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I Beg You:  Please Don’t Let This Happen to You

Orginally published on Wednesday, July 13, 2005 at 4:02 PM
by Todd Rhoades

I’m increasingly hearing more and more about pastors and church staff members who are making the news because of pornography and/or illegal sexual activity.  In searching for valuable items for this blog, you wouldn’t believe the number of local newspaper articles I see that report that pastors have been fired because of porn, or even worse, arrested because of illegal activity involving sexual issues.

Maybe this story caught my eye only because of the picture attached. Seeing  a pastor led to a squad car in handcuffs is pretty sobering.  Eric Michael, the pastor of a local UMC congregation was caught only after the church's internet provider contacted church leaders about inappropriate activity on their account.  Turns out that Michael was known online as "Eric the Awful" and "Master Rick"; and that he liked to download child pornography.

Are there any pastors or church leaders reading this right now that are teetering very close to the edge; flirting with porn; finding themselves in over their head?  Without having a Pat Robertson 'word of knowledge' here, I think I can safely say that there are.

According to a recent survey at Pastors.com; 54% of pastors said they have viewed porn in the past year. 54%.

It breaks my heart whenever I see a story like this.  And if this can serve as a wake up call to even one person... it's worth it.

You see, pastor, pornography is a sin that can (and probably will) allow you the opportunity to lose your current job, your house, your wife and kids, and your entire career.  Plus it will destroy your church and rock your community.  And if what starts out as curiosity turns into an obsession (and an illegal one at that) you can find yourself just like the pastor in the picture above... handcuffed and placed in a squad car.

Are you on the brink?  Are you close to the no return zone?  Do you have a problem that you know you need some help with?  Please, I beg you to get some help.  If you don't know where to turn, you can always email me at and I'll be happy to confidentially set you up with some contacts that can help you through this.

I Beg You:  Please Don't Let This Happen to You.

Todd


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 TRACKBACKS: (1) There are 11 Comments:

  • Posted by pjlr

    Todd,

    It is a sobering and painful picture for sure.  If you know of some websites of organizations that can help Christians and/or pastors who are in trouble or on the edge, why not post links to those sites?  Some may feel uncomfortable emailing your directly.  Just a thought.

  • Posted by Todd Rhoades

    Great idea, pjlr;

    Here’s one from Focus on the Family:

    They have a pastoral care line that can help you get started.  The toll-free number is 877-233-4455.  Or you can contact them on the web here:

    http://www.family.org/pastor/general/a0010218.cfm

    Todd

  • Posted by bernie dehler

    This is a new phenomena, because of the internet.  It would be as if, in the old days, nude women and all kinds of sexual perverts went carousing around on your front lawn, inviting you to join them… and you can’t kick them off, because they claim freedom (of speech, etc.).

    Too bad our government doesn’t have the guts to “just say no.” Nobody knows what indecency is anymore… let’s take a vote… one man’s indecency is another man’s freedom to live life as he wants…

    ...Bernie
    http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/247

  • Posted by

    Also, check out xxxchurch.com—it’s not particularly for pastors, but it is aimed at Christians.  It offers free accountability software that will keep track of where you go online and send a record of your tracks to a partner of your choice (presumably someone who is praying with you to stay on the straight and narrow).  They offer quite a few other helps—definitely worth checking out.

  • Posted by

    A great program that I recently have come across and that has provided me with a great deal of victory can be found at settingcaptivesfree.com.  They have a 60-day course towards overcoming pornography addiction and also have information on SafeEyes, an internet filter that also has accountability aspects. The great thing about this program is that it also pairs you with an accountability partner who emails you daily.

  • Posted by

    Some suggestions:
    1.  PRAY.  Admit there is a problem and you need deliverance by the power of the Holy Spirit.

    2.  PRAY.  Seek a faithful friend who will bare with you the burden of habitual sin.  Take time in prayer and meditation and choose the person carefully, one who will conceal a matter and not be a talebearer.

    3.  PRAY.  Use 1. Blocking software (netnanny) and have someone (accountability partner) else control the passwords and 2. Accountability software with the same person in control of the passwords.  These help to remove the “front lawn sin” (as Bernie pointed out above) and temptation and give you some refuge.

    4.  PRAY.  When you fall outside the home, talk about it, either with your “accountability” partner or with a trusted Christian Professional Counselor.  If you feel you are losing the battle, seek professional Christian help and have your accountability partner with you.

    5.  PRAY.  Thank God for your new freedom and share with others your deliverance.  How a faithful Friend and His servant helped you.

    Sexual Immorality (in all its forms) is the most detrimental sin to American Christianity today.  I have my opinions on the origins (ultimately Lucifer) but I’ve expressed those already on other blogs.

