Pastor 1 has rightly been defrocked. Even apart from the relationship, I think it’s hard to square his other behaviors with the requirements for pastors given in Scripture. We need to become far more serious than we have been about corruption, starting with the actual real enforcement of all the Pauline and Petrine demands for pastoral qualification. My point is not to minimize the evils of corruption, then, but rather to note that even if it sometimes seems as if corruption is the norm, there still remain many faithful pastors. 

I’m thinking a lot about three pastors this week.
Pastor 1 is in his early 70s and recently was removed from ministry due to a five-year long relationship with a woman in her 20s that was not sexual in nature, but was still a violation of the pastor’s wedding vows.
Prior to being defrocked he worked for a nonprofit that he ran and that paid him $150,000 annually with an additional $100,000 paid “by the organization or other related organizations,” according to tax filings while claiming he worked for them 40 hours a week. We can’t view his church’s financials, obviously, but one imagines the church paid him a wage and also expected that he worked 40 hours a week there—which raises the question of how a man in his 70s is logging 80 hour weeks.
It would also mean that the man was making, at minimum, $250,000 annually from ministry, if the $100,000 supplemental income on the tax form is from the church. Or it might also mean that he made $250,000 from the non-profit, with the church salary (and book royalties and speaking gigs) layered on top of that.
This, incidentally, is what Carl Trueman had in mind when he coined the term “big eva.” Trueman specifically had in view pastors who become internet brands, become largely divorced from the work of shepherding in local churches, and who become surrogate pastors for Christians who spend too much time online and too little in their local church. (This old piece from the Baylys, by the way, is helpful for learning a bit about how ministry finances often work in the evangelical world.)
Even before the inappropriate relationship was known, this first pastor had a reputation for being a rather expensive and “high-maintenance” speaker with “very, very unusual food requirements,” as one acquaintance of his put it on social media. He reportedly would demand to be taken to stores that sell thousand dollar pens on certain trips, and also had highly specific requirements regarding wardrobe, including what brands of suit he wears and even specific ties he would wear.
You know pastor 1’s name, which is why I’m not bothering to say it here. What’s worse, you probably know a number of other pastors that fit this profile. I certainly do. But if that’s all you know about American church life, you know something true, but you also know too little.
Pastor 2 is in his early to mid 60s. He recently decided to step down from his senior pastor role in a church of 250 after nearly 35 years in the church and around 30 years as the senior pastor, faithfully and quietly shepherding a congregation, preaching the Word, and administering the sacraments. In that time, he’s helped plant two churches and launch an RUF. Now one of the churches he helped plant is planting and there may be a further plant happening in the medium-term future.
During his career he has pastored his congregation through two building fires and a move after the first fire destroyed their building. He has dealt with many complicated shepherding cases in his own congregation and in the presbytery.
He has sent dozens of people to seminary over the years and is known and respected amongst staff at the seminary where he graduated and where he has sent many people as students.
He has also been instrumental in helping the presbytery become a far healthier place. He has sought to create an atmosphere of care and trust amongst the presbytery’s teaching elders and has been remarkably successful in that, insuring that the men called to ministry there all recognize one another as brothers, are all praying for each other, and trust the basic virtue, theological soundness, and good will of their fellow pastors. That sounds like it should be the norm, but in too many places it isn’t.
He has done all of this without any notable scandal in his household and while faithfully caring for his family.
He’s stepping down so that he’s able to care better for his in-laws and mother, all of whom are in their 80s or 90s and in poor health. But he’s still staying active in ministry, just in a less senior role.
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We see that grace in chapter 6—God showing favour to Noah and rescuing him and his family.  We see that grace in chapter 9 with God’s covenant to preserve creation and never again destroy it with a flood.  And we have seen that grace in the promise of the serpent-crusher. What about the serpent-crusher?  Keep following the line of descendants.  This section ends with another genealogy (chapter 11): from Shem to Abram.  The search for the serpent-crusher continues!  Abram will be the next great character in God’s story of salvation but he will not be the serpent crusher, we have to carry on many more generations until we come to him. 

