off different medications, and even sought counsel from pastors who specialize in this field.

Ten Ways of Dealing with Depression

1. Pray. Find solace in the promises of God (Matthew 11:28).

2. Force yourself to spend time with positive friends and family members. Create a support system.

3. Focus on the positives, your accomplishments and your goals.

4. Try and stay clear of spending too much time alone. Boredom is depression’s playground …

5. Be open, honest and let your loved ones know if you are struggling.

6. Seek professional help. No one is “too cool” to ask for help when in need.

7. Adopt a dog or cat that can be utilized as an emotional support animal.

8. Journal your thoughts and feelings on paper. Take note of your ups and downs.

9. Get outside! Don’t spend all your days cooped up in your room or house.

10. Find a hobby. Engage in an activity that you can spend time enjoying.

I’m not a licensed professional but mentioned above are the few things that helped me through some of the darkest times of my life. Although I have been depression free for the last five years, I still make sure to keep myself aware of its harm and potential to come back and haunt me.

I hope this post encourages you to realize you’re not alone. You have identity and worth in Jesus, and your life truly does have purpose.

Share this post in chance of bringing light to someone who is battling depression.


Source:  Jarrid Wilson

This article originally appeared here.

Sunday, April 29, 2018

From Takeoff To Emergency Landing: A Timeline Of Southwest Flight 1380 |...

Tammie Jo Shults is likely to become a household name after she managed to keep her cool and successfully land a Southwest Airlines plane that had lost an engine. Shults is a Navy veteran and a really good pilot.

What you may not know about her is that she’s also a Christian. 



She says being a pilot gives her the opportunity “to witness for Christ on almost every flight.”

Shults certainly witnessed to the 149 passengers who were aboard the flight she was piloting from New York City to Dallas on April 17, 2018. An explosion in the left engine of the plane sent a piece of shrapnel through one of the windows of the plane. A woman was partially sucked out the window but other passengers managed to pull her body back into the plane and a registered nurse administered CPR until the plane landed.

While all the details have not yet been released, we know that the passenger, Jennifer Riordan of Albuquerque, New Mexico, died. Seven other passengers suffered minor injuries.

Keeping calm and thinking clearly, Shults was able to land the damaged plane in Philadelphia. Shults would have had plenty of practice keeping cool under pressure during her career in the Navy. She was the first female pilot to fly an F-18, a fighter jet. While she wasn’t allowed to fly in combat situations, Shults was an instructor pilot.

Before her time in the Navy, Shults attended MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, Kansas. She graduated with degrees in biology and agribusiness. After graduating, Shults originally applied to the Air Force for pilot training but was denied.

MidAmerica Nazarene’s director of alumni relations, Kevin Garber, describes Shults as a “solid woman of faith,” NBC News reports. Shults’ brother-in-law, Gary Shults, describes her as “a very caring, giving person who takes care of lots of people.”

Indeed, Shults’ concern for others was apparent after she landed the damaged plane. Passengers on board report Shults walked through the aisle to check on everyone. 

According to passengers, the plane erupted in applause as she came through the cabin. Shults is a picture of keeping calm under pressure. She is also an exemplary leader.


Reported by: Megan Briggs

MSNBC’s Ari Velshi runs through the timeline of tragic and terrifying events aboard Southwest Flight 1380 and how pilot Tammie Jo Shults landed the crippled plane.

Saturday, April 28, 2018

The Devil's Favorite Sermon...


10 Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down (about five thousand men were there). 11 Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.”                                                                                          JOHN 6:10-11


Thursday, April 26, 2018

Unfair Expectations of Pastor's Wives


The pastor’s wife in many churches carries heavy burdens.

Sometimes they are impossible expectations.

To be fair, this post could refer to any church staff person, male or female, so it could be called ministers’ spouses. 

For simplicity, and because I primarily hear from this group of people, I refer to them as pastors’ wives.

So what are some of these unfair expectations? Here are the top ten expectations imposed upon these ladies.

1. “I am expected to attend every function at the church.” One wife told us that church members resent it when she is seen doing anything outside the church.

2. “Many church members expect me to know everything that is happening in the church.” In other words, they should know everything their pastor/husband knows.

3. “We have several church members who feel free to complain to me about my husband.” So her church has several members who are lacking in emotional intelligence.

