When the Cowboy Walked Away

“I am through with your church, and I am through with you.”

The words pierced me like a knife. After more than a decade, it came to this.

Eleven years earlier Billy (not his real name) began attending a men’s small group I started. A man’s man, he enjoyed riding horses and driving four-wheelers. He arrived on his blue Harley Davidson early each Thursday morning for breakfast, Bible study, and fellowship. Though not a believer initially, Billy soon saw his need for Jesus Christ. He received the Lord and was baptized.

A promising start

Billy became more and more hungry for spiritual things, and I enjoyed helping him grow. We met for lunch regularly. For two to three years I invested in him heavily. Because he drove trucks for a living, during his weeks on the road we talked on the phone frequently. Over many calls and Mexican lunches, we discussed Bible reading, obedience, and what it means to be a godly man. He witnessed to people he met in truck stops across the Southeast. As he grew, he decided to get his financial house in order. He sold the blue Harley and began regularly giving money to the church.

Billy’s family of origin was dysfunctional and he had a strained relationship with his parents. Though they lived in the same town, they went for months without communicating. Billy suffered from the rejection—and a habitual tendency to perceive rejection even when there was none. As he grew in the Lord, we worked through how to cope with negative, irrational patterns of thought. We discussed how to walk in the sound mind of Christ. As he continued maturing he seemed to rise above this rejection syndrome.

One year, Billy decided to participate in our church’s mission trip to Ghana, Africa. Our small group rejoiced to see Billy prepare, and we prayed for him daily. But the day after he returned, I knew something was wrong. He was not himself. Later, when I confronted him at his house, he admitted to immoral sexual activity with another member of the mission trip.

I met the next night with a few select leaders of our church. We prayed about how to help Billy and his family through this nightmare. We kept the news from spreading and worked hard to protect Billy and his wife as well as the other involved family. During the next year, my wife and I walked through a long, painful process with Billy and his wife of learning to forgive, restore, and trust again. They became a picture of God’s grace, and we thanked God for saving their marriage.

Our families grew close the next few years. Our wives hung out. Our children played together. We embarked on mini-vacations and regularly talked about the next great place we wanted to go. Pastors’ wives frequently have difficulty finding authentic friends, but Billy’s wife became one to mine.

Eventually my wife and I sensed God’s leadership to leave our ministry position. As we sought guidance, we made plans to start a new church in our town. Billy and his wife decided to help. Initially, four families agreed to step out in faith and see what God would do. In January of 2011, Billy, two other men, and I met regularly for nightly meetings to discuss and pray.

Signs of trouble

During the first year, Billy’s job ended, and he took a new position with a schedule that kept him on the road many nights. Billy, a people-person, became lonely and unhappy away from home, church, and friends. It became harder to include Billy in church decisions, meetings, and conversations. We involved more people on the leadership team, and Billy felt isolated and ignored.

In November of that year, Billy’s doctor ordered him to take medical leave for serious depression. He came home for several weeks and began medication. But after returning to work, Billy continued in a slow downward spiral. The maturity of former years began to slowly be replaced by moodiness and anger. The sound mind of Christ faded, replaced by irrationality. The acceptance he knew in the fellowship of the Lord was replaced by the feelings of rejection from his youth.

Over the next year, Billy became highly critical of the church and its key leaders. When he planned a retreat for the men of the church, it offended him terribly that I chose to come home one night early so that I could preach at church. He told me, “You can be gone on a Sunday to take the youth on a trip, but you can’t miss a Sunday for my trip?”

He didn’t like a decision the church leaders made to rent a building: “None of you listened to what I said.” In reality, we listened—but simply disagreed with him. He tried planning a men’s cookout in the middle of a building renovation project. He took it as personal rejection when I and the project coordinator asked him to postpone the event until we could complete the project—in a small church you need all the manpower you can muster. But he didn’t see it that way. “You shot down my idea,” he said.

Billy complained that the men in the church did not call or text him enough. The list went on and on. At almost every monthly leadership meeting, someone asked about Billy. We prayed for Billy. The deacons made a point to talk to Billy every time he came and to tell him that they were glad to see him.

I knew Billy was losing touch with reality when he told me, “The last time I came to church, when I opened the door, everyone turned around, saw me, and looked unhappy to see me. No one wanted to talk to me, and so I went and sat down by myself.” Those were the irrational words of a man spiraling in clinical depression. Fiction was becoming fact.

We did not know then that Billy had also shut God out of his life. And he began an adulterous affair.

For six months, he and another local woman engaged in a sexual relationship. He shut out me and most of our church’s men. He would not return our phone calls and changed his number without telling us. When he dropped his son off at my house for a birthday party, he stayed in his truck and refused to talk to me.

For months, the deacons asked each other, “What is wrong? What have we done?”

Billy finally repented of his adultery, confessed to his wife, and ended the affair. However, he stayed caught in a cycle of rejection and irrationality.

Rumors circulated around our small town. Questions came at school functions, on the ball field, and in the grocery story. “Has Billy had an affair?”

Finally, months after admitting to his wife, Billy came to see me. He told me of his sin, but at the same time he listed numerous ways he felt the church failed him. He inferred that my poor pastoral behavior aided in his downward spiral.

