Texas the pastor is on leave After his church learned of frequent messages between him and a woman who was not his wife.
“In this case, the message was neither romantic nor sexual in nature, but the frequency and familiarity of the message crossed the line,” the village church said in a statement on Aug. 28. “They made it clear that (he) was not using pastor-appropriate language and was not modeling the behavior we expected him to do.”
The village church says it learned of messages between senior pastor Matt Chandler and a woman months ago. I was.
“I didn’t think I did anything wrong,” Chandler told the congregation. “Both my wife and her husband knew it, but some things she said confused me.”
Chandler said he took his concerns to the church elders and informed his wife.
“I wasn’t good enough,” he said.
The elders hired a law firm to review these messages and found that his conversations violated internal social media usage policies, according to a news release.
“And[the elders]had some concerns,” Chandler said. “These concerns weren’t that our messages were romantic or sexual. They were that our conversations were unguarded and unwise.”
He added that the frequency of his messages moved beyond the typical brother-sister relationship, and that “friendliness…was played with vulgar and silly jokes.”
The elders decide that Chandler should take a leave of absence because the pastor needs a “greater awareness” of friendship boundaries. Chandler agreed with their assessment.
“Matt’s leave of absence will be both disciplined and developmental and will allow him to focus on raising greater awareness in this area,” the church said in a statement. will be determined by the expectations set by the elders for his development.”
His vacation from teaching and preaching soon began.
“It’s just really embarrassing, to be honest,” Chandler said. “I feel stupid. I feel
Chandler said he intended to be his church’s senior pastor for the next 20 years. 2002 onwards.
village church A Baptist church in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area.
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