A multi-speaker YouTube conversation (Nick Stumbo, Kel, Rodney) about the harms when church leaders fail to address personal struggles—especially sexual struggles and addiction. Speakers argue that secrecy and deception increase fallout for leaders and congregations (loss of trust, ministry collapse, reproach on the name of Christ), leave congregants feeling hopeless, and limit spiritual formation. They urge pastors to "go first" with transparency, seek help, improve discipleship on sexuality, and note efforts (e.g., Pure Desire) to provide tools and conversation for churches.
And so in. You know, in that regard, Kel, and it's probably obvious to many of our listeners, but I think it'd be helpful to hear you kind of talk about it. What do you think are the dangers for both the leader and the church when the leader's personal struggles go unaddressed?
Yeah. I put here that the longer and greater the degree of deception and entrapment, the greater the fallout for both the leader and the church. We have only to think of some of the great ministries, and it grieves me. I've known these leaders. I've walked with these leaders. I had the privilege of walking with Bill Hybels, Willow Creek. He was a great mentor to me and. And Robert Morris at Gateway and other ministries with large followings. The fact that some of this stuff was. Was there and not dealt with has just crippled those ministries and brought reproach.
Absolutely.
On the name of Christ. And so I. I say, like it or not, the distrust grows even towards those who are walking in health and wholeness when we have these kind of failures. There's just this unspoken assumption, I think, from the world who's looking for a place to accuse the church that. See, they're all hiding something. And every time a leader falls, that's kind of the. The message. See, I knew it was true. There's just nobody out there. That's really. That's really the. The real deal. I said, maybe the greater danger is that a leader who can't admit to his struggles and be transparent about his path to healing has nothing to offer those in his congregation with similar struggles. It's like we all start to feel hopeless when nobody's talking about the issues that we should be talking about. And. And. And we sit there and feel like the gospel's not really working for me. And I guess this is just the best we can hope for. And so I go, man, Nick, when I hear your story, I think, gosh. And you probably know, but I go, do you have any idea how much your story offered hope to your congregation? Yeah. Because of how many people are sitting out there and saying, oh, my gosh, somebody finally.
Right.
Is offering me hope. Yeah.
Started the Me too movement in his local congregation.
Right.
Somebody could say, me too, Pastor. I want help as well.
That's so good.
Yeah.
So think about how much we just keep people mired in their hopelessness. We don't deal with our own stuff.
Yeah. You know, Cal, the best definition of leadership I've ever heard just means, go first, go first. And I just would Just say to the pastor who's there that's listening or this got sent to you like it's one of the best gifts you can give your congregation.
Absolutely.
Is when you realize at whatever area of your life you need help, go seek the help and, and, and get help. And it's unfortunate that many pastors haven't had just good training about healthy sexual development. There's a lot of shame, unfortunately, around sexuality and human sexual development that as Nick said earlier, we've never really matured or been discipled in this area because we don't have a healthy framework to even begin to talk about it, you know?
Absolutely.
And so that's, that's a great perspective.
When I think of the dangers for the church, what comes to mind for me too is that we really limit, I think, the capacity for spiritual development in our church. Because if, if we're not being formed in our sexuality, if we're not allowing God's grace to bring us maturity and wisdom and freedom, and then we're probably not preaching on it, we're probably not implementing healthy sexuality into our church. And it's kind of for me, like that illustration of a barrel that people say how big of a barrel you have all depends on the height of your shortest side. And so if one piece of the barrel only goes up 2 inches, it doesn't matter if the rest of the barrel is a three foot tall barrel. You only have a two inch barrel. Because as soon as water hits that level, it's going to start to spill out. And I think for many believers in churches, because their sexuality is totally unaddressed, we remain really immature there. And our growth is really limited by that leaking point of our faith. And so when we're willing to face our issues, when we're willing to lean into what we need to lean into, and we become more holistic in our teaching and our discipleship approach as a church, I think then, as you said, Rodney, we give everybody that gift of saying we're going to be holistic in our spirituality. We're going to believe God is in charge of everything and we bring our whole lives to him, not just these pieces over here that are socially acceptable to talk about. So if you want to see discipleship thrive in your church, I think this is an area that we've really got to be willing to tackle.
And I think you guys, us guys, I'm part of pure desire. I, I think that we're creating the, the tools and the conversation that is helping awaken some churches to this. I think as a 26 year old in my first church, I was preaching through, just doing some proverbs in the summertime and landed did, did a proverb around would say probably a sex talk that maybe that church had never heard. And I, I was, I was even pretty discreet in where I went with that message. But I, at the back door that day, you know, it's where you lined up and people come by the pastor, good to see you, good message today I had a, an elderly former elder of the church say, young man, if you had preached that message a few years ago in this church, you wouldn't be the pastor. I said, oh really? I said, why not? He said, doesn't the Bible say that you're not to even mention this in the church? And I knew where he was. Ephesians 5 says, Let not sexual immorality even be mentioned among you. I said, do you understand that saying that this should not be a part of our life? Right. It's not saying don't talk about it. Right. The likelihood is if we did more talking about it. Yeah. Maybe it'd be less a part of our life. Yeah. You see what I'm saying? But I'm going, if that, if that had been, I mean, think of a young pastor at that point saying, well, I guess this isn't a safe topic that we can even talk about. Sam.
