This morning I felt a familiar feeling as I watched the morning news. One of the leading stories was about Arthur Schirmer, a Pennsylvania pastor charged with murdering two wives. When I heard the word pastor, that’s when I got the feeling.
I want to be really clear. This is a tragic set of circumstances and, if proven guilty, pastor Schirmer should be punished. When human beings commit evil acts the public should be informed and justice should be done.
But this morning as I watched the video (repeated somewhere between six and ten times) of Schirmer in handcuffs being led from his home to a waiting police transport, as I heard the news reporter strongly accent both syllables in the word “pastor,” I still got the feeling. I guess I would describe it as cross between irritation and grief mixed with a little bit of nausea.
Maybe it goes back to the early days of my ministry when I was the pastor of my first church. It was the mid 1980’s and the church was a small congregation in the north end of Mecklenburg County, NC. I was pastoring the church, commuting sixty miles one way to college and working side jobs to make ends meet, when the Jim Baker scandal broke. You may remember it.
Jim Baker was the head of the PTL (Praise The Lord) empire based just inside the South Carolina line, not very far from my little church. He went to prison after bilking millions from his TV parishioners and having an affair with a ministry employee. I remember driving back from Charlotte one night after visiting someone in the hospital.
My car was a 1970 something, nauseating brown Ford station wagon that I bought from another pastor for $75.00. (Yes, I’m that old.) The front was damaged from a previous encounter with a deer. I had to pull the grill out with a crow bar and tie the head light in place with wire. It was a real peach!
So I’m heading up the interstate in my station wagon with no air conditioner listening to one of the many radio talk show hosts waxing eloquent about Jim Baker, Jimmy Swagart, Robert Tilton and a few others. (By the way, how would you like to be a preacher named Robert Helton when Robert Tilton was on the air. Can you guess what nick name my fellow co-eds gave me?)
The thing about this particular radio personality was that he made it sound (unintentionally I’m sure) like all preachers are basically cut from the same cloth. Driving back from praying with a sick person I found myself included in the list of preachers gone wild. Suddenly I was being lumped into a pile of reprobates and charlatans. And that’s when I got the feeling the first time. I almost had to pull the nauseating brown station wagon over and… well… you know.
So I think that there needs to be a little balance brought to the media’s portrayal of clergy. I want to respectfully point out that for every bad preacher on the six o’clock news there’s another thousand or so actually doing what preachers are supposed to do. Those preachers don’t get much media attention.
I know a youth pastor who helps kids learn what it means to seriously follow Jesus, who stays awake all night for lock-ins (a long standing youth ministry tradition) and organizes a tutoring ministry for children who fall through the cracks. I know a pastor who regularly visits home bound seniors, who prays with them and makes them laugh. I know a pastor who visits men in the jail, prays with them and reads passages of scripture. I know a pastor who helps homeless people feel like real human beings when she spends time with them listening to their stories and sharing their sorrows.
The list could go on and on. Maybe it’s inappropriate for me to brag on pastors since I am one, but I thought it might be helpful to bring a little balance to the media coverage.
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