My mouth was dry and cottony. Each syllable, one by one, had to be forced out. These were tough words to say to my pastor, boss, and ministry colleague: “Last April when I came across you and Linda arm in arm, I felt hurt that you had betrayed your marriage and your ordination.”
I’d thought out my lines the day before, and they’d been reviewed by the intervention counselor from the alcohol and drug abuse treatment facility. Now, speaking to Phil, I’d begun with reassurance: “Phil, I’m here because I care about you, I care about Carol and your children, and I care about our church.” But still, I hesitated.
I had scrawled the word “eyes” across the top of my script because I wanted to be sure to maintain eye contact with Phil across the large conference table at the presbytery office. After our suspicions and hurts of the past two years, I wanted this encounter to be clean.
“Two weeks ago on a Tuesday afternoon,” I continued, “you came into the church office. Your speech was slurred, and I smelled alcohol on your breath. I felt angry that alcohol was back in your life. I’m asking you now to accept the help being offered today.”
Despite the awkwardness of the moment, I saw in Phil’s face a relief perhaps not dissimilar to what I felt as the words tumbled out.
How had we gotten to that warm fall afternoon in a downtown office? What had gone wrong, so that I found myself part of a team composed of Phil’s wife, fellow staff members, church elders, and denominational officials, who, one by one, were telling him our hurt, anger, and sadness at his alcoholism? How had the “little secret” of one man’s life come to dominate the lives of colleagues and parishioners?
Allow me to tell the story of First Church, and how the congregation and I slowly came to recognize an unfolding crisis.
A Risky Call
The search committee that brought Phil to the church said from the beginning that they had found “a diamond in the rough.” In his mid-30s and just a few months older than me, Phil had served two previous churches for a total of ten years, the first as solo pastor, the second with a couple of part-time support people.
A talented guitarist and song leader, Phil had made staid Presbyterian worship services come alive with a fresh style of praise. Energetic and full of stories and humor, his sermons helped attract young families and many previously disenchanted baby boomers. Clearly nonministerial, his pulpit manner attracted to the church many who otherwise might have thought they didn’t belong.
Considering his record and potential, the committee thought it an acceptable risk to bring someone from a small church in a rural setting to a large church in a suburban setting.
Besides, I was already there as church administrator and program director to help keep things organized and stable. What a wonderful team we’d make! To Phil’s ideas I’d add my organizational ability. To Phil’s energy I’d add my natural caution.
We’d talked some about possible conflicts, but those seemed manageable. Phil would be the tone-setting leader and pastor. As a nonordained professional, I would know how to get things done. Our tasks and roles were to be clearly different.
What the church did not know was that in addition to his giftedness, Phil would also bring his alcoholism, which had plagued him for a dozen of his three dozen years. And at the same time he was interviewing with our search committee, he was involved in an adulterous relationship.
In fact, charges of inappropriate behavior with women had dogged him since his first pastorate. But presbytery officials thought Phil had put those problems behind him. And none of the people called as references had any concerns in this area. Thus, the search committee was left in the dark.
Early Signs, Early Denial
For a year, none of us on the church staff suspected anything was wrong. We did know, however, that we were dealing with someone who showed flashes of energy, insight, and innovation but who had trouble carrying through on ideas, who seemed intimidated by the people he wanted to lead, and who wasn’t always honest with those whose trust he needed to inspire.
He seemed uncomfortable with setting specific plans and dates. The administrative secretary began asking the same questions week after week: “Who is assisting in worship this week?” “Will you have a docket for the Session meeting?” “Has a date been set for the baptism?”
Invariably he would avoid answering directly. “Oh, yeah, I need to get on that.” “I always forget. I must remember in a big church to get those details early. I’m not used to getting such details in advance. I’m still working on that,” he’d say, or “Some details are up in the air.”
When Phil failed to attend important meetings or make needed calls, I tried to tell myself those characteristics were part of the visionary personality. At the same time, I felt guilty that I was unable, and increasingly unwilling, to confront Phil and offer my help in overcoming those deficiencies.
