The Las Cruces church to which the Ewings fled that August had risen sharply in all district standings—membership, attendance, giving—under the leadership of Bill and Ruth Coffey.
One cloud, however, was their teenage son Darin, who had been charting his own course ever since junior high. His choice of friends, his music tastes, and his insolence were but the tip of the iceberg; a school principal finally confronted Bill and Ruth with Darin’s smoking, and there were hints of drugs as well.
When the boy turned sixteen—the week after police had picked him up in a friend’s car that contained marijuana— Bill had decided something had to change. His reprimands had gotten nowhere, he felt; maybe if Darin sensed how close he was to adulthood, he would be more responsible. He announced a hands-off approach. Ruth Coffey, on the other hand, viewed this as capitulation. She and her husband talked often about their differing strategies but always seemed to end in stalemate.
One person who tended to see it the pastor’s way was the minister of youth and music, a thirtyish single woman who had recently come to the church staff. Chris Jackson, from El Paso, held a master’s degree in Christian education and was well liked by the youth group. She would take Darin out to dinner occasionally and try, in a friendly, nonauthoritarian way, to get him talking about his life. “It was obvious that here was a troubled kid,” she says. “So while I felt very close to Bill and Ruth—she was almost like an older sister to me—I also tried to do what I could for Darin.” The boy was wary, though, and kept the talk on a superficial level.
When office conversation would drift around to the pastor’s son, Chris would volunteer her guess that Darin would learn more by natural consequence than by further parental restraints or harangues. “He’s not a little boy anymore,” she remembers saying, as Bill nodded. “He’s almost a grown man.”
One time Chris was invited to the Coffey home for dinner on a day when there had been another incident at school. “I could sense the difference between Bill’s approach and Ruth’s,” she remembers. “Ruth was still protecting; in her mind, Bill ought to go down there and straighten things out. I just sat back thinking, You can’t do that forever. He’s got to take some responsibility for his own actions.“
When the Ewings landed back in town from Idaho, Gary updated Bill Coffey on his aborted pastorate. He said he was still being pursued by the young woman in Idaho and finally felt he needed to leave the church there. He did not mention his actual involvement with Rachel.
Bill Coffey said little in response, and in the days that followed, contact between the two men was minimal. Gary became suspicious. He watched the interaction with Chris Jackson for a while and finally went to his friend. “Something’s not right here. You’re spending too much time with Chris. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about!”
The seasoned pastor, now in his twenty-first year of church leadership, shook his head. “Chris and I have a very professional relationship. She does her work, and I do mine. There’s nothing to worry about.”
In fact, their joint concern over Darin made it difficult to discern the boundaries of professionalism. More than once they discussed the boy’s latest rebellion and pondered what to do. When Darin agreed to go along with a van-full of other high schoolers that fall to see the denominational college in San Antonio, both his father and Chris were pleased. Maybe he’d wind up on a Christian campus and straighten out his life.
Chris remembers:
It was a real good trip. The kids got along great together, and even Darin seemed to open up. We stayed overnight in the dorms and had lots of fun.
But coming back from that trip, there were some little things that happened, and all of a sudden I began to feel something within myself toward Bill I’d never felt before. It was odd. In my mind, I kept thinking, We’ve worked together in this church so well, and Bill would never make any kind of advance toward me. He’s just not that kind of man. I trusted him completely.
In fact, I’d been a single adult almost ten years at that point and had plenty of chances to fall in love. I was secure in my singleness; I wasn’t looking for anybody.
Bill Coffey, raised in a strict environment, had been a model of propriety all through his ministry. He knew well how to rebuff temptation and preached on it often. A few days after the San Antonio trip, he and his wife were driving somewhere, and he said in a casual way, “You know how you said one time that Chris gives great back rubs? You’re right. We were having a Halloween party with the kids down at the college, and my back was hurting. I just sat in a chair, and she really got the kinks out.”
Ruth Coffey froze inside.
I wanted to scream, Bill, I can’t believe you did that! But the words just locked in my throat. I’d always said I was not a jealous wife.
It was true that he has back trouble, and so I guess it was fine for somebody in the group to help him. But still, it scared me to death.
Six weeks later, the forty-one-year-old pastor and his minister of youth and music were in bed together.
Bill looks back at the suddenness of it all and is still perplexed at how self-control evaporated.
I was in a situation I never felt I’d be in. I’d always been able to handle any temptation up to that point.
