So welcome to the podcast.

This is episode 406.

My name is Douglas Wilson, and you are welcome aboard. Thank you for coming. So as I'm recording this, if you're a regular listener, you should know that I record four at a time. I record these things once a month. And so I do four at a time. And that covers the month,

right? So, uh, you may notice some things, you know, an episode may drop. And there's no

reference at all to something that just happened. Well, that's because it was not going to happen for two

weeks after, uh, until two weeks after I had recorded.

So there you go. As I'm recording this, the news has just dropped that a pastor named Renahan,

a pastor named Renahan, who is associated with Reform Baptists, has stepped down from ministry

because of an acknowledged adulterous affair, having committed adultery.

And this kind of thing is, of course, very sad and as a blemish, black eye with regard to the church's testimony. But the real

black eye in such things, if you have a large group like Christians are or evangelical

Christians or reformed evangelical Calvinistic Christians, and there are millions of them,

you're going to have things like this. You're going to have someone who strays. You're going to

have someone who sins. You're going to have someone who disqualifies himself. The real test of biblical integrity has to do with things like,

did he bust himself or was he caught? And whether or not he was caught or busted himself,

is he doing the right thing in stepping down from the ministry, demitting his ordination and saying,

I'm not qualified to be a minister anymore.

We have drifted into a world in which in some quadrants of the church,

a pastor can be caught in some kind of sexual indiscretion and go into counseling

for a brief period of time and then reassume his pulpit. No. Paul lays down the qualifications

for leadership in 1st Timothy 3 and in Titus 1, and Peter does in 1st

Peter 5. And the qualifications that are laid down for a pastor or a leader are moral

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