I began to feel angry that people considered my gifts, especially in administration, the perfect match for Phil’s. It seemed Phil’s administrative laxness was simply shifting increasing administrative burdens to me.
More than once, Phil would promise a committee that he would see that office staff would prepare or mail pertinent information. But after the committee meeting, the chairperson would ask me to make sure the task got done. Not wanting to see things fall apart, I’d double check.
Staff meetings became more and more uncomfortable. Because he usually didn’t follow up on tasks he agreed to, Phil hated being asked about them. So I’d ask, and he would get “caught.”
After a while, however, I tired of these games. I supervised most of the full-time staff at First Church. The first January Phil was with us, I brought a list of vacation requests, including my own, to Phil to take to the personnel committee for routine approval. After the meeting I asked Phil about the vacation requests, and he assured me all was fine.
But then the March report of the personnel committee meeting showed approval only of Phil’s vacation dates. None of the other staff’s dates were listed, and Phil’s overlapped mine (a situation we tried to avoid). When I asked Phil what had happened, he admitted he’d forgotten to bring the other dates for review. He hadn’t meant to steal my dates, but he didn’t think it was really that big a problem for us both to be gone.
Profusely apologetic, he took full responsibility for the foul-up and assured me he’d never make that kind of mistake again. He said he knew he was a hard person to work with.
I don’t like confrontations, and after Phil repeated several such similar episodes with me and others, I quit raising issues.
Resentment, hurt, and mistrust hounded the other staff people, too. As we gradually realized this was a shared misery, however, we began to relish the camaraderie.
For example, Phil would often give different staff members different explanations for his frequent absences from the office, and sometimes we would discover his explanations proved false. As the staff began comparing notes on these inconsistencies, we’d talk about deeper hurts he had inflicted on us. Frankly, too many hours were taken up in these complaint sessions. We didn’t like what we were doing, but fellow staff members seemed to be the only ones who understood what we were going through.
Early on, Phil showed a tendency to strike up warm relationships with certain types of women-usually women between the ages of 25 and 45 who were in good physical shape. Most were vivacious and outgoing but who also displayed some sense of vulnerability-divorced women or young widows, those with emotionally unavailable husbands, or those enduring family or marital stress.
Phil, who was somewhat shy, awkward, or inattentive in most personal relationships, was warm, friendly, and open with these women. With no apparent embarrassment, he’d talk candidly and freely about his own life and the lack of understanding he felt from others, including his wife. And with a smooth ease, he’d move close physically-bumping, touching, stroking. Much of this was done publicly, but not overtly. Phil had learned to do it subtly to maintain deniability. And Phil would often tell others he was just “the touching kind.”
At first the reports through the grapevine said that those women thought Phil just wanted a little understanding and reassurance: “He’s really insecure, you know.” Never the touchy-feely type, I concluded that my discomfort was due to my inhibitions.
Throughout that first year, I often thought about writing my resume and seeking new employment. But I liked serving First Church, and people I respected told me how much I was needed to provide stability and continuity. So I did nothing.
Clearer Signs, Stronger Denial
One early autumn midafternoon at the beginning of his second year at the church, Phil came into the office after having been at home for several hours. He was taking the afternoon off and had come by to drop off his two children at choir practice. He was staggering, his speech was slurred, and his breath was overpowering. He was talkative and much more friendly than normal. He was drunk.
I was stunned. I hadn’t seen anyone like that at church since my youth-director days when the group would be crashed occasionally by intoxicated kids. He stayed a few minutes and left.
I sat in my office for a few minutes and then went to the outer office and shared my suspicions with the two secretaries. “I think Phil was drunk,” I said tentatively.
“So what else is new?” The response surprised me.
For several months the secretaries had seen and smelled the signs of excessive drinking. Searching for a file in Phil’s office, one secretary found an empty wine bottle. Another had discovered a clearly “noncoffee odor” coming from Phil’s ever-present coffee cup.