  My dad loves genealogies—working on the family tree.  I know of at least one occasion where our summer holiday included a picnic in a graveyard—dad was gathering information from a gravestone.  I suppose the thrill is in the search, searching further and further backwards into history and the people who were there.
            There are genealogies in Genesis and they too are part of a search, but this search looks forwards not backwards, for it is anticipating someone that is to come.
            This search begins at chapter 3, verse 15.  There the LORD God says to the serpent:
 And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your offspring and hers
He will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.
            Note in this verse the singular ‘he’ and ‘his’!  There is an individual we are looking for.  We are searching for the offspring of Eve who will crush the serpent’s head?  [1]
Cain and Abel (chapter 4)
In chapter 4 we read of the first of Eve’s offspring.  Cain is the first-born.  Will he be the one to crush the serpents head?  No!  In fact Cain crushes his brother Abel!  In this murder we see how the breakdown in relationship between God and humanity inevitably leads to a breakdown in relationship among humans.
With regard to finding to the serpent-crusher Cain and Abel lead to a dead end (in Abel’s case literally!).  Abel has no descendants, and when we read of Cain’s (4:17-24) we see little hope.  The line from Cain leads to Lamech, who boasts of killing a man for striking him (4:23).
So where will the offspring of Eve that will crush the serpents head come from?  In verse 25 we read of the birth of another son born in the place of Abel, Seth.  A new line of descendants begins and immediately it is associated with the worship of God— at that time men began to call on the name of the LORD (verse 26).  This is the line of descendants that we are to follow as we search for the serpent-crusher.
The account of Adam’s line (chapter 5)
You might be tempted to skip over chapter 5 if you are working your way through Genesis.  Certainly it is not the most exciting read: ‘so and so had lived for a certain number of years, he became the father of someone else, he lived for a certain number of more years and had other sons and daughters.  Altogether he lived a certain number of years, and then he died.’  The pattern is repetitive!  But there are important things being taught here!
To start with a certain line is being traced, only one member in each generation is mentioned: we are moving in a direction towards one person.  This line, as we will see, continues right through Genesis and contrary to expectation it does not always continue through the first-born—it goes through Seth rather than Cain, Isaac rather than Ishmael, Jacob rather than his first-born twin brother Esau.
This genealogy also serves as a reminder that the consequence of sin—death. Again and again we read—and then he died.  People don’t like to talk about death, some even try to avoid the word.  Apparently there is a hospital in America that refers to death as ‘negative patient care outcome’[2].  However death is a harsh reality of life.
Noah (chapters 6-9) ‘Grace and Covenant’:
In chapter five the line leads to Noah who is introduced by his father’s hopeful words, “He will comfort us in the labour and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed” (5:29).

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When I was a much younger Christian, v15 confused me. Here it is in theLSB, “Now the spiritual man discerns all things, but he is discerned by no one.” What does that mean? The regenerate are able to discern and examine all things in the wisdom and knowledge of God because that is part of “spiritually discerning” everything. It is the second part of the sentence that confused me. Obviously, unbelievers are able to discern or see or recognize Christian’s faults and shortcomings. However, they are not able to evaluate their true nature as spiritual people because they are not given that as the regenerate have been.

13 Who has encompassed the Spirit of Yahweh,Or as His counselor has informed Him? Isaiah 40:13 (LSB)
When we observe Christian leaders operate according to the world’s standards and methods with pastors taking on roles other than shepherd of the sheep then responding to righteous criticism with further deception, what we are actually witnessing are professing Christians not walking within the wisdom that is available to all true believers via the Mind of Christ. This same situation is seen in all who have been deceived by and drawn into the “Innovation Cult” as well. That would include those proponents of easy-believism in all its forms. We see it in “church organizations” that are built around a personality rather than following a shepherd of the sheep who is obediently following the Lord as he should. When a Christian leader becomes the focus rather than Christ in a ministry then we see this idolatry begin to take shape. How often do we see one of these personalities build up a large church then when he moves on to the next church the one he built just falls apart? This should not be and this is indicative of a form of Christianity that is built around this personality cultic focus rather than around following Christ.
When a church doesn’t seem to be growing fast enough then the leadership changes to a seeker-sensitive or “missional” focus then we know that that church may indeed grow, but that growth will be the fruit of the “Innovation Cult” and not of the Holy Spirit growing a Church. It is manmade growth grounded in the fleshly ways of the world and produces “professing Christians” who are biblically and doctrinally ignorant. They are the simply religious. When we point out these things to the apologists for this sort of thing, the push back is usually hateful and sarcastic with an emphasis on us being legalistic, old-fashioned, and stuck in the past. What should our response be to that? However we respond, it must be within the wisdom from the Holy Spirit that is manifest in the Mind of Christ.
14 But a natural man does not accept the depths of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually examined. 15 But he who is spiritual examines all things, yet he himself is examined by no one. 16 For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL DIRECT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ. 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 (LSB)
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