4. “Church members utilize me as a de facto assistant to my husband, giving me messages for him.” One wife shared with us that she received eleven messages to give to her husband after a specific worship service.

5. “I am still amazed how many church members expect me to function as an employee of the church.” Some are expected to lead music or play piano. Others are expected to act in a specific ministry employee role such as student or children’s director.

6. “Some of the members expect our children to be perfect and act perfect.” One wife explained that she and her husband were new to a church when a church member confronted them about their misbehaving children. Their outlandish sin was running in the church after a worship service.

7. “I am always supposed to be perfectly made up and dressed when I leave the house.” A church member expressed her dismay to a pastor’s wife who ran into a grocery store without makeup. You can’t make this stuff up.

8. “I have no freedom at our church to be anything but perfectly emotionally composed.” This story really got to me. A deacon chastised a pastor’s wife for shedding tears at church four days after her dad died.

9. “I think some of our church members expect my family to take a vow of poverty.”She was specifically referring to the criticism she received for purchasing a six-year-old minivan after her third child was born.

10. “So many church members expect me to be their best friend.” And obviously a pastor’s wife can’t be the best friend to everyone, so she disappoints or angers others.

These are some of the comments we have received at this blog over the years from pastors’ wives. And it seems as though these trials are more gender biased. For example, the husband of a children’s minister commented that he rarely has the pressure and expectations that he sees imposed upon female spouses.

But more than other staff positions, the pastor is naturally the focus of attention and, often, criticism.

And the pastor’s family, by extension, becomes the focus of unfair and unreasonable expectations.






This article was originally published at ThomRainer.com on September 4, 2017. Thom S. Rainer serves as president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources. Among his greatest joys are his family: his wife Nellie Jo; three sons, Sam, Art, and Jess; and seven grandchildren.

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

The Death of “The Great Commission”

timothynetwork.org

According to the latest Barna report 51 percent of church goers do not know what the “The Great Commission” is. Take that in for a moment, the average “Christian” doesn’t know the last and lasting mandate that Christ gave to go and make disciples of everyone everywhere.

Wow.

That’s like a doctor who doesn’t know what the word “medicine” means or a soldier who has never heard of a gun before. In many ways it is unthinkable.

I believe that the responsibility of this falls squarely on the shoulders of the church leaders. If preachers and church leaders are not banging the drum that Jesus banged they may be playing in the wrong band. And if the leaders are confused about it then the people will be even more confused. As someone once said, “If there’s a mist in the pulpit there’s a fog in the pew.”

Maybe the growing focus on social justice in our churches has overshadowed the primary mission that Jesus gave his followers. Perhaps the attention we are giving to loving our neighbors somehow has been psychologically untethered from the verbal proclamation of the Gospel to them.

Whatever the reasons, we must face the fact that a technical majority of the people in our churches are unfamiliar with the term “The Great Commission.” Now the question is what do we do about it?

1.  We reframe it.

What if we reframed the Great Commission as the primary way we make the world a better place? What if we showed that the best way we can love our neighbors is by introducing them to the only One who can truly solve their problems and overwhelm their lives with peace and purpose?

In Luke 19:1-10 Jesus reaches a infamous tax collector named Zaachaeus with his message of redemption. As soon as this tax collector believes he proclaims, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

As soon as Zaachaues believes, his heart is changed and he immediately gives half of his possessions to the poor and pays back any social injustice he has committed four times over!

This powerful passage shows us that the real key to social justice is Gospel proclamation. When someone puts their faith in Jesus their heart is changed. Greed is replaced with generosity and selfishness is replaced with selflessness.

If we genuinely want to see lives changed, systemic injustice removed, the poor fed and the prisoners freed we must make the proclamation of the Gospel primary in our lives and churches. 

The power of the Gospel (Romans 1:16) changes lives, families, communities, nations and situations. It turns sex traffickers into soul savers. It turns greedy overlords into selfless servants.

It’s time to reframe the Great Commission as the primary way we love our neighbors.

2.  We rename it.

At Dare 2 Share we call The Great Commission “The Cause.” We renamed it because years ago we started to see that Christian teenagers had no idea what the term “Great Commission” meant. To the average teenager the term “great commission” sounds like a bunch of money someone made on a real estate deal.

Because teenagers are into causes (take a look at last Saturday’s massive national march as an example) it seemed fitting that we renamed this hundreds-of-years-old musty term as something more relevant for this generation. That’s why we call it “The Cause!”

