WN: There is a similar paper on this site. This was the original.
Exactly a week before I was to deliver this to a Regent College class of first year students in a “World Christianity” course (April 8, 2007 was the day of the lecture, at the invitation of Loren Wilkinson), Dean Davey declared to his wife that he was having an affair. Dean was married to my niece, also senior pastor of a Baptist Church; the woman with whom the affair, pastor of Children’s Ministries, whom Dean was supervising. Besides the issue of professional clergy abuse, of violation of a friendship between the couples, and sending an entire congregation reeling, this affair destroyed two marriages, and impacted seven children. Huge harm was done, and I was suddenly caught up right in the middle of it all! This effectively eliminated all time needed to prepare properly for the lecture. It was done on the fly after a cramming all-nighter…
This paper therefore in terms of preparation was stunted at the time. Its final form (long version) was completed only after the lecture. It was shared later at a COV&R conference, the “similar paper” (see here).
Ironically, as if none of this ever happened, Dean was hired by World Vision. When that was terminated due to their discovery of his malfeasance, he continued right on as though nothing had happened. There has never been active repentance, confession, amends-making, commitment to sin no more – all prerequisite to moving on, all central to healing, to the Gospel. Dean is the loser, sadly, though the fallout is seen in the kids and on and on…
An excerpt:
Ever since Clark Pinnock taught an interterm course in 1975 at Regent College, entitled “The Politics of Jesus,” for close to half of my life, I have been drawn to the nonviolent Cross of Jesus. Pinnock later taught a full-semester course by the same title, based upon a then recent publication by Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (1972 & 1994), that theologian Stanley Hauerwas believes is the most important publication on ethics of the twentieth century.1