We had been offering an adult class on alcoholism, which one of the secretaries was taking. As the teacher had described alcoholic behavior-memory blackouts, inconsistent excuses, urgency about finances, preoccupation with health-she found herself listening to Phil being described by someone who didn’t even know him.
But, unbelievable to me now, I still wasn’t ready to accept the diagnosis. Yes, Phil had been drinking that afternoon. But he’d also been off, maybe raking leaves or doing some work around the house. Maybe he’d had a beer or two, but that was no crime in our church or community. I am not a teetotaler myself. Okay, perhaps his famous bad judgment, but no more.
Fall turned to winter, and the episodes continued. Often I had smelled nothing when the secretaries told me they thought Phil had been drinking. I’d ask if it might have been mouthwash or cough drops.
Nonetheless, on two more occasions I recognized clearly that Phil was influenced by alcohol. I shared my growing concern with a good friend who was also a part-time pastor on our staff. He responded that he had seen Phil under the influence one Sunday morning before the early service. It was becoming harder and harder to deny the problem.
Reverberations at Home
In the second year of Phil’s tenure, my wife’s tolerance with the situation was just about exhausted. Debra had spotted his relational insecurity almost immediately. My reports of his drinking and womanizing concerned her but never became the preoccupying issues they were to me. In her mind, Phil was a spiritual blank, not qualified or equipped to be pastor.
She saw me coming home spent, drained by the day’s experiences and frustrations. Seeing the stress I was under, she became angry at the lay leadership of the church, which wasn’t acknowledging any problems. She grew impatient with me for my “naive faith in the system” and my loyalty to the institution.
My wife and children, who deserved a contributing husband and father, were asked to wait a little longer until things got worked out.
First Tentative Attempts to Help
Not knowing what else to do, I decided to talk to an elder on our personnel committee.
As a church staff person, I had come to believe that if things between my pastor/boss and me were not the way I wanted them, and if they could not be resolved, then I should leave. I also recognized that even the unfounded implication of misconduct could ruin a career. I didn’t like what I was doing.
“Tom, I have some concerns about Phil,” I began. “I think it’s more than his work style and habits that others have mentioned. What I say must be kept in strict confidence. I am making no charges, and if what I say makes no sense to you, you’re free to forget that this conversation ever took place.”
Tom was a personnel professional and on the one hand probably couldn’t be shocked easily. But he was also a pastor’s son and a pastor’s father and held the ministry in the highest esteem. I was having a hard time reading the expression on his face.
“I have reasons to believe,” I continued, “that Phil may be having a problem with drinking, with seeing other women, and with honesty.”
“Can you tell me your reasons?”
“I’ll tell you some reasons, but I also want to give you some reasons not to believe me.” I went on to tell Tom that from the beginning I had been disappointed in Phil’s selection as pastor. I had never felt he had the personal or spiritual qualities the position required. Further, for reasons I still did not fully understand but for which I took my share of responsibility, Phil and I had not hit it off well. So what I was sharing about Phil’s drinking, womanizing, and lying might all be a figment of the imagination of a disappointed subordinate. Then I told him what I had seen over the previous several months.
Tom thanked me for my candor, assured me of his confidentiality, and told me he would get back to me if anything else came up. Tom, however, would not be a significant player in the remaining episodes of our drama.
Two months after my conversation with Tom, I had my second conference with a personnel committee elder. John was a backpacking buddy and an old friend. An early-retirement executive, he was a pro at troubleshooting staff problems. John was newly elected to the Session and had been chair of the pastor nominating committee that had selected Phil. His first personnel committee meeting had been a shocker. As a result of my and other’s comments, they had met without Phil to discuss the rumored drinking problem.
“Can you tell me anything?” John asked more as a friend than a personnel committee member. I felt a definite sinking feeling inside. Had I sabotaged Phil’s ministry by making mountains from mole hills?
So I continued in a tentative tone. Yes, I thought there might be a problem, and while I had personally seen some situations that raised concerns for me, I nevertheless would urge John and the personnel committee to corroborate my concerns by what others had to say.