    I commend you Todd, you’ve really pulled out all the stops this and last week with your topics of discussion.  It takes boldness to post these subjects.

    Finally, Todd has found some updated information and I’m sad to say, it has gotten worse (according to the numbers).  The information that I had was 1 out of every 3 pastors and 1 out of every 2 male parishoners are hooked on porn.  The data Todd found is now at 54% (1 out of every 2) so you can imagine the parishoners numbers have also increased.

    For those of you struggling I can be, through the power of Christ, a faithful friend because I needed a faithful friend.  So in truth and love, I don’t care what your name is (from the standpoint of identity - email or otherwise) or what position you have (pastoral, laity, leader or unbeliever), if you need someone to talk to and feel led by the Spirit, by all means contact me.  I’ll keep the matter concealed.  WE need deliverance from this sin and if I can help, I praise God for the opportunity as I believe nothing happens without purpose - to help others who may suffer the same.  I can bear witness to the validity of Paul when he says “of whom I am chief”.

  • Posted by

    Hi guys,

    I am a recovered member of Sex Addicts Anonymous. The scary part of the 54% figure is not that it is especially high, but that it tracks evenly with the population. There have been sex addicts since the dawn of time. The difference is that the transmission of these images is so much easier to access. Pat Carnes, a therapist specializing in sex addiction, calls it the crack cocaine of its time. It addicts, and for many (including me) it addicts the first time you use it.

    For me, compulsive sex was something that I indulged in as a teenager and in my college years. It was marked by occasional forays into masturbation and magazines, with strip clubs thrown in for good measure. I was addicted then, to be sure. But the expense and the exposed nature of the media at that time made being an addict very difficult.

    Not since 1995--when I discovered that the internet was a well-suited carrier for sexual images of all sorts. My acting out (as we call the use of compulsive sex) became more frequent, to the point of me losing hours from work, from my family--and to affairs with other women and men (homosexuality was not the issue, it was accessing the high).

    The advice given on this site so far is well-intentioned, but it is like putting a band-aid on a dam break. Filtering software does not work for a real sex addict like me. Other people monitoring me will not stop a real sex addict like me. And the consequences of my behavior will not stop me, if I am a real sex addict. Even KNOWING I am a real sex addict does not help me. Because at certain times, I am without defense against acting out.

    The classic model of alcoholism goes like this: Physical craving (when I drink I need more), mental obsession (I have a mind which cannot leave alcohol alone despite that fact), and spiritual malady (I am afflicted with a selfish, or sinful, if you like, nature that blocks me off from the sunlight of the Spirit, a Higher Power which can keep me from that first drink.

    With sex addiction, it’s a bit different. In fact, it’s worse. Only 10% of the world’s population is even capable of becoming an alcoholic addict, because the nature of that addiction has to do with what happens once the alcoholic takes a drink. Alcoholics cannot process alcohol the way we do. When a normal person around alcohol, like myself, drinks, I get tipsy and then sick, and I don’t want anymore. When an alcoholic drinks, their body processes alcohol a bit different and they crave alcohol once they drink.

    The physical craving cannot be produced without alcohol in an alcoholic, or without drugs for a drug addict. Once an addict in these areas has de-toxed, they do not any longer have a physical craving to drink. They may have mental obsession and a spiritual malady, but they are dry.

    For sex addicts, when we act out the drug is in our heads. Our minds cannot tell the difference between the fantasy of the event and the event itself (for most of us the fantasy SEEMED more real than the event). And so whether we are in obsession around sex or acting out physically with porn or a partner, we can have a physical craving AT THE SAME TIME we have a mental obsession. In other words, in AA you can have such a thing as a dry drunk (a person who is not spiritually or mentally sober, but who is not currently drinking).  In SAA, if I am in not in fit spiritual condition, then I will have a mental obsession (not a passing thought, but a line of thinking in which I am engaged) that will cause a physical craving. And I do not know at ANY time where that physical craving will take me.

    The program of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, from the Big Book, as applied to my addiction, has effectively removed my obsession to act out, and has given me a way of life that can solve all my problems, through a Higher Power I know as Jesus Christ, my Savior. I have had a spiritual awakening. I have recovered, and I have been given the power to help others to recover.

    I am not cured, however--my recovery is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. The 12 Steps are the method I use to maintain that condition.

    Anyone can become a sex addict. Anyone. And studies have shown that acting out on the internet can actually lead a person to places he/she would never normally visit. It is not a virtual reality. It is actual reality, for our minds do not know true from false in our addiction. So someone looking at pictures of adult women can easily be led towards children. When in the disease, we have no power, choice, or control over our actions because of the physical craving.

    This is why filtering devices don’t work--because the addict will obsess about ways to find a way around it, which triggers the physical craving and then it’s Katie-Bar-The-Door.