Some people say we are intellectual beings with emotions, but I’m not so sure anymore. I’m afraid we’re emotional beings with intellect instead. I keep thinking about a car analogy. Intellect is the steering wheel. It’s a marvelous tool as long as all four wheels are on the road and going straight. But once you go into a skid, the steering wheel is virtually useless. When the forces of emotion take over, turning the wheel doesn’t change very much.
Be that as it may, I can testify today that all the “wages of sin” I’d described in sermons came true. Loss of self-respect, fear, guilt, shame, physical deterioration, financial loss—every one of them hit.
Was Darin’s waywardness the gust of wind that sent Bill Coffey into his skid? This remains a major difference of opinion. Says Ruth:
He blew that totally out of proportion because of his guilt. He had to blame somebody, and Darin caught the brunt of it. That hurts me to this day; it’s not right.
I was upset about Darin, too, wasn’t I? But I coped. We had always said, “We love our children for what they are, not for what we want them to be.” The biggest sadness of this whole mess for me is that Darin became the scapegoat.
On the surface, nothing changed in Las Cruces for nearly a year. Bill Coffey continued to pastor the church, his attractive, dark-haired wife at his side. Chris Jackson put together another summer work trip to Mexico for the youth group. The congregation knew nothing of the inner turmoil.
Bill and Chris repeatedly vowed to stop their liaison. Too much was at stake; both of their ministries would be ruined if they did not quit. It was over. All such resolutions were soon broken. Says Bill:
At first it seemed like a dream. This couldn’t be happening. But the longer I went, the more conniving and covering up … I’d schedule more and more guest speakers or music groups for Sunday night services, just to avoid having to go into that pulpit and preach. I was just hanging on.
When you get scared, you do some pretty stupid things. You’re not thinking straight. Finally, Chris and I became so fearful we just packed up one Monday, took some money out of my checking account, and starting driving west toward Arizona. We had no idea where we were going. We just had to get away from the scene.
Before I left, I went off by the riverbank and wrote my family a long letter. It was almost like a suicide note. I told them I loved them, and I hated what I was doing, but there was no way to change things now. I sealed the letter in an envelope and gave it to my secretary to hand-deliver to Ruth.
Ruth remembers noticing that morning, as she dressed to go to her job at a bank, that Bill had quietly observed her. She thought it unusual but was a bit flattered by the attention. Getting Bill to respond to her physically had been a pull throughout their marriage, she says; unlike most couples, “he was the one who had the headaches. I’d learned to accept what love he could give and be satisfied with it, even though I wanted more.”
During the day, she called home several times; there was no answer. The last time she tried, Darin answered the phone. He said his father was not around, but his car was there, and his keys were lying on the kitchen ledge. That was strange indeed.
The church secretary was waiting for Ruth at the end of the day. “Get in the car,” she said. She then handed her the fateful envelope.
I opened it, and the very first paragraph said he was sexually involved with Chris. They’d gone on a trip somewhere in Chris’s car and would contact me in two weeks. In the meantime, I was to pack up his books from the church office and get ready to move.
I started screaming. Everything was just going crazy inside me. It was like I was somebody else. We went inside, and I paced the floor until I was so tired I collapsed on the couch.
When I handed the letter to Darin, he read the first paragraph and ripped it in two without going farther. He grabbed his coat and said he was going down to the river. I started screaming again. I was afraid he was going to jump in! Actually, all he wanted to do was think.
The secretary was about ready to take me to the hospital to get a shot or something when the phone rang. Darin answered, and I heard him say, “No, you don’t want to talk to her.” I knew it was Bill. I grabbed the phone out of my son’s hand.
What had happened was that the runaway couple had stopped at a motel in Tucson, 250 miles away, and Chris had called her mother back in El Paso. A stern lecture crackled through the phone lines, and by the time Chris hung up, she had been persuaded to take a bus back to her parents’ home. Bill could drive on alone. The lunacy of this escapade began to dawn on them both. Bill finally called home.
Ruth pled with him to return; if only they could talk, things could work out. Bill wanted to know if she could accept and forgive Chris. Yes, yes—anything; just come back, she urged. Bill agreed. He says:
The truth is, I was scared to death. I needed somebody to tell me what to do, and that’s what Ruth did. I was a sick man. I felt like I was floating in outer space.
We drove back the next day and told Ruth it [the affair] was all over. She cried; we all cried together. Chris’s parents came up and took her home for a couple of days. I made an appointment to see a doctor, who gave me an antidepressant and prescribed three weeks of rest. As far as the church was concerned, I was “ill.” That’s a great cover-up, you know.