The next month was agonizing. Phil was remote, defensive, and unapproachable. At staff meetings he lashed out at staff persons who asked simple questions of clarification or who raised legitimate logistical concerns about planned events. “Do you really think this is a concern of yours?” he’d ask caustically.
In committee and social occasions, his fuse seemed uncharacteristically short. When Phil failed to show up at one meeting of a church renewal task force to which he belonged, a member called Phil at home to ask if he would be joining them that evening. She was told she “had no right to tell a pastor how to spend his time.” She was shocked, especially since the group, over the months, had become close.
Evidence of “the problem” continued to mount: more episodes of insobriety and the clear emergence of one suspicious relationship with another woman. The month before I had come across the two of them arm in arm alone on a church patio. No need to call it an affair, for I had no way of knowing. But it was inappropriate. That’s not how married people relate to a member of the opposite sex who is not their spouse.
Pseudorepentance and Anger
Summer had come, and with it the vacation season. I’d be gone for a couple of weeks, and as soon as I got back, Phil would be gone for a month-some breathing room, time to get perspective on the whole crazy year. I was still in town on my first Sunday of vacation, but my family and I worshipped with another congregation. Before we could leave for a week of camping, though, I received one and then another phone call: Had I heard about Phil’s sermon on Sunday?
In the course of discussing Galatians 5:1 and freedom from spiritual slavery, Phil surprised the congregation with bad news and then reassured them with good news. “Several years ago,” he said, “when I first came to this community, I was under a lot of pressure to succeed, and I began to drink too much. But then I realized I had become a slave to alcohol and I quit drinking. Now I know that to say yes to the freedom promised in Christ is to say no to alcohol.”
Apparently it had played well. The congregation was impressed with the candor and honesty. They respected the willingness to be vulnerable. They rejoiced in the victory.
I, on the other hand, was furious. Didn’t they realize they’d been conned? “Several years ago, when I first came to this community”-several years? It had been less than two years! Certainly someone should have caught that. And the code on my calendar, where I had started noting Phil’s erratic behavior, showed but five weeks since I’d seen Phil in the office drunk.
It was not a good vacation. I was preoccupied with the church situation. The tent got put up, the pictures taken, and the scenery noted. But my mind was at church.
I didn’t know that sometime during the five weeks between my last calendar entry and the confession sermons Phil had stopped drinking. The personnel committee had hinted that they thought there might be a problem, and Phil’s wife had confronted him about his excessive drinking. Phil took the hint. He quit drinking, and he began seeing a psychotherapist to sort out some issues going back to childhood.
I returned from vacation and saw Phil for just a few minutes before he left for his vacation. He had lost weight. His complexion looked healthier, and there was a liveliness in his eyes I’d never seen before. Later a postcard arrived from Phil during his vacation: he felt better than ever and was enjoying his family in new and wonderful ways.
I felt betrayed. After my agony of the previous two years, he just ups and gets better! The bitterness that had been directed at Phil turned inward. I was ashamed of my attitude and actions of the past year.
Getting Help for Me
After Phil’s return from vacation, my wife had asked me to seek professional help if for nothing else than to find a way to manage my own stress. My therapist was well-trained and aware of the dynamics of ministry and congregations. She helped me identify patterns by which I responded to extreme tension. For example, I grew up in a family where little disagreements were ignored and big disagreements ended in anger and hurt. I learned early on to avoid disagreement at all cost. However, the cost was paid inside me.
At the church, for instance, rather than confront the situation, I was rescuing the congregation from Phil by denying and hiding the consequences of his actions. Furthermore, I had hoped someone or something would rescue me in the same way. When the elders were reluctant to take firm action, I felt betrayed and angry.
When I finally recognized such patterns, I was able for the first time in a year to make firm statements and take uncompromising stands.
Relapse and Confrontation
Phil’s vacation had been good. Things were different. Drinking had been left behind. But coming home was a return to the testing ground. Feeling healthy, relating more honestly, and understanding the past had opened up new possibilities, but home was also the place of clandestine patterns for getting a drink and of confused relationships with women. Unfortunately, the demon of dysfunction won out.