His criticisms seemed endless. I didn’t text him enough. I didn’t call him enough. I should have visited him at his house. My wife should have stopped by their house. My family did not sign up to clean the church enough. My wife should sing more at church.

I later realized that he came partly to notify me that they would no longer come to our church. “I’ve got to find somewhere that I can worship,” he said. “I have had a very hard heart toward you. A very hard heart.”

We were a long way from the jolly friends who threw a Frisbee on the beach or rode a train together at Dollywood.

Upon leaving, he instructed me, “Don’t tell anyone about this.” I knew intuitively that at least for the present, the relationship was over. I began a process of grieving. But I also turned a corner that afternoon. I accepted the fact that I could not please him. For more than a year I had endured his complaints, hoping he would bounce back and like me again.

That afternoon I let myself off the hook. I accepted that I would not have his favor.

Charles Swindoll writes, “God says there is a ‘time to shun embracing’ (Ecclesiastes 3:5) just as there are times to embrace. ‘To give up as lost’ (3:6) may, on some occasions, be the wisest response, though extremely painful.”

The following days, I processed many things: his clinical depression, irrational thinking, critical spirit, suicidal tendencies, isolated life, and habitual sexual immorality. Instead of allowing the men in our church to carry his burdens, he distanced himself.

The next week, one of our deacons asked me face-to-face, “Has Billy had an affair?” I replied, “I can’t answer that question.” He knew the answer immediately by the look on my face.

The next several days I made a decision I still do not regret.

The Christian counselor Jay Adams writes that to give someone absolute confidentiality is an unbiblical stance: “No such vow to silence should ever be made.” Instead, we should say, “I am glad to keep confidence in the way that the Bible instructs me. That means, of course, that I shall never involve others unless God requires me to do so.”

Sometimes love demands that we involve other people in the body of Christ in order to help a wayward brother or sister. We want others to love them, pray for them, correct and train them, with the goal of restoration. We want to see them walking uprightly in God’s grace once again.

As spiritual leaders, our deacons shared a responsibility for Billy’s life. He needed the godly men of our church. Some of these men loved and prayed for him for years, going back to that Thursday morning small group. We could not forsake him even if he did not want our help.

A few days later I shared Billy’s news with the deacons. We grieved. We prayed. And we determined to go after him. I asked them to intentionally pursue Billy, assure him of our love, and tell him that we were not dropping him. I wrote Billy and his wife about my decision to involve the deacons, which infuriated the couple. One deacon later told me of his utter surprise that Billy saw me as an enemy and could see no goodwill from me.

I could not help but compare Billy’s attitude from the two times of sexual immorality. Both times I involved appropriate, godly church leaders. The first time Billy showed brokenness, humility, and submission. Antagonism and defensiveness marked him now.

I sent them a used copy of Dutch Sheets’ book Tell Your Heart to Beat Again. In a few weeks, Billy showed up at my back door early one morning and asked me to come outside. He returned the book, telling me that it was impossible to read because it had someone else’s markings inside. He shouted that the book was “ridiculous.”

He exclaimed, “You broke my confidence. You had no right. I am through with your church, and I am through with you!” I said, “God bless you. I love you.” And the cowboy stormed off, got into his truck, and sped away.

Letting go

The next several months my wife and I grieved the end of the relationship. Their family completely cut us off. My wife made several attempts at contacting his wife to no avail. One day my wife shared, “I have never had a friend that treated me like I was dead.”

It angered me to see my wife hurt. Billy took a job with a bad schedule, experienced clinical depression, thought irrationally, and wallowed in feelings of rejection. He forsook the Lord and committed immorality. So why were we the bad guys?

During that time, I read Henry Cloud’s book 9 Things You Simply Must Do to Succeed in Love and Life. In his chapter called Upset the Right People, he shares how making the right decisions sometimes involves upsetting irrational people with unrealistic expectations. Cloud explains the difference between hurting and harming. Harming involves wrong, destructive behavior. Hurting, however, is sometimes required to try and help someone grow. The Proverb says, “Wounds from a friend can be trusted.”

Sometimes “we make a decision to do something that pains them if it is done for a purpose, for one’s own well-being,” Cloud writes. “That is not inflicting harm at all, even if the person on the receiving end acts as if it is.”

The previous two years I battled Billy’s unrealistic expectations. I didn’t text him enough. If I texted, I should have called. If I called, I should have gone to his house.

I finally accepted Billy’s expectations of me and the church as unrealistic. He wanted us to meet unmet needs deep within him that only Christ and a better work schedule can satisfy.

I finally accepted that it was okay if I did not please him.

“You cannot speak the truth, live out good values, and choose your own direction without disappointing some people,” Cloud writes. “What you should do, and what someone’s response is going to be, are two very different issues.”

Jesus Christ and the apostle Paul both experienced rejection. They experienced the loss of followers and companions. On one occasion the Bible says that “many of [Jesus’] disciples withdrew and were not walking with him anymore” (John 6:66). Paul’s epistles include lists of men who deserted him. When forsaken, Paul said, “But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me” (2 Tim. 4:17).

The man I helped disciple rejected me. The man I helped many times did not want my help. And he did not want me. The cowboy walked away. Through it, I learned that sometimes you have to let them walk away. Jesus did not go after everyone, and neither can we.

The cowboy walked away. I am thankful that Jesus did not.