In a world filled with good causes this is the greatest one! Jesus left his young followers with this cause and now it has been handed to us. This is The Cause that all Christians are called to embrace as their own!

It’s time to let the term “Great Commission” die and replace it with something stronger! My vote is for “The Cause!”

3.  We regain it.

We need to regain the mission of Jesus as the primary focus of the church. Why? Because it is!

Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

This is our mission until Jesus comes back…to the very end of the age. This is our mission until everyone everywhere hears the Gospel!

Where does “The Great Commandment” (to love God and love others) fit in? In the words of my friend Dr. Dann Spader, the Great Commission is our mission. The Great Commandment is our motive! We make disciples who make disciples, and we do it fueled by love!

How do you live and lead this cause in your church or youth ministry? You build a Gospel Advancing, disciple-multiplying ministry that is focused on Christ’s mission and built on biblical values. For more on this check out: gospeladvancing.com.

Let’s wave the banner of The Cause of Christ in our churches, small groups, Sunday school classes and youth groups! It’s time to reframe it, rename it and regain it! It’s time to make and multiply disciples until everyone everywhere has every last opportunity to put their faith in Jesus! 

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
                                                                                                                    Matt. 28: 19-20


This article originally appeared here.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

God Is Preparing You for Something He’s Already Prepared For You


Christine Caine is an Australian born, Greek blooded, lover of Jesus, activist, author and international speaker. She and her husband, Nick, founded the global anti-human trafficking organization, The A21 Campaign. They also founded Propel Women, an organization designed to activate women to fulfill their God-given passion, purpose, and potential.




Key Questions for Christine Caine:

– How do you handle times of doubt in your ministry?
– What have you learned about incremental faith in your life?
– What encouragement do you have for pastors who have suffered through an unexpected event?


CLICK HERE


Key Quotes from Christine Caine:

“Sometimes it’s not until you get to the other side that you realize that God was with you in the middle.”

“It’s very important that you monitor the voices that you listen to when you’re in the midst of a struggle or trial. They can determine your actions and reactions.”

“Unless you take proactive action to guide your heart and mind with the right people around you then it’s easy to listen to the negativity of the enemy.”
“We end up being disappointed with God because we expect from God what he never promised.”

“God has to prepare us for the thing he has already prepared for us.”
“If we aren’t careful in those times (disappointment) we can harden our heart and get stuck.”

“It is a daily decision to remain tender hearted and allow people into your life.”
Bottom of Form
“Some things I just have to start out doing afraid until I’m no longer afraid of doing it.”

“Our trust of God grows and our need of control lessens the longer we are in relationship with God.”

Monday, April 23, 2018

The Theology and True-Life Tragedy behind Hallmark’s Hit Show, ‘When Calls the Heart’

Daniel Silliman (PhD, Heidelberg University) is a Lilly postdoctoral fellow at Valparaiso University. A U.S. historian, he is writing the history of bestselling evangelical fiction, including Janette Oke’s Love Comes Softly. As the season finale for When Calls the Heart airs this Sunday on the Hallmark Channel—based on Oke’s series—I asked Silliman if he could help us understand the author and the evangelical tradition behind the series and the books.

When Calls the Heart doesn’t look like a theology of suffering. The Hallmark Channel show is a sweet and sentimental drama, telling the story of a cultured young woman who takes a job as school teacher on the Canadian frontier in 1910. She faces challenges. She learns lessons. She finds love, inner strength, and a supportive community.

The show is finishing its fifth season this month. And it’s a big hit. More than 2.5 million viewers are expected to tune in for the finale on Sunday, April 22. The show has already been renewed for a sixth season, and the first four seasons are available on Netflix. Online, the show has an active fan community, including a “Hearties” Facebook group with more than 60,000 members.

“It’s feel-good TV,” The Washington Post reported, explaining the appeal. “The main characters do the right thing. The problems get worked out. The guy and girl . . . always end up together.”

Mother of Evangelical Romance Novels

The story, though, with all its sweetness and light, is built on a real reckoning with tragedy. It comes out of an evangelical tradition that addressed itself to the burdened and brokenhearted.

When Calls the Heart is adapted from a novel by the same name by Janette Oke (b. 1935).

Oke, now 83, is the mother of evangelical romance novels. She wasn’t the first to write a romance novel with evangelical themes, but her success established the market for the genre, and made “evangelical romance” its own market category.

