The congregational storm that struck the Arcola Christian Church four months after Nick Scully’s arrival centered on him, but it was not of his making. He and Diane thought they had been simply following the board’s direction, shopping for a home on the basis that the church would loan them a down payment.
When the matter came to a business meeting for approval, however, objections popped up immediately. Nick soon realized the members had not been informed of the board’s promise. “What if you leave in a couple of years?” one man demanded. “Why should the church help you buy a home for yourself?”
Nick and Diane excused themselves from the meeting, promising to adjust to whatever the members voted. The motion was defeated that night, and the couple ended up arranging other housing.
Nick’s relaxed manner in the pulpit was another bone of contention for some in the pews. True to their Missouri temperament, a fair number took a “Show me” attitude toward this couple from Pennsylvania. People commented about their “accent.”
Attendance most Sundays held at around seventy, the level it had been before the Scullys came. But after a couple of years, one family decided to leave, then another. A church in the next town seemed more to their liking. When the third family pulled out, a definite pinch was felt in the church’s finances.
Nick fell into a dark mood. His failures in an earlier church now haunted him. Diane was surely disappointed, he assumed, that he couldn’t seem to make this church grow. He was disappointed in himself. What was wrong with his ministry?
It was along about then that I began to wonder, just once in a while, if maybe things would be different if Diane were not my wife. If she were dead, what would happen if I were married to someone else?
I certainly wasn’t hoping for such a thing; it was just Would things be easier? I felt she was blaming me that the church hadn’t blossomed here. She hadn’t actually attacked me. But I would receive her comments and suggestions as that.
A young widow in the church, three years younger than Nick, came often for counseling. She had one child. Life without a husband was grinding her down, and she did not know how to handle the way she felt toward a certain man at work. What should she do?
Nick responded with the appropriate words of counsel and prayer. She was indeed an attractive woman, he thought, with a great capacity to love. The void in her life longed to be filled. She warmly appreciated Nick’s gentleness with her week by week.
Before long, Nick began to realize that the woman’s desire was no longer toward the fellow employee but rather her pastor. She always dressed her nicest when she came to his office, and her unspoken manner conveyed her deep regard.
Meanwhile, Nick ruminated at times about his own somewhat constrained physical relationship with Diane. Throughout their eight years of marriage so far, fulfillment had been less than he had expected. The two of them did not always see alike regarding frequency, and Nick sometimes thought of his wife as “cold.”
Says Diane regarding the sexual side of marriage:
I’m not a real passionate person. I can take it or leave it, to tell you the truth. And so, it’s something I have to work at. Whereas for him, he’s a man, it’s “an important part of our marriage.”
Except for reproduction, I think I could do without it.… But that’s not true, either. If he were suddenly taken from me, it would be hard to go without.
He wants it at a different time than I want it, I guess. That’s the main problem.
About three months after the counseling began, a special concern arose in the little congregation: the church treasurer’s nephew was on trial for murder. He had never attended the church, but his relatives were worried. Through the treasurer he had sent a message several months before that he would like to talk to a minister.
Nick had driven to the prison several times. The young man had made no spiritual commitment, but he remained open. When the trial began twenty-two miles away in the county seat town of Lamar, Nick met with him each morning for prayer before court resumed.
Several members of the church accompanied their minister to sit in the gallery each day. The young widow and a friend of hers were among the most faithful. Nick recalls:
On a couple of days, the other woman couldn’t go, so the two of us drove together. By then it was obvious to me that she viewed me in a special light.
My fantasies began to pick up speed, as you might imagine. It was that stretch of days that really showed me, Hey, this is getting too hot to handle. I am putting myself in a situation that’s going to lead to trouble.
In my own physical actions, I was above board. I don’t think she ever realized the attraction was two-way. But in my mind, I knew I was wrong.
By the time the trial was over (the man was acquitted), Nick knew what he must do. The previous fall he had heard a popular seminar leader in Kansas City talk about male-female relationships and warn against raising expectations that cannot legitimately be fulfilled. Was he guilty of that, even though there had been no actual intimacy? Apparently so.
One night the next week, he and Diane sat talking in their living room. The children were asleep. After a while Diane—usually the one to introduce serious topics—said, “Are there any problems?”
Her husband looked away. “Yeah.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, up until recently I was having a hard time controlling my thought life. I didn’t want to say anything until I could promise you it was over.”
“Is there another woman?”
“No, not really.” Nick took a long pause. “I’ve just been struggling with whether another gal in the church would understand me more.” He then went on to breathe the name.
