Alister Cameron // Blogologist

The Christian newswires are abuzz today, because a big earthquake hit Melbourne with its epicentre down at Planetshakers. Michael Guglielmucci confessed that his battle with terminal cancer has all been a lie. Alun Davies immediately suspended his ministerial credentials.

Now begins a long and painful exercise of self-examination. And I’m not talking about Michael… that goes without saying. I’m talking about Planetshakers and about the AOG. The obvious question is this: How could no-one have known? Not even family! What kind of “system” can promote someone to such a place of influence and yet can fail to enforce a regime of accountability and scrutiny?

The thing about the Christian church in general, and Pentecostalism in particular, is that its history is littered with stories of fallen heroes. And this is not something to speak of lightly. It is very very painful stuff from which people never fully recover. People trust religious leaders like they trust very few other people and when one falls, it leaves a deep and very painful wound that will always leave a scar.

I know of a brilliant “man of God” who after decades cannot return to the congregation from which he was expelled for a matter of sexual indiscretion. Time heals a wound, but it doesn’t restore trust… not fully.

In a place like Planetshakers this kind of catastrophe will impact different people in different ways. For some it will not challenge just their trust in leadership… it will challenge their spirituality, their faith. That’s just what happens.

But see, the thing is… we KNOW that’s what happens. It’s happened many times before! And it will happen again.

So why don’t we learn from the massive damage of past leadership failures, and expect (and demand) a level of accountability and transparency from our leaders? I simple ask this: How many church leaders in this country — and in Pentecostalism in particular — have explicit structures of accountability and transparency in their lives and ministries so that it would be extremely extremely hard for them to get away with immoral behaviour for any length of time?

To leaders who resist these kinds of structures and strictures, I’d say… tough! It’s a very high call, so deal with it. It’s the price you pay to honour God and to honour the seriousness of your position of influence and leadership.

We’ve had too much spiritual abuse. Too many (especially young) people have been burned beyond recognition. Surely the least we can do is wise up to what’s going on here! And not to make too fine a point of it, I find it is almost a feature of Pentecostalism that the more senior a leader becomes, the more unconstrained his movements become; the more unaccountable we allow him to be.

Why did Michael not feel safe enough to confess his fraud to an intimate friend and co-leader, ages ago? Why did he find himself promoted to senior leadership, all the while carrying this deep inner turmoil, that never came out?

The answers to these questions should be none of our business. But they are when they spill out and hurt so many people. And spare a thought (and prayer) for the Guglielmucci family. Hurt indeed.

Never mind cancer of the human body. There is a cancer of the Body of Christ here and it’s called leadership. Even in Pentecostalism we are far more man-centric than Spirit-centric. We place so much on human leadership and so little on Spirit-leadership, and this sort of debacle is the fruit of it.

And lest you think it has anything to do with the size of a church, it doesn’t. Homechurch or Megachurch… leadership abuse and failure hurts people just as much in either case.

I, for one, have so much respect for Ps Danny, Michael’s dad. I can’t imagine his and his family’s pain right now. I’ll be praying for them.

Meanwhile, I hope the shockwaves of this earthquake lead to better “construction methods” in the structures of church leadership, designed to make sure it’s much much harder for a leader to fall like this again.

Will we learn from Pastor Mike’s fall?