NASHVILLE (BP) — When Albert Mohler asked two Boyce College students how they were doing, the reply was stark: they were not well.

“What they were bearing was the burden of the news about a disaster that had fallen upon a church and a ministry,” said Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS), “a pastor who was exposed as having what would be described as an improper relationship with a woman not his wife.”

The news caused Mohler grief too — so much so that he addressed the issue of pastoral infidelity late last month in comments to students at Southern and Boyce, the seminary’s undergraduate school. “I have no sense that there is an increase in number” of instances of pastoral sexual sin, he said, “but there is an increase in public damage to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the ministry of the church” as news of pastors’ sins spreads rapidly online.

Discussion of sexual sin among ministers has been stirred in recent months by news of falls by prominent pastors. But there is more going on than meets the eye, a Christian counselor and a veteran pastor say. Recent instances of ministerial infidelity are not merely sexual sin. The sexual sins are symptomatic of narcissism and a celebrity culture in the church.

“I’m not at all discounting their sin,” said Dwayne Milioni, pastor of Open Door Church in Raleigh, N.C., and a leader of the Pillar Network, a Southern Baptist group that helps equip, plant and revitalize churches. “But I am super concerned as to why we continue to have this tendency towards ministry idolatry.”

“Because we created this culture, then we are in fact to blame,” Milioni said. “We isolate a few individual church leaders. We make celebrities out of them. We idolize them, and then when they fall, we cancel them.”

Narcissism comes to church

Adultery by well-known preachers is not a new phenomenon. In the 1870s, one of America’s most famous preachers, Henry Ward Beecher, was accused of an adulterous affair with a friend’s wife. That friend sued Beecher over the incident. The jury could not reach a verdict, but Beecher never regained the popularity he enjoyed before the scandal.

Likewise, in the early 1700s a prominent London Baptist pastor, David Crosley, was accused of sexual misconduct against at least three women, with multiple witnesses giving corroborating testimony. Eventually, he was excommunicated from the Baptist Church of Cripplegate. He was restored to ministry at the end of his life in the 1740s with none less than revivalist George Whitefield commending his ministry.

But are new conditions in today’s evangelical subculture exacerbating the problem of sexual sin? Perhaps, says Chuck DeGroat, a Christian counselor who has written on narcissism in the church.

“It’s an oversimplification to regard affairs by pastors merely as instances of sexual temptation,” DeGroat told Baptist Press. “When they act out, that’s the symptom. Underneath, there are often unaddressed wounds and unhealed trauma/shame. The ‘narcissistic false self’ didn’t originate in a vacuum — there’s a story behind that, and it’s important for these pastors to begin to address their deeper wounds so that they stop the cycle of wounding others.”

In his book “When Narcissism Comes to Church” (IVP), DeGroat defined narcissistic personality disorder as a condition “characterized by grandiosity, entitlement, a need for admiration and a lack of empathy.”

“Those who are diagnosably narcissistic may be talented, charming, even inspiring,” DeGroat wrote, “but they lack the capacity for self-awareness and self-evaluation, shunning humility for defensive self-protection.” Narcissism occurs when people treat as reality a false image of themselves — the powerful, omnicompetent person they want to be rather than the flawed human they are. Building up the false image leads to other sins, as other people become tools to prop up the narcissist’s ego.

Such narcissism thrives among today’s ministry leaders and opens the door for both sexual sin and abuse, said DeGroat, a professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Mich.

Churches set pastors up for moral failings when they “prop up and reward those in power and create the conditions for harm to the vulnerable,” he said. The solution to narcissism includes honest self-assessment of who we are and what God wants us to become.

“Ironically, while narcissism is often defined as self-focus,” DeGroat said, “these leaders are radically out of touch with themselves. They lack both self-awareness and self-regulation, which is to say — there is a lot of inner work to do.”

Celebrity pastors

Narcissism fits hand in glove with evangelicalism’s culture of celebrity preachers, according to Milioni.

“Celebrity is the confluence of power, money and sexuality,” Milioni said. When pastors embrace a celebrity mindset, they treat people as tools for self-gratification rather than sheep in their spiritual flock, he said. That leads easily to sexual sin.

Christian media outlets bear blame for enticing pastors to seek followers over faithfulness, Milioni said. “Who’s making the list of the 100 most faithful pastors who retired after decades of ministry? You guys aren’t publishing that. No one is talking about it.”

Yet Christian pastors should not be anxious about falling to sexual sin. Neither should their wives be anxious about their husbands’ marital fidelity, Milioni said. A focus on godliness and shepherding God’s flock will lead to healthy marriages. He cited the example of Billy Graham, who remained morally pure even after achieving worldwide fame.

“The essence of” the Billy Graham Rule “is universal,” Milioni said. Even pastors of smaller churches whose staff includes only a secretary should set boundaries. They include minimizing time in the church office with just the secretary and considering the hiring of a male secretary.

“A pastor has every right” to demand “a sense of protection,” he said. “Hopefully the church will understand this is the day and age in which we’re living. It just takes one accusation, even if you don’t do anything, and you’re canceled.”

Back at SBTS, Mohler noted that pastors’ falls invalidate their ministries but not the Divine Word they preach. He also offered a principle to ensure marital fidelity.

“I want to speak more bluntly than I have ever spoken from this chapel before,” Mohler said. You “will not have sex with a woman not your wife if you are never alone with a woman not your wife.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE — David Roach is a writer in Mobile, Ala.)