Diane swallowed but kept her composure.
I had thought something must be happening to him. But I hadn’t thought about that.
I said, “Well, you’ll either have to drop that, or we’ll have to do something for a while until you can get straightened out. Maybe I could go and stay with my folks for a while or …” I can’t remember the exact words, but I let him know I couldn’t put up with him fantasizing about one woman and having me, too.
In a way, though, I did feel bad for him, because maybe I wasn’t being everything to him I should be. That doesn’t give any excuse, of course. The pressures and problems [in the church] bother me and make me more nervous than they do him, I guess.
Nick talks about the relief he felt:
That open confession did a lot to seal off the problem and remove it from my heart.
It would be easy for me to say I’ve never stooped so low as to have a physical relationship with another woman. But I have to remember what Jesus said about lust inside your head. That’s what the Lord was really showing me: There was no way to continue a healthy relationship [with Diane] while my mind was taken up with fantasy.
Shortly after that, Nick mentioned from the pulpit that he was changing his ground rules for personal ministry. He had decided to counsel women only in the presence of their husbands, or a friend, or Diane. He said he felt this was a precaution he should have practiced from the beginning of his ministry. Afterward, several women in the congregation expressed their agreement with his new policy.
The young widow came to see the Scullys a few weeks later. She confessed the only reason she had gone to the courtroom was to be with Nick. She apologized to Diane for the damage she had caused.
Relationships with this woman have maintained a certain distance since then, but she has remained in the church, and no further incidents have occurred.
Nick’s courage to confess to his wife not only cemented his decision but also established an important pattern for the future. Two years later, Diane found herself edging toward a similar problem with sexual fantasy. She conquered it by following her husband’s example:
Things in our marriage were getting sort of humdrum, and I felt like I needed something more exciting. I began inventing someone who would give me that. No one man in particular, nobody I knew—just an imaginary person.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but now that I look back on it, a lot of this was coming from evening TV. Nick was gone a lot, and I’d watch all this stuff, and after a while, it looks normal. You start thinking, Why isn’t my marriage like that?
I had to tell Nick about it. I didn’t want to. I felt like I can handle this. I’ll just stop, and no one needs to know. It’s very humbling to have to tell somebody you were so weak to do something so stupid.
But I realized that in order to stop, I needed to tell him. And of course, he was extremely understanding. That was when I really gained victory.
The Scullys have since taken the bold step of banning all secular television from their home. Some in their church think this is “fanatical,” but Nick and Diane insist it promotes health, not only for themselves but for their children. Says she: “Since those shows are out now, I don’t have to live up to anything.”
Their public ministry, in the meantime, goes on steadily, and they are learning to let one another help carry the frustrations of ministry. Whether the church grows or not, they will stick with each other, not a chimera. Nick smiles convincingly as he says:
There’s not a lady around who could ever take Diane’s place. We’ve gone through so many things together that no one could replace her.
Reflections
by David SeamandsThis case, and the two that follow it, show us a curious fact: sexual temptations are apparently greatest at the extremes. When a person’s ministry is difficult and frustrating, sex can be a way to escape. But on the other hand, the height of success is also a danger zone.
We notice that age has nothing to do with anything in these cases.
Ministerial infidelity is indeed becoming more frequent, I am sorry to say. We ministers are products of our culture; there are no moral fences anymore. Have you watched this talk show on some TV stations called Good Sex? When my generation was growing up, we may have jumped the fence sometimes, but at least we knew the fence was there.
When Vance Packard wrote The Sexual Wilderness, he was asked to call it The Sexual Revolution instead. He replied that a revolution has goals. You may go through chaos to reach them, but you know where you’re going. The modern sexual scene, he said, was not a march to new goals; it was more like a wide-open plain. I found that comment very profound, especially from a secular social psychologist.
This has certainly affected the church and its leaders.
I must admit I had trouble reading some of these narratives, because I too have struggled to keep my thought life clean and holy. All other battles pale in significance to that one. I remember talking to a saintly missionary years ago who was in his seventies. I asked him to name his greatest temptations. Quick as a flash he said, “Sex and self.”
I’m really grateful for a tough, confrontive wife and the grace of God. Those are the outside forces that have rescued me at times.
Every case of unfaithfulness starts, of course, in rationalizing that fantasy is allowable. Nick Scully’s first fantasy is What if Diane would die? (I used to preach a sermon in which I would rather casually ask the men in the audience, “Stop a minute and think about what if your wife should die. Do you already have somebody picked out?” The place always got stone-silent! I just let the subject drop at that point; the fallout spoke for itself.)