Phil, it seems, panicked when he realized how hard it was going to be to end or redirect those other woman relationships. He fell back on petty lies and dishonesty to explain things. Then he withdrew again from an easy give-and-take in workday relationships. There were renewed signs of drinking. Finally, and for the first time, the personnel committee received a clear and steadfast message from other elders and from me: “Do something now.”
The newfound strength of my convictions came at the same time that a small number of key elders and members had begun to look at Phil with new eyes. The confession sermon, which had played well with most, had not settled easily with some.
Phil’s last episode with drinking at the church came on a Tuesday afternoon in late September. He had been out of the office, ostensibly on a pastoral call, and returned to the office intoxicated. This time, rather than pretending “maybe it’s only mouthwash,” I picked up the phone and called a nearby and well-informed elder and said, “Phil has just come by the church. He’s drunk. I thought you should know, because you’re in a position to do something about it.”
The next several days were a flurry of phone calls. Though the confusion and anxiety had hardly disappeared, important changes had taken place. Even the presbytery was growing concerned. By the time our elders were ready to act, presbytery officials had determined to respond quickly when the local leadership requested help. The reality of the problem and responsibility for it was being borne by those given authority in our system-elders and presbytery officials, not subordinate church staff. Denial had been replaced, at least partially, by a plan for remedial action. Phil would be asked to admit himself to an alcohol-treatment program. In love and concern, the church would pay all noninsured expenses and full continuing salary.
An intervention on Phil’s behalf was planned. Church staff members, key elders, Phil’s wife, and presbytery officials were gathered and then trained in how to confront Phil in a calm but direct manner in a group setting. When we finally met with Phil, my speech mentioned earlier was repeated in similar manner by each person present.
After the last member of the intervention team made the request that Phil “accept the help that’s being offered today,” the representative of the treatment center, who was leading us, briefly explained the offer.
At first Phil jokingly asked if there was an alternative. (There was: the elders present were prepared to ask the full Session to dissolve the pastoral relationship with Phil.) But he quickly acknowledged the problem and offered an explanation. He then made a brief apology to all, hugs and best wishes were exchanged, and he left.
A month later and in the interest of his own recovery, Phil asked to be relieved of his responsibilities at First Church. The congregation concurred and offered salary continuation for six months to ease his transition.
Etiquette in our polity calls for Phil to be out of any kind of relationship with First Church. After Phil completed four months of treatment, he decided to remain in the community, and he has found satisfying employment with a private human-services agency. Phil will, for the rest of his life, be a recovering alcoholic.
What Had Happened?
The process of recovery and resolution was aided by prayer and the counsel of Scripture and of brothers and sisters in the church. Also of significant help was current writing on dependency and codependency and family-systems theory. Of particular note is Edwin Friedman’s book Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue (reviewed in LEADERSHIP, Fall 1989).
In reflecting on our crisis in light of these sources, it is clear that we had become bound up in a dysfunctional circle, a problem that was exacerbated by the part that various individuals played in it.
Phil. The drinking, the womanizing, the dishonesty, and the spiritual emptiness were responses, coping mechanisms, learned by Phil early in life as he reacted to pressures and problem relationships. They are traits that have been carried from “generation to generation” in his family.
The fact that neither Phil nor his references mentioned any alcohol or fidelity problems during the search and interview process was not an act of deliberate deception. The insidiousness of the problem was that from Phil’s perspective, it seemed to be “another Phil” who stopped for a drink on the way to a hospital call and who sometimes forgot to make a call. The Phil being interviewed, putting his best foot forward to impress a church interested in hiring him, had not chosen to be unfaithful to wife and children or betray the confidence of his congregation. The “other” Phil had.
That’s not to excuse Phil or to suggest that Phil is a multiple personality. It’s simply a way to say that, as much as he must take responsibility for his actions, other forces were working on Phil, as well.
