One of my first communiqués was to a man who fell into immorality while heading up one of the most respected evangelical campus ministries in the world. He very curtly informed me that he did not want to be a part of this project.

Then there was the man who had been a fixture on Christian radio for more than a decade before losing it all over an adulterous affair. He came at me like a wounded animal, as I listened in stunned silence on the phone.

Why would men who had experienced the redemptive grace of God not want to share that joy with others? Why would they not want to offer words of guidance or correction for the church?

I was discovering that the wounding of fallen believers by others in the church takes a far greater toll than I had ever imagined. In response to feeling betrayed by a believer who falls, many react with their own brand of betrayal. The former radio preacher told me, "Rumor and accusation are the biggest problems. You can't trust even friends to keep confidences." Choking back deep emotion, he breathed, "The pain is awful! . . . . Tell them to obey Galatians 6:1-2", he finally growled.

In Galatians, Paul says, "Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ."

In high-profile cases, the shock and hurt of "counter-betrayal" at the hands of believers is compounded by the media circus that arises. Some reporters are masters at pretending to be supportive while extracting evidence for a public crucifixion. This ravenous publicity machine exposes issues to a public that doesn't have the maturity to handle them - issues that should be handled by those who have learned to employ grace as a means to restoration. What ensues is the modern version of a mob lynching. So the "wounded dog" syndrome in those who fall is the offspring of the "wounded dog" syndrome in those who trusted them - exacerbated by an unforgiving, press-incited public.

Another reason for a reluctance to talk by fallen ministers is the nature of western leadership models. We expect them to be perfect. And so, they must project a flawless image or risk losing the support of the group that placed them on the pedestal.

Someone who has dared to fail faces the daunting task of re-establishing credibility, assuming that option is even held out to them. They must construct a new image - a goal that is impeded when their name continues to be associated with a failed past. It must again become associated with success, trustworthiness and reliability.

What happens when they fall?

The response of one southern church to the sin of their pastor was so egregious that the outcome was almost predictable. Bill (not his real name) had been a pastor in a conservative denomination for 27 years, faithfully married and with kids. One night he was mugged and raped. Though he had never been homosexually oriented before, he secretly began to engage in dangerous sexual encounters in an attempt to be raped again, (a syndrome found in some victims of abuse who use re-enactment as a way to work through the pain and trauma of their abuse).

"I would repent in tears after each encounter", he said. "I'd tell the Lord that it would not happen again but as a pastor there was nowhere to turn for help and so after two or three weeks I would wind up in another park and it would happen again. I lived that way for ten years without the church knowing it. When I was finally confronted, I was given 24 hours to resign my church, clean out my desk and get out! Except for distant friends and relatives, no pastor or anyone else came to me personally to pray or help." By then, he had contracted AIDS.

I knew Bill. The repentance and sorrow over his sin was real, yet his local church and denomination ruthlessly cut him off without recourse. Just weeks before his death, in weak and feebled tones, Bill described his support system to me: "I am on total disability with social security. I've often said it seems like the church stepped out of my life and the government stepped in. That's not the way it's suppose to work."

A friend who counseled him reported that in the last weeks of his life the church would not even place Bill's name in the bulletin to ask for caregiving help. Finally, a gay couple took him in and provided for his needs. His counselor said to me, "I wish people in the church could see what I saw." It was not the church's finest hour.

Why do we shoot them?

1- Because we don't trust 'em!

Americans possess a streak of rebellion that originally served to unify us after fleeing the tyrannies of other lands. Declaring our independence became a matter of pride and we've been suspicious and distrustful of authority figures ever since. So it is particularly galling when, after yielding our independence to follow a leader, he or she fails. Our rebellious, "I told you so" spirit rises up in anger and retribution.

2- Because we are performance-oriented.

We live in a performance-oriented world and attend performance-oriented churches. In a recent lecture, author Richard Foster observed, "We preach grace in the church, but live in legalism and performance."

Even our restoration programs often have at their core, performance righteousness. Good works, evangelistic programs, Bible drills, church attendance, or just plain old guilt are too often the things used to motivate the body of Christ to be faithful. In our efforts to shore-up the weaker brother, "accountability partners" are often made the focus and the hope for a person's ability to remain faithful to God's standards. While such partners can be an important ingredient in the sanctification process, they should not be the focus and the hope for the process.

Performance-orientation is just another sophisticated attempt to avoid an intimate relationship with God, which is the core ingredient in sanctification. Keeping busy for God gives me an excuse for not having to interact with God on the intimate level that He desires. Why would I want to do that? Because I have a distorted image of Him and am afraid to trust Him. I'm afraid He's going to hurt me or reject me. I'm also afraid that I'll lose my independence and control by getting too close to a God who has His own plan for my life.

