When Christian Giants Stumble, the Proper Response is Mourning

My blog has moved.  Click here for this post on my new blog with all the old and new comments.

I heard a really amazing talk last month on writing in—get this!!-- a large Charismatic Conference, RiverCamp. The speaker Mark Stibbe talked about the angel of writing, and prayed for an anointing to write for us.

I asked for it; I received it.

I have always felt guilty and conflicted about my writing, since I got married in 1989: wasn’t there some laundry or housework to do?  Should I be encountering God in a laundry basket as a male spiritual adviser suggested?

Now I saw it as a calling, a spiritual gifting. An anointing!! I have, on a daily basis, written more words than ever since then. When I am stuck, I visualize myself as standing in the waterfall of God’s power and anointing, and ask to be refilled with the spirit.

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Another thing Mark Stibbe said that helped me was that “Seeing” was a spiritual gift. For instance, he said, if you have a gift for leading Bible studies, you “see” things in the text which most people do not. I have long had the experience of seeing riches in a Biblical text which I thought were totally obvious to any reader, but which, apparently, were not. But I had never thought of this as a spiritual gift.

Stibbe talked about the gift of “seeing” as you write. And the manuscript which I had been stymied over for 15 years began to shape and coalesce in my mind as he spoke, and over the next couple of days.

That evening, a sweet Elim Pentecostal minister, Trevor Baker, who seemed to be his sixties or older, spoke about how he had been stymied with his first book manuscript—his autobiography—for decades; how Mark Stibbe prayed for him; how the block dissolved; how he finished the manuscript in six months. He asked us to buy the published book!!

Stibbe himself spoke about how he received an anointing to write when John Wimber prayed for him.

I was delighted when Stibbe prayed that we receive the anointing to write. Over the next few days, I saw the shape my book should take. I saw the painfully long chapters—between 12 and 20+ pages dissolve and reshape themselves into short 2-3 page 1000 word chapters. In the other words, the length of the blog-posts I’ve been writing for the last 29 months—the sound-bites in which I’ve been instinctively thinking. I was filled with a longing to write it, and it has been flowing freely and joyfully since then.

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I am reading a book called The Anointing by R. T. Kendall, unusual, brilliant.

It says God’s gifts and call are irrevocable. It examines how one might be able to transfer an anointing to write, let’s say, or be able to preach brilliantly, or heal, while no longer in a fresh, close relationship with God.

I have written about how I was very keen on hearing Mark Stibbe talk about the Father Heart of God, and how I was astounded (though delighted) to instead hear him talk about writing.

Perhaps there was a reason why he chose to talk about writing rather than God.

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Stibbe spoke again at River Camp on our last evening there. And dramatically, all the lights went out. The sound switched off. The back-up generator failed. His talk was left unfinished. There was no ministry time. There were thousands listening, and we were instructed to file out one by one. We did so in total silence.

Stibbe tweeted  

27 AugMark Stibbe ‏@markstibbe

Extraordinary last night preaching at River Camp. Total black out just before ministering at the end of my talk. Someone didn't like it!

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Indeed!!

It was an eerie and dramatic last scene for a brilliant life in ministry—30 books, some of them very powerful; being Vicar of a flagship Anglican Charismatic Church, St. Andrew’s Chorleywood; founder of the Father’s Heart Trust.

Full of dramatic irony, as he would have appreciated.

11 days after that dramatic evening, I was emailed by a vicar in London, pointing me to this  and this, which stated that “Mark has made a decision to enter into an inappropriate relationship with someone other than his wife,” and so, according to the email, “has stood down from all pastoral leadership and Christian ministry.” The announcements speak of “a significant and immediate financial need for his wife and four kids,” and solicited money for a “Stibbe Family Compassion Fund.”

What can the proper response to all this be, but mourning? Someone so gifted, with such a grasp of theology, of the Father’s love, with a spiritual anointing on his writing?

Billy Graham has been credited with saying that when Christian leaders, giant oaks in our forests, fall, it’s one of these three reasons: girls, gold, glory. The lust of the eyes, and the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.

God has put the yearning for significance in everyone’s hearts. No one wants to grow up to be “a no one.” Most children I ask want to be writers, or actors or football players or astronauts. But too much adulation has a corrupting and isolating effect, and if we are given the opportunity to develop a sturdy Christian character in anonymity, an opportunity many Christian celebrities are not given—well, we need to rejoice and thank God for that opportunity.

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Should public sin put an end to ministry, when none of us is without sin, and secret sin lurks behind so many shiny facades, as you realize one you get to know Christian celebs? Besides, no minister—and no parishioner—is free from sin!!

I look forward to seeing Mark Stibbe back in ministry. I believe he has much to teach--this aspiring writer certainly.