Me. My readiness to avoid conflict and deny problems, my rescuing Phil by holding the church together when he neglected his duties, my delight in the affirmation I received for holding the church together, and my willingness to ignore the needs of my family for “the higher calling” of ministry were behaviors I, too, had learned at an early age.
Leadership. Each staff member and each elder also brought into our circle bits and pieces from his or her distinct background. Tom, having been raised in a ministry family, too easily sympathized with Pastor Phil. John, the executive problem solver, saw the situation as a professional difficulty that management techniques could solve.
Congregation. Over its sixty-five-year history, First Church developed its own personality and learned to respond in its own way to such difficulties. Extramarital affairs on the part of two previous pastors and a divorce in the life of another have made First Church members reluctant to know about the personal lives of their ministers; they are afraid of what they might find and be forced to do. In the face of overwhelming evidence of something wrong, they wanted to believe that nothing was wrong. Consequently, neither Phil nor the staff received much support in resolving a problem whose existence was denied.
The denial began with the call process. When they hoped against hope that a diamond in the rough would smoothly fit in and that my gifts would neatly fill in his, they were not looking at the situation clearly.
The denial continued even after the intervention. In the first month after Phil’s admittance to the treatment program, the Session leaders talked only of “crisis management” and “damage control.”
Then the official stance became that we were “praying for Phil’s quick recovery and speedy return to the pulpit.” We were expecting a miracle. I found my relationship with several key elders deeply strained when I expressed my doubts.
Ours is a suburban community of professionals and successful people. We are used to buying what we want, be it a Volvo or the right education for our children. When we finally acknowledged a problem at our church, we bought the right help. Having made the purchase, we expected to be done with the problem. A rite of congregational closure with Phil and the issues his tenure brought never took place. Phil is gone, but the issues may fester for years.
Denomination. Our denomination’s tendency to look for sociological and psychological answers instead of theological and spiritual answers also played a role.
For instance, the congregation was never told that there were issues other than alcoholism that affected Phil’s ability to return to ministry. Even when evidence of at least one extramarital affair emerged, the presbytery made it clear that there would be no discussion of church discipline in this case. Phil had a diagnosed illness and was receiving appropriate professional help. Phil should no more receive moral condemnation for his “symptoms” than a diabetic would for having an insulin reaction. When some individuals raised moral and theological concerns, especially regarding Phil’s possible return to our pulpit, they were told, “Well, let’s not be rigid and judgmental.”
In short, we each contributed to creating a dysfunctional system.
Truth and Grace
I have no hard-and-fast guidelines about how to deal with situations like this. But I have found that the concept of “differentiation” helps me think more clearly about them.
Differentiation is the ability to see plainly one’s own position in a relationship and to differentiate between one’s own responsibilities and another’s. In fact, the concept reminds me of a fundamental biblical teaching: although we are to bear one another’s burdens, we are also reminded that “each man will have to bear his own load” and to “let each one test his own work” (Gal. 6:35).
Throughout those two troubled years, I was plagued with guilt over my “disloyalty.” I denied the existence of problems because I didn’t want selfishly to undermine Phil’s ministry or the church’s life. But I was bearing more than my load.
If I had separated Phil’s responsibilities and mine, I would have seen things differently. The problem was not my disloyalty. I simply had failed to acknowledge that Phil, as pastor, was responsible to meet deadlines, stay sober, and remain faithful to his wife. Instead, I took responsibility for his actions, covered for his shortcomings, made excuses for him, justified his behavior.
On my side of the relationship, I had failed to acknowledge my responsibilities to fulfill my staff duties (and not also his), to maintain time and energy for my family, and to gently but firmly hold a ministry colleague accountable to scriptural norms for his actions.
That doesn’t mean that had I recognized the seemingly obvious, everything would have worked out nicely. No person and no process could have prevented Phil’s self-destructive tendency. But it would have brought the issue to a head sooner.
As truth is tied to freedom and grace in Jesus Christ, so it is in human relationships. Perceiving these truths, then, has been the first step in allowing the grace of God to flow more freely-in Phil, in the congregation, and in me.
Copyright © 1991 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