Her first novel, Love Comes Softly, sold an average of 500,000 copies per year for 20 years after its publication in 1979. Oke went on to write seven more novels in the series, plus three other series, plus another series with a co-author, more than a dozen standalone novels, some children’s fiction, and a number of devotionals.

She has had a profound and under-appreciated influence on many evangelicals, shaping their imagination. She has told story after story of evangelical faith, story after story about how a woman could trust God.
Oke had a conversion experience at 10 years old. She was Janette Steeves, then, the child of farmers on the Alberta prairie. In 1945, she was invited to an evangelistic summer camp for children. Her parents weren’t churchgoers, but they let her go, and it changed her life.

The camp was run by the Missionary Church, an association of Mennonites who had embraced revivalism. One thing that set the Missionary Church apart in Western Canada was its women ministers. On the “needy prairies,” the church authorized at least two dozen ministering sisters to organize revivals, preach, and plant churches. The church in Hoadley, Alberta, for example, was founded by Pearl Reist. In the middle of the Great Depression, 38-year-old Reist took over a pool hall, built a pulpit out of wooden crates and pews out of nail kegs, and began to preach. Eleven years later, the church was sponsoring farm children for a summer camp at nearby Gull Lake. The evangelist, that summer, was another ministering sister named Beatrice Speerman Hedegaard.

Hedegaard preached to the prairie children about yielding their lives to Christ. It wasn’t enough to read the Bible stories, she said. It wasn’t enough to believe God existed. It wasn’t enough to say that Jesus died for your sins. To really believe, you needed to turn everything over to Jesus and truly, totally, give your life to God.

Young Janette sat through altar call after altar call, her heart beating hard, her palms all sweaty. She wanted to go forward. She felt a longing that almost pulled her out of her seat, she wanted to go forward so bad. But she was afraid she’d be embarrassed in front of all the other children.

Finally, one night, Hedegaard didn’t give an altar call. Instead of asking people to come forward, she told the children if they wanted to give their lives to Jesus, they should just raise their hands. Janette’s hand went up. Then Hedegaard said, if your hands was up, you should come forward.

Remembering this episode years later, Oke mostly remembered the feeling of relief as she went forward. She felt free. She was free from embarrassment, free from shame, free from the fear that kept her locked in her seat for so long. It was, she said, just a “wonderful realization of forgiveness.”

This became the core of Janette Oke’s theology. She believed in the power of yielding your life to Jesus and trusting God.

Her favorite hymn was written by a Linda Shrivers Leech, a Methodist organist. The hymn goes:
God’s way is the best way
God’s way is the right way
I’ll trust in him always
He knoweth the best

It’s sweet. And some might think the theology sentimental. But Oke found this practice of trusting God was sturdy enough to bear up under the greatest sorrow. This was the hymn she sang to herself at 22, when she had a miscarriage.

Reckoning with Reality

Janette married a young man from the Missionary Church, Edward Oke. In 1957, the young couple moved from Alberta to Indiana, where Edward took classes at Bethel College. He was going to be a minister. She was pregnant.
They had only just arrived and unpacked their belongings when Oke had a miscarriage. She was alone in their $65-a-month apartment, far, far from her mother and sisters. There was no doctor, no trusted friends, and no pastoral counseling.

It was just Janette, her pain, and God.

Oke laid down on a fold-out bed and cried. And as she cried she decided again to give everything to Jesus. She decided to trust him and she gave him her baby and her sorrow. She sang the hymn again:

God’s way is the best way.
God’s way is the right way.
I’ll trust in him always.
He knoweth the best.

The next year Edward graduated and started seminary at Goshen College. He took a position as an assistant minister at a nearby Missionary Church, and Janette started working in the mailroom at a manufacturing company. Sometimes she taught Sunday school. Life seemed to be good to the Okes.

Then Janette got pregnant again.

Her joy was mixed with fear. Oke prayed, though, and felt comforted. She gave God her baby and her fear. It comforted her.

Oke gave birth to a son in October 1959. But the infant had a heart murmur and an enlarged liver and the doctors didn’t know why. They whisked him away and tried to save him while Oke lay in her hospital bed, unable to do anything. Then they came back. Her son was dead.