Ruth and Bill spent several days away in the mountains. The next week, he announced to his wife that this was “Victory Day”—he had spent the day in prayer, and God had cleansed both body and soul. They went out to dinner to celebrate. Who was invited to share in the rejoicing? Chris Jackson.
The idea that Chris should leave Las Cruces was talked about repeatedly, but neither she nor the pastor could quite see it as necessary. They had overcome their problem, their sin had been confessed and forgiven; no need to rock the church. Besides that, she and Ruth still genuinely loved each other. Says Ruth:
She was so talented. She was my best friend, kind of like a little sister. We went shopping together, went to exercise classes together. She’d been at our house for meals constantly, and we’d been to her place a lot, too.
She even stayed with us sometimes. I made her bed—probably made their bed and didn’t know it.
Chris, who calls herself a “survivor,” showed the greatest stamina throughout this time. She alone was back at her post of duty the following Sunday, leading the youth group and directing the choir. She reflects:
I don’t know how many times I said to myself, We’re going to make it. Bill’s going to get his act together, and so am I.
Throughout the whole struggle, Ruth was very compassionate and tender towards me. The longer things went on, the more time she and I spent together. It was like maybe she was trying to figure out what Bill had been attracted to. I remember she’d call me from work two or three times a day just to talk. She’d say, “I’m really full of fear, Chris. What am I going to do?” We’d pray together.
For the first time in my life, though, I realized what Romans 7 means about the struggle with sin. I was praying for Bill and Ruth to rebuild their relationship, but there was also an undercurrent of “Lord, if they can’t make it work, please give me the chance to make him happy.” I prayed for the Lord to take my feelings of love away, or help me meet somebody else—anything.
Good intentions notwithstanding, Bill and Chris continued to find each other irresistible. In May, at an annual district convention, Chris’s mother confided to Ruth that she feared the affair was still alive. That night on the way home, Ruth told her husband what she had heard and then softly said, “It’s still going on, isn’t it?”
There was a long pause. Finally he said yes.
Ruth was not the longsuffering forgiver this time; she blew up. She insisted on an immediate confrontation with Chris. The three met at the church around midnight. Sharp words flew, followed by tears, and soon Bill was again promising, “Never again.”
Ruth at this point began thinking of suicide. By June she laid a plan to asphyxiate herself in the garage while her husband was away the following week, and Chris was gone to youth camp. She said to Chris, “Well, when you get back, everything will be fine—you’ll have exactly what you want.” Chris caught the clue and demanded that Ruth do nothing until she returned; then they would have another long talk. Ruth backed down.
In July, the threesome decided to seek professional help. An appointment was made with a Christian counselor in El Paso, who was surprised to see all three of the principals in his waiting room. Says Bill:
He was a very benevolent man, but he just didn’t know how to cope with what he was seeing. Because I was a pastor, he gave me a book to read on David and Bathsheba. I read it and came back the next week with some questions.
“Tell me this,” I said. “Why, after the adultery, did God allow him to keep Bathsheba? And why does the lineage of Jesus, in fact, run through her? Why didn’t God make him give her up?” He couldn’t answer me. He just went on to tell me about the pain, the physical and emotional toll I was going to have to pay. And in that, he was exactly right. Everything he predicted came to pass.
A trip to a ministerial counseling service in Denver produced no better results. Bill was powerless to shake off the attachment to this bright, well-educated, hard-working woman who deeply loved him in return. His wife was willing to forgive him even yet, he knew. But what could he say or do now that had not already been tried?
The lid would soon blow off in the church. The secretary had kept her mouth shut up to now, but how long could that last? He had already used the sickness alibi to explain his absences. There was nothing to do but resign and hope a new pastor could be called quickly, so the congregation would not be shattered.
Bill announced his resignation in October. He remembers, ironically, that a special film series was underway those particular weeks: Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. Ruth, hopeful to the end, had tried to persuade him not to leave the church but simply to dismiss Chris so they could rebuild. He refused.
He lost his nerve the first Sunday he intended to read his resignation, so he printed it in the bulletin the following week instead. The congregation was perplexed but put together a large fellowship dinner regardless to say farewell. By the next Sunday, Bill had left for Albuquerque and rented an apartment, leaving his wife behind to sell the house and continue working through Christmas, when her bank paid a year-end bonus.
