Of Course Church Leaders Fall: The Scandalous Truth

What failure reveals about the Church, the cross, and the God who kneels beside the accused

In recent years, headlines about moral failure in the Church have become all too familiar. We’ve seen the downfall of Ravi Zacharias, revelations about spiritual abuse within Willow Creek, Hillsong’s imploded leadership, the broader reckoning within the Southern Baptist Convention, and the recent misconduct allegations involving Michael Tait. Even lesser-known churches and long-revered figures have not been spared, such as revivalist Dr. Michael Brown. These stories leave us disoriented, disillusioned, and asking hard questions: How could this happen? Why does it keep happening? And why do those most vocal about holiness sometimes resist accountability?

Photo by Ayko Neil Kehl on Unsplash

Of course, opponents of the Christian faith are quick to remind the world that the church is super-scandalous and untrustworthy. This is based on a common perception that scandal shows up more often in the Church than in other places. Especially when it comes to moral or sexual failures. And while all the data doesn’t support that claim, the perception persists. Because the betrayal feels deeper. The outrage burns hotter. The failure stings more profoundly. The Church, unlike other institutions, has claimed to be something more: scandal-less!

But the real scandal is that the Church is just as scandalous as every other human community. That the Church, for all its language of light and holiness, has never been immune to the same fractures and failures that haunt every human gathering. We hurt, we hide, we lust, we hunger for power, just like everyone else. And maybe that wouldn’t be so scandalous if we had just told the truth about it. If we had lived with the humility of those who walk with a limp (Genesis 32). But we didn’t. We wrapped ourselves in the language of calling and covenant, of anointing and authority, and we forgot what the gospel actually declares: that God has entered the ache and the fracture of our world and refuses to leave. It is the insistence that grace is not a prize for the righteous, but a gift for the desperate. The gospel gathers us, not because we are innocent, but because we are loved in spite of all we hide. The gospel is not afraid of what is real. It walks into the middle of it, names it, and makes space to begin again.

Instead of naming that brokenness, we cloaked it in sanctified language and a pious veneer. We told the world we were different, better, set apart not just by grace but by virtue. We curated our image with certainty and control. We built fences around ourselves and called it holiness, forgetting that Jesus never built a fence, instead, he was the gate (John 10:9). He invited us not to display righteousness, but to participate in redemption. We placed ourselves on a pedestal and invited others to look up. But Jesus never asked us to rise above. He asked us to go low (Matthew 23:11–12). He invited us to take up a cross, not ascend a platform (Luke 9:23).

But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

- Jesus, in Matthew 23:11-12

The truth is, church people are messy AF. We wouldn’t even have a New Testament if it weren’t for our mess. The letters that make up so much of our Scriptures were not inspirational essays or doctrinal manifestos. They were written responses to crises and moral dilemmas. They were interventions. They were written in the aftermath of betrayal and confusion, lust and lies, factions and failures. The apostles wrote not to praise the churches, but to plead with them. To expose the wounds, to name the dangers, to keep them from devouring one another. The early Church was messy because it was made of people. And it still is.

And yet, in the modern Church, particularly in the American expressions shaped by Evangelicalism and Restorationist fervor, we have tried to ignore that history. We built a brand on moral clarity. We projected an image of purity and protection. We constructed a moral high ground and stood upon it, as if it were part of our inheritance. As if Jesus handed it to us. But he didn’t. He warned us, in Matthew 6, about performing righteousness for the sake of appearance. He warned us about long prayers and loud offerings. He cautioned us against the very stage we seem most drawn to.

But that stage comes with lights. And sometimes those lights are so bright, they blind the one who stands in them. We’ve watched it happen to pastor after pastor, platform after platform. Leaders elevated beyond accountability, intoxicated by applause, convinced they are untouchable. And then, when the spotlight catches them in contradiction, we act surprised. We turn quickly, defensively. We point the light at others. We accuse. We scapegoat. We claim they are the exception. We claim it is an isolated case, an unusual evil, a single bad actor. But we know better. We have known for a long time.