The Prince of Darkness frantically works to keep me in this trap. He's the one who planted the doubt about the goodness of God in the mind of man (cf. Gen 3:1-5). The evil one knows that if I get to know God as He really is, I will fall hopelessly in love with Him and begin utilizing the power and authority won for me on the Cross. Satan will send me to the mission field if it will keep me from realizing the truth about what God is really like!

3- Because we do not understand grace.

A performance-oriented person fears that if he extends grace to someone, they'll be motivated to go out and sin all the more (cf. Rom 6:1). After all, the only thing that is motivating the performer not to sin, is law. In his mind, if you remove the motivation of law, you remove the motivation not to sin! So, he'll govern the parceling out of mercy by putting conditions on it. It's a control thing.

Jesus, on the other hand, refused to restrict grace, saying to the sinner, "Go and sin no more!" (Jn 8:11) - no conditions! How could it be that that was enough? The answer lies in the hidden power of grace. When someone receives forgiveness at the moment of realizing the darkness of their sin, power is released to demolish the law-fed, fearful heart of stone. It's the fulfillment of God's promise in Ezekiel 36:26-27:

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit in you and move you to follow My decrees and be careful to keep My laws." (cf. also Jer 31:33)

4- Because we allow feelings of betrayal to justify judging others.

There are three kinds of judgment spoken of in the scriptures: (1) presuming to know what is in someone's heart; (2) the passing of a final, eternally condemning sentence against a person; (3) the weighing of known evidence in a conflict within the church, by those in the church whom God has called to that task. The first two forms of judging are forbidden to men. Only the third is allowed and then only by those called and informed by the Holy Spirit.

We must leave judging to God. He's better at it. He knows all the facts. He can read the heart of man. He has an infinite, omniscient mind. Ours is finite and thus incapable of accessing all the facts. Besides, judging is His job. He's the one with a throne. We need to get out of His seat. Do we really think that on the day when we stand before Him in heaven, we are going to be so bold as to sit on His throne? I don't think so. We'll fall before Him as dead men. So why sit on His throne now?

5.- Because we are self-righteous.

We shoot our wounded, when in that moment of pulling the trigger, we consider ourselves better than them - an attitude that is deadly to the call of reconciliation and restoration. Grace cannot operate in such an atmosphere because God resists the proud (Jas 4:6).

When we fall into self-righteousness, we need to get back in touch with the fact of our own depravity. A good barometer for me is the story in Luke 7:36-50 where a sinful woman anoints Jesus' feet with her tears. Jesus proclaims to the indignant Pharisees that her many sins were forgiven because she loved much, but that those who are forgiven little, love little. I believe He said those words not only to reveal the power of forgiveness, but also to unveil the self-righteous hearts of the Pharisees. The woman's sin was obvious to her and so her repentance was deep. But the Pharisees were blind to their equally wicked hearts, and so had little forgiveness to receive.

We all stand in abject need of God's mercy, no matter how good things look on the outside. Keeping that in mind will produce the fruit of love and humility that enables us to redemptively minister to a fallen brother. When I realize that my heart is just as desperately wicked as his, then I can love him back into fellowship with God and the church.

6- Because we lack discernment in detecting true repentance and are afraid of the embarrassment of failing or being manipulated by an unrepentant sinner.

When someone falls, it can make us uncomfortable to realize that the process of dealing with the situation requires the use of gifts that we may not have properly developed or maintained. It rankles us to realize that if we get involved their fall might wind up making us look bad!

Discernment is a necessary gift in these matters. People will often deny or minimize what they've done. Many appear to be sorry about their sin when they're just sorry they got caught. Since we can get fooled, we need to be able to accurately perceive the depth of a person's repentance. We need to learn to hear the voice of God in ministering to others and that means developing our own intimate relationship with Him.

How should we respond to a fallen Christian?

Because we are designed to communicate the image of God, it is just as critical how we respond to sinners in the church as it is outside the church. Some receive a distorted image of God and refuse to believe in Him when we represent Him falsely. In such cases, they're not rejecting the true God, but the hateful, unforgiving deity that they've seen reflected in us. We thereby become accomplices in Satan's master plan to keep them from God by preventing them from discovering what He is really like.

We also need to be cautious about discriminating between sins, in our attitude toward people. For example, those who gossip are never considered as having "fallen" at all - perhaps because gossip is such an acceptable sin among believers. A brother caught in a lie is rarely considered as having "fallen" either, despite the fact that gossiping and lying are found on some of the same lists of sins that we quote to condemn the divorcee or the sexual sinner (cf. Rom 1:26-32; 2 Cor 12:20-21; Col 3:5-10). In the church, sex-related sins are usually the unforgivable ones, 1st Corinthians 6:9-11 notwithstanding.