Chris Jackson hung on until the Christmas musical was finished and then resigned as well. By New Year’s Day, she had left for Kentucky to stay with a married sister. Several weeks before, however, Darin Coffey—the young rebel she had originally thought to help—came to see her.
He lashed out at me and told me to please get out of his father’s life. I told him I was trying to do exactly that, as soon as the Christmas musical was over. He said something like “You’ve all been on my case about what I’ve been doing and how I live. Well, at least I’m not sleeping with a married woman.”
Darin and his mother went to Albuquerque after the holidays to join Bill. A concerned pastor there, a long-time friend, counseled them to maintain the form of marriage whether the feelings were present or not. Bill had by then found a job with the school district’s maintenance department.
The fighting was now over. But so was the will to try once more, to hope. Sometime in March, Ruth moved out, leaving a note saying she realized she was no longer wanted. Says Bill:
It wasn’t that I didn’t want her so much as the fact I just couldn’t pull out of my tailspin. We were just destroying each other. A couple of months later I finally made up my mind to file for divorce. I sat in that attorney’s office just whipped.
The day after the divorce was granted, I loaded up my car and headed for Kentucky. Not to say that was right, but that’s what happened.
A month later, he and Chris were married. They spent the next two years patching together a livelihood through a variety of jobs. Then, the chance came to manage a nursing home owned by an association of churches. They serve there today.
Ruth, meanwhile, lives with Darin in a small apartment in Albuquerque. Her son at last was brought to his senses by a serious accident at his construction job; both legs were broken by a falling beam. In the hospital, his older sister urged him to return to the faith of his childhood, and he repented. A definite change of lifestyle followed.
Ruth, the former pastor’s wife, now finds herself organizing socials for the singles group she belongs to at church. She works in an office by day and cares for an elderly woman on the side in order to make ends meet. Quietly she says:
When I get depressed, I sort of pity myself, I guess. I start thinking, There he is, married to the one he wanted, with a nice position again and everything. And here I am trying to make it alone, with no one to hold me at night—and I didn’t do anything! In fact, I was willing to settle for so little.
I try not to let that kind of thing last, though. I just wish I’d been told in the beginning of my marriage that my husband was not a god. I loved him more than anyone in the whole wide world, and I honestly believed he could do no wrong. By the time I woke up, it was too late.
Bill Coffey does not attempt to defend his actions or blame anyone but himself for the demise of his pastoral ministry. He surrendered his credentials voluntarily. He attributes his fall to undiagnosed pride.
I had become an achiever in my church and in the state, and I was proud without knowing it. When a pastor gets to the point of thinking he’s safe, and nothing can penetrate his shell, he’s in danger.
Now, when I’m with a group of ministers in a restaurant, and someone flirts with the waitress, it absolutely scares me to death. If they only knew …
He returns at times to read what he calls “The Ex-Pastor’s Psalm,” the thirty-eighth, which he prayed almost daily for a while. It is, to him, a none-too-graphic description of what it is like to torpedo one’s ministry through infidelity. It is a prayer of brokenness, of collapse:
O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.…
My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear.
My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly.
I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning.
My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body.
I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart.
All my longings lie open before you, O Lord: my sighing is not hidden from you.
My heart pounds, my strength fails me; even the light has gone from my eyes.
My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds; my neighbors stay far away.…
I am like a deaf man, who cannot hear, like a mute, who cannot open his mouth;
I have become like a man who does not hear, whose mouth can offer no reply.
I wait for you, O Lord; you will answer, O Lord my God.
For I said, “Do not let them gloat or exalt themselves over me when my foot slips.”
For I am about to fall, and my pain is ever with me.
I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin.…
O Lord, do not forsake me; be not far from me, O my God.
Come quickly to help me, O Lord my Savior.
Reflections
by David SeamandsThe difference between the Ewings and the Coffeys is, among other things, a matter of timing. The Bill Coffey-Chris Jackson affair was sustained for many months. In the end, the bonding proved irreversible. That’s what sex was created to do. They say a spider web is the strongest thing in the universe for its weight. I’d agree with that—second only to sexual bonding. The longer an affair goes on, the more two people get wrapped up with each other until they cannot be separated. It has to be broken early, as in the first two cases: either preventively by the confession, or by a shock treatment.