Scandal threatens our image. That is why it cuts so deeply. The scandal may be greed. It may be manipulation. It may be deception. It may be sexual sin. But whatever form it takes, it threatens the version of ourselves we have presented to the world. And that is what terrifies us. Because we are not just ashamed of what we did. We are afraid of being seen for what we are; simul justus et peccator, "at the same time, saint and sinner."

We like to believe that scandal is what happens elsewhere. That our sanctuaries are immune. Thus, the reason moral failure in the Church feels so devastating is not because it happens more often. It is because we built an identity on the belief that it would not happen here. Should not happen here. And when it does, and it has, and it will again, we are left not only with trauma, but with dissonance. Our story collapses. Our illusion cracks. And far too often, we protect the illusion instead of the people.

Make no mistake, owning our scandalous nature does not release us from responsibility. If anything, it deepens it. If we dare to speak of sacred things, then we must also be serious about the sacred lives entrusted to us. Vigilance is not optional. Care is not a side project. Creating spaces of safety and accountability is not just a response to scandal. It is what faithfulness looks like when people are counting on us to be good stewards of their stories and wounds.

Why is our impulse to make sense of scandal in ways that abdicates our responsibility and complicity? There is something ancient about this. Something Edenic. Our nakedness has always made us afraid. And we have learned, generation after generation, to hide ourselves, our shame, by pointing fingers at someone else. We throw stones, hoping no one notices we are unclothed. We look for someone to absorb the shame we cannot bear to carry. This is the ancient impulse that Girard names: the drive to preserve community through exclusion, to protect purity by projection. But the gospel offers another way. The cross stands in defiance of scapegoating. It refuses to cast the burden elsewhere. Instead, it bears the burden fully. Jesus doesn’t deflect the scandal. He carries it. When anxiety rises and reputation trembles, we look for someone to carry the blame. And when that someone is sacrificed, we tell ourselves we have done justice. But we haven’t. We have only hidden the wound beneath another layer of silence.

Jesus broke that cycle. He did not cast a stone. He stood beside the woman in the dust. He stood in solidarity with the accused. He bore the weight of our violence rather than perpetuating it. He showed us a different way.

Paul called the cross a scandal—a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles (1 Corinthians 1:23). But for those willing to see, it reveals the subversive heart of God: not power maintained through exclusion, but love revealed through surrender. The cross does not preserve purity by casting others out. It restores by absorbing the blame, and then refusing to return it.

What if we followed him there? What if, instead of protecting our image, we stood where he stood, alongside the accused, the ashamed, and the cast out? What if we stood beside the wounded, even when the wounds came from within our own walls? What if holiness looked less like performance and more like confession? Less like spectacle and more like solidarity?

The cross is not just the place where sin is forgiven. It is the place where cycles of violence and shame are interrupted. It is where the powers of accusation collapse. It is where solidarity replaces spectacle. The early church did not gather around a platform. It gathered around a crucified Savior. And if we want to be the Church in a world unraveling with scandal, we will not get there by ascending. We will get there by descending, by becoming people shaped by the cross, not just symbolically, but ethically, relationally, and communally.

Christians do not stand above the brokenness of the world. We live within it. We carry it, weep under it, and refuse to let it be forgotten or passed off onto someone else. The Church does not stand outside the scandal. It stands in its shadow, beneath the cross.

We do not need to prove that the Church is better than the world. We need to become a people who tell the truth about ourselves. We need to stop throwing stones and start telling the story of the one who knelt beside the accused. We need to walk the long road of repentance, not for optics, but for healing.

Jesus did not protect his reputation. He emptied himself. He did not scapegoat the sinner. He bore the sin. He did not secure a platform. He carried a cross.

And so must we.

The way forward is not up. It is down. Down into the mess. Down into the truth. Down into the broken places where Christ still waits, not as a judge, but as a companion. And there, in that place of shared pain and presence, we may not find resolution. But we may find the God who still walks in the garden, calling, "Where are you?" But we may discover something more powerful than control. We may find a resurrection we did not perform, but one we are invited to receive.