    This is why accountability does not work for a sex addict in physical craving--you think I actually CARE that you know that I act out. You already do, if I am giving you “accountability” for me.

    The only treatment I KNOW works, the only solution is a spiritual experience that gives us a relationship with God. The only method that works with any consistency in my experience is the 12 Steps of AA adapted for sex addiction.

    Don’t pray for sex addicts to stop acting out. It doesn’t work. Instead, pray for us to have a spiritual awakening to Jesus Christ through the 12 Steps, accompanied by intensive work with other addicts. By intensive, I mean dozens at a time, for me. It’s the only thing that works, in my experience, for a real sex addict like myself, who had lost all power choice and control over his acting out.

    One more point: At each moment in my acting out career, I KNEW that what I was doing was immoral (i.e. untrue to God’s plan for me). I had no choice to BE moral. And my position in a church? Nope. Didn’t help me either. I have a distinctive memory that spells out how powerful this disease is.

    I leave work at my church early one day to go to a library and check the chat rooms for folks to act out with. I find one, and get their address and start to head over. My spirit is screaming “NO, TURN RIGHT” when I get to the onramp. My car turns left. Every time.

    This isn’t about immorality. I am not saying that the behavior isn’t immoral. I am saying that we who were addicted KNEW it was immoral, and could not stop anyway.

    You can all give me your opinions about how you THINK this illness of body, mind and spirit works. I’ve been in the belly of this particular beast. I feel a bit like Captain Picard, who, having escaped the Borg, knows exactly how the Borg works. That of course will never keep me from acting out. But I have a relationship with a Higher Power that has given me new birth--the side effect is that I am cut off from the choice to act out sexually. The problem has been removed. It is the only way I know that works.

    I sponsor dozens of sex addicts. Many have recovered. Please feel free to email me at if you have a problem with compulsive sex. I have many sponsees throughout the world. I am sure I can find one within an hour’s flight of you who has found a solution to this problem.

    -A Sex Addict Anonymous
    2 1/2 years free of his addiction

  • Posted by jb skaggs

    Another issue is that we as churches do not have woman’s pastors as public offices to deal with counseling and handling of women.  They expect male pastors to do so and many times that leads directly to adultery and sometimes divorce.

    Women need female leaders and men need male.

  • Posted by D. Neal

    Thanks for this article. I told my wife a week ago that the world is turning into the Truman Show. The Truman Show is a movie starring Jim Carey about a man brought up in an artificially created world and made to believe for the first thirty years of his life that everything he saw and everyone he knew was real. None of it was.

    While I flipped through the channels of our TV I saw nothing but lewd sexual dipictions of scantily clad women and sex acts. I had no choice but to turn the TV off in order to escape. The reason this reminded me of the Truman Show is because it feels like we are being surrounded by images of sexuality on TV, in theatres, in magazines, on billboards, on VHS and DVD, even in video games. Satan wants us and our children to believe that this is the real world when in actuality it’s all just fantasy. None of what we are being shown is truly attainable; the money, houses, cars or the women. It’s all just imagery that evaporates as soon as we think we’ve attained it.

    In the movie, Truman somehow began to realize that he was being deceived. To prove his theory he set out on a dangerous journey. He fought the waves of the sea that battered him until he was unconcious. When he awoke, he sailed right into the end of the massive studio that had been created to keep him contained. Truman was devastaed to learn that his whole life had been a lie. The voice of the studio’s creator attempted to make him stay. But even though his world was plush and filled with everything he could desire, Truman chose what was real over what was fake.

    In Hebrews 11:25-26 it says about Moses, “24By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.” NIV.

    We have to become like Truman who fought treacherous waves for what was real even though the artificial gave him what looked appealing and satisfying. We must become like Moses who understood that the pleasure of sin was fleeting and temporal but has grave consequences.

    Although the pleasures of sin are real the promises that lure us into sin are never lasting. We must trust God’s promises that are yes and AMEN. His word promises us a crown of life when we resist temptations. We can walk with a clear conscious and our heads uplifted when we walk according to His word. He will strengthen us to overcome every temptation. There is always a way of escape. When we submit ourselves to God and resist the devil, the bible promises us that he will flee. Please pray for every believer to walk worhty of their calling. Pray that we will coose what is real, the blessings of the Lord. God bless…

  • Posted by

    I am not a pastor. I was hooked on porn at one time. If these pastors dont know where to look for help,,,they shouldnt be pastors to start with.  My Heavenlt FATHER,& JESUS helped me stop,all I had to do was ask HIM.

  • Posted by aaron

    I too would have to reitterate xxxchurch.com - it’s a great site!  Also check purityonline.  another great resource for helping with this addiction!

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