James 2:10 says, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it." And so it is that any sin will separate you eternally from God if you haven't given your life to Jesus. It's all very serious business!

However, the full context of James 2:8-13 renders a deeper truth still. Verse 13 tells us that James is actually arguing about the need for mercy to triumph over judgment! His point is that since the slightest transgression produces the same eternal death as the biggest of sins, then the barometer for dealing with a brother's sin needs to be other than law. It should instead be the same mercy that sets us free from the law of sin and death - that mercy provided to us by faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice on our behalf.

Elsewhere, the Apostle Paul writes that it is grace that teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions and that it is grace that teaches us to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age (cf. Titus 2:11-14).

If there is one core message of the New Covenant, it is that the standard of the law can only be met through the mercy won for us by Jesus. And it is our love for Christ, sprung from His mercy in the midst of our otherwise hopeless condition, that is meant to motivate us to obey the law. We are to keep the law not because we should, we'd better, or we ought, but because we want to, purely and fully from our heart. The only thing that can give birth to such pure inner desire is the motivating grace, mercy and love of Jesus that we receive in the midst of "knowing" Him.

It says in 2nd Peter 1:3: "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness." Certainly, as His disciples, we are to express that same heart of mercy to those who fall and who seek God's forgiveness for their sin. For it is that very mercy that is the power of God to motivate them not to fall again.

An Offensive Game Plan

Don't play the defensive, "Uh oh, what do I do now?" game with sin and brokenness. Be prepared! Know ahead of time what you're going to do when a believer falls. Have a plan already in place, with proper resources at hand.

1. Be part of creating an atmosphere of grace in the church, so that people feel free to be honest and vulnerable in confessing their sins. The creation of such an atmosphere must first come from the pulpit. This involves regular teaching on such things as: humility, grace, unconditional love, considering others as better than ourselves, the centrality to the Christian walk of intimacy with the Father, the principles of spiritual authority and warfare, and the desire and the power of God to forgive, heal and restore anyone, no matter what they have done.

Creating an atmosphere that facilitates honest confession also involves leadership's willingness to be open and vulnerable about their failings as well. The dishonest posturing of sinless perfection by leaders has been a debilitating phenomenon in the growth of the body and must not continue.

2. Help raise up resource people for specific problem areas - e.g., divorce, homosexuality, addiction, adultery, child abuse, anger, teen rebellion, etc. These will often be people whom God has forgiven and healed of similar problems, though not always. Sometimes God uses someone who has been strong in an area to serve as model and coach for someone who has fallen. Establish a church "restoration council" that can facilitate situations as they arise, creating restoration programs and assigning "accountability partners", peer counselors, prayer ministers, mentors, etc.

In one church, I established a "Men's Healing Group". It was not "sin-specific", so there was no stigma attached to attending. The group decided what they wanted to study and worked on that issue until everyone was satisfied that we had done all that we could. It was "preventative" ministry. Even if you did not struggle with the topic being studied, you were there to become equipped to help those who did.

Our first topic was "Anger". We worked through a book on that for six weeks - sharing and praying with one another. By then, trust had been established among group members and we were able to tackle "Sexual Sin" as our next topic without losing anyone. It turned out to be the most effective model for encouraging growth and healing among men in the church that I have ever seen, and it will work just as well with women.

What happens when it's done right?

On the Cross, the redemptive power of God poured forth for the sins of the world. Even today, God's transforming power pours forth during acts of grace and mercy. In one recent church board meeting, just as a vote was about to be taken to disfellowship a young man for having experimented with homosexuality during his marriage, one deacon blurted out: "Is kicking the young man out of the church the response that Christ would have in this situation?" In minutes, the Spirit of God had taken over and a plan had been devised to first offer assistance to the man and his wife. Not really knowing what to expect, two elders were sent to reach out to the couple. For all they knew, they would be met with denial and anger. But as they extended love and grace to the young man, he broke down in tears and exclaimed, "Nobody from church has ever offered to help me with this before." Today, that young man lives a sexually pure life.

A Blueprint

Matthew 18:15-20 is our blueprint - going to our fallen brother first in private, then if he does not listen, with one or two others, and if he still will not listen, then to the church. The gentle spirit requested in Galatians 6:1-2 is critical. They must see love and grace in our eyes, for if they see condescension, judgment and hatred, we will not be useful in bringing them into restoration. They must see Jesus in us, for as with any bondage, knowing why helps, but knowing Him, heals.

2 Corinthians 5:11-21 calls us to be compelled by love (v14), exhorting our fellow Christian to live out the new creation in Christ that they are (v17), not counting their sins against them (v19), believing in them again and calling them back to Him so that they can fulfill their destiny in becoming the righteousness of God (v21).