If we hope to give ourselves – leaders in the Church scene – a hope of long-term survival we need to update our view of how forward progress is made in the real world. I’ve seen lots of models of the discipleship process and each author of these misses the one thing Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker and Gordon McDonald all needed in their time of brokenness – therapy before the yogurt hit the fan. 
 
The cycle of forward progress goes something like this:
 
Hospital – School – Army … Hospital – School, etc.

Of course, in order for this to work, a leader needs to be able to trust the person he / she is going to for help. I know very well from personal experience this is often not what one encounters when seeking help. I’ve never gone through an addiction or a moral failure, but I have gone through episodes of depression. When I confided in a couple of people I had worked with for an extended time, I was absolutely convinced they were “safe.” Little did I realize these “brothers” weren’t listening to me so they could pray for me, feel for me - they were carefully logging all that I said in order to use that information later to make me look incompetent. Disappointed, betrayed, the list goes on.

I understand exactly why someone like Ted H. was gun shy in confiding in someone. Those hungry for opportunity…well it makes me cry as I am now in writing this. Is this the Church Jesus had in mind when he said his bride would be spotless and without wrinkle? I think I’m going to get a bumper sticker movement going with the simple words, “not there yet!” It will be an insider’s only kind of thing. Only veterans of the Church will get it.

More to come…