In her apartment, alone, she thought the same thing over and over again: I didn’t even get to hold him. I didn’t even get to hold him. She spent days looking at the empty crib, just crying.

She said to God, “I know I said you could take him—but I didn’t promise not to cry.”

Let Go and Let God?

Sometimes this revivalist theology is summarized as “let go and let God.” And sometimes, it’s understood as a kind of prosperity gospel. If you give up and surrender, it’s said, God will give everything. Abundant life! Fullness. Your days will be sweetness and light.

But for Oke, that’s not what it meant to let go and let God. To really yield and really give everything to God meant also giving up any idea of what abundant life was supposed to be like. You couldn’t trust God and get a Mercedes. You could trust God and get God. You couldn’t yield your pregnancy to God and get back the baby you always wanted. But you could know Jesus was holding your baby, your mourning, your deepest pain, and know he loved you—loved you so much—and your sorrow was his sorrow, your loss was his loss, your ache was his broken heart.

If you give your life to Jesus, Oke believed, you can know how much he loves you, and his love can comfort when life is hard.

This is the theology Oke put in her romance novels. Her first novel, published by Bethany House in 1979, starts with a woman suddenly widowed, alone and afraid on the frontier. By the end of Love Comes Softly, the protagonist tells God, “Ya be comfortin’ me, and I be grateful for it.” She says, “I thank ye, Lord, that ye be teachin’ me how to rest in you.”

It was Augustinianism in a bonnet, in a made-up prairie patois. It was evangelicalism for the everyday lives of women who knew how life could be. It was story for all those who are weary and burdened, who just wanted to give the weight of their lives over to Jesus. It resonated with a lot of people.

Hallmark Version

Janette Oke’s faith in yielding to God doesn’t always translate to the TV series. When Calls the Heart is not plotted around conversion, and the religious elements are mostly relegated to the background, the moral norms setting the scene like the Canadian landscape. There are no revivals and no born-again experiences, as there are in the books. Brian Bird, who co-created the show with Michael Landon Jr., explains the show is trying to be more subtle. He says, “I believe all human beings have these violin strings running through our souls. These strings, when you pluck them, they reverberate with certain themes like forgiveness and redemption and sacrifice and courage and banding together to help one another.”

An estimated 2.5 million viewers will tune in to those reverberations on Sunday. More will watch it when it goes to Netflix, probably later this year. And some of those will glimpse in the show the deeper theology behind the original books—an evangelicalism contextualized and addressed to burdened and brokenhearted women.



Article by: Justin Taylor

First posted HERE

Sunday, April 22, 2018

DATE OF END OF WORLD "NOT FOR YOU TO KNOW" (Jesus)

Getty Picture 

According to “Christian numerologist,” David Meade, the world ends TOMORROW. 

ARE YOU READY?

Apparently, he has never read Acts 1:6-7:




“So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, ‘Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?’”

“He replied, ‘The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know.’”

That’s pretty clear! And here’s a big but:

“’But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’” (1:6-8).

What if we spent our time, instead of trying to discern when Jesus will return, we spent it telling our family, friends and others—here and around the world—that they can know Jesus today?!


For more on false prophets’ predictions: Click HERE

Saturday, April 21, 2018

Glued to my seat this evening: Is Jack Dead?


This was the closing scene last Sunday evening on the Hallmark Channel show "When Calls The Heart."   Was this a dream - or reality?  Is the recently married Jack and Elizabeth facing tragedy?







Happy Birthday to Sharron

I want to be sure and express my love for Sharron. God brought her into my life when I was a youth pastor at a church in Charlotte, NC. I had just graduated from college. Sharron had just earned her RN degree and was recruited by a hospital in Charlotte. 

It was almost love at first sight. We began to date within days after meeting and were married five months later. That was the summer of 1978. God blessed us with twin daughters in November 1980 as we began our family. We departed Charlotte in 1981 to move to the Northern Virginia area. 

God has taken us from Northern Virginia to Marion, Indiana - to Sturgis, Michigan - to Topeka, Kansas - to Raleigh, NC - to Gastonia, NC and the road is open for another move very soon. 

God has blessed us as we celebrate 40 years of marriage, this
 coming June.

 On Sharron's birthday I once again want to express my love and admiration for her.


Sharron and her Aunt Elva on her 100th birthday!












Friday, April 20, 2018

The Same old thinking -- The Same old results






If you are tired of seeing the same old results over and over, it's time to change without fear of what others will do or think. 

