Protecting the Sheep

You may have seen the news this week of the disgusting sin of Kenny Baldwin, a Baptist pastor in Virginia. I will spare you the details in this blog, but a simple Google search will fill you in on all that you need to know - and likely more than you would ever want to know. In short, Baldwin engaged in inexcusable actions with a minor. I will share no more than that here.

Baldwin is incredibly popular. You may have seen his clips while scrolling social media, particularly on Instagram or TikTok. He was a very common speaker in various youth conferences and pastor’s conferences around the nation, especially the south. He spoke with clarity and boldness. He was funny, engaging, and could have you eating from the palm of his hand. By the end of one of his sermons, you would be ready to charge the gates of hell with a water pistol.

But none of those things - and I mean NONE of them - are listed in the Bible’s given qualifications for a pastor. They may accompany the spiritual gifting that pastors are given, but those are not the qualities God instructs His church to look for when calling a man to the pastorate. We have gotten our priorities so woefully out of order that we no longer know what it looks like for a man to be a pastor. We can see the most engaging, fiery, captivating speaker on Earth and say, “THAT is a pastor,” without ever looking into the caverns of his life and determining whether or not he stacks up with what the Bible prescribes a pastor to be. We can then look at the most gentle, faithful, family-driven, prayerful, and patient man on Earth, but if he speaks monotonously and puts us to sleep, we would say, “that man is NOT a pastor.”

Christian, let me say this clearly: if we continue doing that, we are setting ourselves up for more of the same kind of destructive sin exhibited by Baldwin and many others in recent days.

Let’s just examine what the Bible says a pastor should be, directly from 1 Timothy chapter 3. (Side note: not long ago, this passage was used to defend the complementarian viewpoint of the pastorate; being a man is but one qualification given, and while it is the most cut and dry, it is no more important than the rest.) Paul says a pastor or overseer must be firstly above reproach. That is a directive to examine the character, history, and reputation of a man. He says he is to be the husband of one wife, meaning - among other things - he is a faithful, loving husband who cherishes the one wife that he has. He is to be temperate and self-controlled, not a bully or contentious; these related qualities stick out like a sore thumb to me because it seems as though we have not only ignored them, but we often call men who are the polar opposite. Rather than calling men who are gentle and soft spoken, we tend to fall for men who would preach WWE-style promos for sermons and lead as aggressively as humanly possible. That’s not to say that pastors won’t have to engage in their fair share of fights, but they should never go looking for one. Other qualities include being respectable, hospitable, apt to teach, free from the love of money, and a manager of his household.

NONE of those include his ability to draw a crowd, captivate an audience, or fill an altar. Again, those things may accompany a man who is gifted by the Holy Spirit for preaching and teaching, but they are not the characteristics God has instructed us to look for in the man filling the pulpit.

That leads me to three related lessons from this sad event.

First, churches need to reexamine how they evaluate who leads them. We have fallen into the trap of buying into men who can wow audiences and sell tons of tee shirts but whose character suggests they’ve spent a lifetime on Capitol Hill. We have done so, at least in part, because we have erroneously decided that the power vested in the church comes from men and not from God. We believe there are certain men who just have more of “it” than others, and that if we don’t get one of those, we lose our power. I cannot say this clearly enough: the power that we have as the church of the living God does not come from any man, no matter how gifted of a speaker, teacher, or salesman he may be. The power that we have comes from the God who loves us, saves us, and calls us. As long as we have Him, we have His power. His power can use and fill anybody, anywhere, anytime. We don’t need to find that man with an “extra dose” of it. We need to trust that God has poured it out on His church and rest in that promise.

Secondly, we as pastors need to stop trying to be somebody that we’re not. We need to stop watching all the reels and videos of famous pastors and saying to ourselves, “I want to preach like that.” We need to preach however God has uniquely gifted us to preach. If you’re soft spoken, be soft spoken to the glory of God. If you’re animated and energetic, be so to the glory of God. If you’re not John MacArthur, don’t try to be John MacArthur. If you’re not Billy Graham, don’t try to be Billy Graham. God didn’t call you so you can then imitate somebody else; God called you to imitate Christ, and you can’t do that wearing somebody else’s shoes.

Thirdly, we as pastors need to remind ourselves that we are sinners too. While the sin of Kenny Baldwin is particularly vile and ultimately disqualifying of the pastorate, we also must look at ourselves in the mirror and acknowledge the sin in our own lives. Our churches have called us to lead them, and whether they did their due diligence on our character or not, we must every day line our lives up with the qualifications God has given. We must pray every day that God would make us more and more true to those qualifications. If I meet them today, I want to meet them even more tomorrow. This is a holy calling, and it isn’t one that we should play games with. We need to be serious about our lives, acknowledge our fallenness, and pray that God will continue to build us up in character and faithfulness.

Finally, let me simply say that no one is rejoicing in the fall of this man. It is downright heartbreaking to see someone who was loved and trusted fall in this manner. But our heartbrokenness needs to take two forms: we must be heartbroken first for the victims of his actions and secondly for the reproach brought upon the church. That brokenness must then drive us to action. We must pray for the victims of Baldwin’s crimes, as well as the victims of many other such events. We must protect the sheep in our own flocks from similar circumstances - that means not only praying for them, but it could also mean teaching them what signs to look out for, background checking children’s workers, training a security team, investing in security systems, and more. We also must pray for our own selves, that God would continually mold us more and more into the image of Christ, and that our character would resemble that which God has called us to exhibit.

Pastor: protect the sheep.

Church: protect the sheep.

Christian: protect the sheep.

Protect. The. Sheep.