Does Your Integrity Match Your Position?

Yesterday The Gospel Coalition posted an article about a popular youth speaker (I won't call him a pastor) who was recently arrested for the second time for impersonating a police officer.  Apparently during the second offense he actually ran from the police and jumped off of a cliff.

Just to be clear, after being arrested and pleading guilty to impersonating a police officer, he was allowed to continue to speaking at a gathering with 7,000 teenagers at it.

There are two big problems with this:

(1) The leadership allowed him to stay in his position without much of a real hiccup
(2) Youth pastors and parents kept taking their kids to hear him speak


I have no inside knowledge of the situation.  Perhaps the leadership did make some big changes which he circumvented, but on the surface it appears that he was allowed to stay in his position because people kept showing up.

This isn't the first time a pastor's platform has exceeded their integrity.  For some reason we all have a tendency to be very forgiving towards people who we think are talented.  In areas like politics or entertainment that's dangerous enough, but in ministry, this is devastating.  We have to demand better.

Does your integrity match your position?