Neither Nick Scully nor Gary Ewing had nearly as much to lose, professionally speaking, as did Bill Coffey. His story reminded me of three of the most outstanding classmates in my graduating group who fell to sexual temptation at the top of their careers and are now out of the ministry. I sometimes wonder whether success wasn’t really their god. Had they in fact made that surrender of spiritual ego that is essential for the minister? After all, one can reorganize a carnal ego around religious things. The drive to be the top jazz trumpeter or the top lawyer or the top surgeon is the same as the person who says, “I’ve got to be pastor of First Church, Jerusalem—not Fourth Church, Bethany.” It’s basically the same sin.
If such a person reaches the goal, he may feel there is nothing left to achieve. After the thrill of the chase, when you’ve got the fox—what else? If you’re playing for the grandstand rather than the Coach, you think you need something more.
The fall isn’t particularly intentional. But an unsurrendered ego will often fall at the point of sex, like David after his greatest military victory.
I realize this is a theory. But I’ve watched enough situations to see that a false idea of success (as Chambers said) is deadly. Ministers who have gotten their identity and fulfillment not from serving God but from using God to serve their egos are more vulnerable. After all, we are made for something even greater than First Church, Jerusalem.
The Coffey experience includes several early warnings that a missile is going to strike. Gary Ewing is one of those whom the Lord sent along, I believe. He was ignored.
Ruth, of course, should have blown a fuse over the back rub. She got angry, she was shocked—but she swallowed her words. She was not tough enough. I repeat: What right have we not to be jealous over our marriages? If ours is a jealous God, we should be jealous husbands and wives, in the right sense.
There is also an unsatisfactory sex life here; in this case, the husband holds back. This should have been a warning. Suddenly he discovered he was more sexually minded than he thought.
Some readers may think his comments about the human emotion and the will are self-justifying, but I find them basically accurate. The intense emotional push of an affair can hardly be described. It is a compulsion. After a certain point, the will doesn’t have a chance. People will sell their souls, jobs, reputations, children, marriage—they will literally chuck everything. The Book of Proverbs is filled with warnings about forbidden fruit being hardest to resist. Once this toboggan starts over the hill, it is terribly hard to stop.
That’s why wives ought to blow up and bishops ought to intervene right away. Outside forces are often the only way to make a man stop. He’s skidding downhill; he has to be grabbed. Nothing inside the car is powerful enough.
There ought to be an extra line in Jeremiah’s verse about “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” The further sentence should read, “The lusting heart is the most deceitful of all.” Bill Coffey announces “Victory Day,” the conquest of his problem, the restoration of his commitment to Ruth—and how do they celebrate? They invite Chris to dinner! Yes, this is a true story. Can you believe the self-deception?
Have you ever noticed in 2 Timothy 2 how Paul talks about enduring hardness as a good soldier? He mentions the athlete and the farmer, too—all tough jobs that call us to stand up and fight. But when it comes to lust (verse 22), he says, “Flee! Get out of there as fast as you can. Don’t fool with your armor, buckle on your sword, or get your pistol ready. You don’t have a chance. You’re outgunned before you start.” (That’s the Revised Seamands Version.)
That’s what Joseph did in the Old Testament. There was no way to stand and discuss things with Potiphar’s wife. He ran.
People who have been romantically involved come to me sometimes and say, “Oh, but I still pray for him/her.”
I say, “Cut it out. No more praying. Prayer is an emotional tie to that person. You’re past the point of doing any good by praying.”
The Phillips version of Ephesians 4:27 (“Neither give place to the devil”) is this: “Don’t give the devil that sort of foothold.” Fantasy lust is like a beachhead from which the rest of the island is attacked. There is indeed a force of evil that lures us to unfaithfulness. It’s more than human.
The longer the Coffey case goes on, the more we see Bill’s difficulty in connecting truth with deed. It is as if he cannot match up what he knows with how he is acting.
Men and women in ministry together must be extremely careful and bend over absolutely backward to preserve purity. That’s why Jesus taught us to pray against being led into temptation. I take that to mean, “Give me the good sense, Lord, to keep out of alluring situations, because if I get into them, I know exactly what I’m capable of doing and what I will do.”
In place after place these last two crises could have been handled more redemptively. God might have been able to use them as shock treatments to build better marriages for both the Ewings and the Coffeys. That does not mean I endorse affairs! But I have seen the correct handling of such events give couples new foundations to build on. It shocks one spouse or the other into realizing what has been lacking and where they need to go from there.
In that sense, temptation is not unlike the other kinds of personal stresses we studied earlier. Moral breakdown does not have to cause a breakup. It can instead become a breakthrough.
Copyright © 1985 by Christianity Today