The sex life in the Scully marriage is less than satisfactory. So there are frustrations in the bedroom as well as in the church—a deadly combination. Add to that an aggressive young widow, and trouble is ensured.
There are women who, because of their psychological past, find a kind of satisfaction in knocking ministers, lawyers, and others in high positions off their pedestals. I don’t know that this widow had this in mind, but I do believe ministers should be warned about it. Some women are out for them, and they may be very religious women who are unconscious of what they’re doing, but … they will still try to bring the minister down.
Why do they do this? If you want to be Freudian, I suppose you would say these women want to get even with men, or with somebody.
I remember one counselee who used to come in the summertime dressed very carelessly. One day she arrived in shorts and a very brief top. So for my own protection as much as anything else, I brought the problem right out into the open. I said, “It’s obvious to me what you are out to do by the way you’re dressing and sitting.… Well, you are succeeding. You have sexually aroused me. Now what are your plans?”
She was shocked. She broke down at that point and admitted this was a major problem. We had a very good talk after that, in which some truth came out about her relationship to her husband, her fantasy affairs, and so forth.
Not every woman who gets involved with a minister is this kind, certainly. But many are.
The other danger in counseling is that transference, or whatever you want to call it, is sometimes absolutely essential to the healing of the person. This fact bothers me. It’s true: I must reparent some women. I am a father to them.
But they sometimes fall in love and want more than a father. Scores of times I’ve had to bring this out into the open.
Nick Scully did an extremely wise thing when he shared with his wife. In my own marriage, I have always been very open about these things, making them into a humorous game. I’ll say, “You know, that gal really gets to me somehow. I could go for her,” and my wife will say, “Well, I find so-and-so very attractive.” We kid each other, but in so doing we pour Lysol on the matter and keep it antiseptic.
And Diane Scully was wise with her tough love. She took a firm line from the start—there was no sloppy agape. She said OK, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. It’s me or her.
That doesn’t sound very Christian—but it is.
Contrast this with the “Christian wife who’s so loving.” Her great mistake is apathy. I remember one woman who was so kind, so willing to forgive her non-Christian husband for an affair. Later on, he came to see me and said, “You know, I know she’s trying to be nice—but I was hurt. I don’t know whether she really loves me or not. I wish she’d gotten madder than hell. Then I’d know she really cares.”
The minister must know that 100 percent of his emotional fulfillment and enjoyment must come from his wife—nobody else. You see, in the ministry there is emotional fulfillment from other women. The majority of the members and even a higher percentage of the attendees are women. In every congregation, some of them flatter, they gush—and if you’re not careful, you can believe their tripe after a while. That’s dangerous.
In the face of any indiscretion, anger and resentment are always better than accommodation. A holy jealousy is a sign of a true love. Awhile ago the television program 20/20 had a half-hour segment on “the problem of jealousy,” which was portrayed as a terrible vice. We should train husbands and wives not to be jealous.
I got so mad I preached that Sunday on “The Lord thy God is a jealous God.” I cited a lot of Old Testament texts about God’s jealousy for his bride Israel and said, “Look—jealousy is part of the character of God. We are made in his image. If we think we can dispose of that characteristic, God have mercy on us.”
I did point out that there is an insane jealousy, of course—the kind that sends some people reaching for a shotgun when trouble arises. That’s not what I’m advocating. The tough line that guards a marriage, however, is not wrong. I’ve dealt with a lot of affair situations over the years, and if a minister starts down this path, it’s awfully hard for him to stop unless his wife throws crockery and makes a royal scene. Otherwise, he will destroy himself.
When Nick Scully, in telling his wife about his fantasies, said he had waited until he could promise her it was over, I think he was deceiving himself. I don’t think it was as “over” at that instant as he wanted to believe. But he had enough moral integrity to know that sharing it with Diane would help him cross the line. That’s why he did it. It’s like what counselees have sometimes told me: “Just by making an appointment with you, I solved my problem.”
Later on, of course, Diane defeated her temptations the same way, and that’s the marvelous part of this story. She shared her fantasies with Nick.
Here is someone who is allegedly “cold” in her sexual life, and yet she reaches a season where that part of life spins out of control. Blessed is the wife whose husband has shared in this way, so that when her time of temptation comes, she shares it with him.
Their decision against all secular television reminds me of Ed Wheat’s advice in his book Intended for Pleasure that newlywed couples ought to throw out the TV for the first year. Their love life will develop much better.
Copyright © 1985 by Christianity Today