Obedience to God always trumps someone else's opinion. 

Step out of your comfort zone, have faith, think differently, lead boldly and watch God bless you with different results. 

Obedience is our responsibility; the outcome is His!

Thursday, April 19, 2018

THE ONE MISTAKE ALL FALLEN PASTORS MAKE

It’s disturbing how many of the pastors that I grew up idolizing have fallen.
My early years in ministry were shaped by pastors like Perry Noble (alcohol abuse and divorce), Mark Driscoll (abuse of power), Rob Bell (heresy), and the list could go on.

Straight out of Bible College, I worked under a senior pastor that I highly respected for his years of experience growing large churches.

But after God called my family to a new ministry opportunity, my mentor was caught in an affair. It wrecked me and many in the church.
Just this week, I was stunned to hear the news of allegations against Bill Hybels that forced his resignation. I pray they are false. But with our history of fallen pastors, could you blame us for being a bit skeptical?
WHY DO SO MANY PASTORS FALL?
Be careful before you start blasting megachurches. It isn’t just a megachurch problem, scandals of other churches just don’t make the headlines.
Every time a pastor falls, we need to remember two things:
First, this is why we put our faith in Jesus, not man.
If you make people into idols, you’ll be disappointed.
People make terrible gods.
Second, we are no less susceptible to sin than they are.
We’re all just one poor choice from falling.
If we are ignorant, we will repeat the same mistakes.
May their mistakes be a warning to us all.

THE ONE MISTAKE ALL FALLEN PASTORS MAKE

The pitfalls in a pastors life haven’t changed. They’re as old as sin, itself.
The Bible warned us:
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world (1 John 2:15-16).
Every fallen pastor in history repeated the same fatal mistake. They got caught up in a love for the world.
That love manifested in one of three ways: the desire of the flesh (sex/addiction), the desire of the eyes (covetousness/money), or the pride of life (power).
Fallen Pastors allowed the temptation of sex, money, or power to erode their soul until it crumbled.
And remember: these three killers are after us all. No pastor is beyond their reach.
The resilient pastors who survive decades of ministry, identify these threats and make a conscious effort to stay far away.
For example, consider Billy Graham and his team’s Modesto Manifesto.
Graham saw the many failures of other evangelists, so he met with his team in Modesto, California and they drew a plan to avoid these traps.
  • To avoid the temptation of sex, Graham made a rule never to be alone with a woman other than his wife.
  • To avoid the temptation of money, Graham took a set salary and practiced financial transparency
  • To avoid the temptation of power, they decided to never criticize other pastors or exaggerate their numbers.
While some might criticize these kinds of decisions, and perhaps we could make some modifications today, we should all learn from Graham’s example.
It’s a tale of two Bills: You have to wonder if Bill Hybels would not be facing accusations if he had practiced the same rules as Billy Graham.
We need guidelines and procedures to keep ourselves from straying anywhere remotely close to temptation.

GUIDELINE EXAMPLES

Here are a few examples of rules you might want to put in place for yourself to protect your integrity:
Sex: Never be alone with a member of the opposite sex. And today it may even be better never to meet alone unless in a public setting with anyone regardless of gender because it only takes one false accusation to ruin your credibility.
Flee from all compromising situations. Never comment on another person’s body. Never travel alone with a member of the opposite sex.
Prioritize your marriage, and pursue your wife.
Money: Open the church budget. Be transparent about staff salaries, ministry budgets, and where all the money goes.
Also, think long and hard before you buy a big house, designer suits, or fancy cars. Although you may be able to afford them and there is nothing inherently wrong with these things, you need to avoid even the perception of greed.
Make it your mission to be the most generous person in your church.
Power: Decentralize the power. Have a board of elders that aren’t just your best friends. Put systems in place to limit your ability to make huge decisions alone.
Also, treat your staff and church members with respect. I’ve known many pastors who are brutal behind closed doors with their staff members but angels to their church members.
I’ve also worked in environments where the boss reminded the staff weekly that he could fire them. That’s no condition to work.
Wield your power with extreme care. Don’t let it go to your head. Pride is the silent killer of many ministries.
Please, don’t be the next case study of a fallen pastor. Learn from the age-old mistakes of others.
What procedures do you need to put in place to fortify your integrity?

Source: 
Brandon Hilgemann