Pastor Caught in Reformed Website Scandal

Battle Creek, Mi - John Hodges, the associate pastor of Liberty Baptist Church in Battle Creek, stood before an emotional and confused congregation this past Sunday and tried his best to explain what was going on with the church's senior pastor, Dr. Charles Hollingsworth.

"I know we are all in shock," said Hodges from the pulpit. "Believe me, I'm hurting from this too. But I think one thing that brother Charles needs right now is our prayers and our support. He's been placed on sabbatical indefinitely, but we want to work with him and spend some time trying to help him through this deeply troubling period of his life."

The trouble for Hollingsworth began about a month ago when the church installed a piece of software called Covenant Eyes on all of the church's computers. The Covenant Eyes software is intended to help guard against someone surfing the web for explicit material through accountability, remotely monitoring all internet sites visited on a particular computer and logging them so that they cannot be changed. The program then sends the information to designated accountability partners. In the case of Liberty Baptist various members of the Deacon's board were assigned to keep the pastoral staff accountable. While the main intention of the program is to guard against surfing explicit websites, the log information shows every site visited, including sites designated as "safe." Thus, it was not long before pastor Hollingsworth's accountability partner made some shocking discoveries.

"I got his weblog in my email, and I was looking it over carefully," said deacon Patrick Downes. "Everything looked fine to me, I didn't see anything inappropriate, but I kept seeing this one site over and over again called monergism.com. From what I could tell he was visiting this site a lot. So I decided to take a look and see what it was all about."

Downes describes what he found as "shocking" and "disgusting." As it turns out monergism.com is an entire website devoted to Calvinist and Reformed writings, cataloging everything from the Puritans to contemporary theologians. Downes soon found out that Hollingsworth had been deeply engaged in reading the works of John Owen, John Calvin, Sinclair Ferguson and C.H. Spurgeon.

"My heart sank when I found out he had been visiting all of these sites," said Downes. "I immediately contacted brother Hodges. We went into the pastor's study one night when he wasn't there and started up his computer. As it turns out he'd been downloading articles and even printing them out. We also found he'd started up a friendship with a local PCA [Presbyterian Church in America] minister, having coffee with him and things such as that. It was just terrible."

For the time being Hodges has been named interim pastor of Liberty Baptist while Hollingsworth has been placed on "Sabbatical." Hodges, who is supposedly overseeing his "rehabilitation," told TBNN that he has put Hollingsworth on a strict reading diet of Ergun Caner, Dave Hunt and Charles Finney. TBNN was unable to reach Hollingsworth for comment. Hodges further noted that Liberty Baptist is planning to buy the popular Net Finney software to ensure this kind of incident does not happen again.

Very funny! I like this one from Touchstone Magazione Jne 2007 http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=20-05-017-v The Minister’s Cabinet Christopher Bailey reports the Minutes of the April Council Meeting at St. Barnabas Lutheran Church, Blandville Mrs. Woodstock called the meeting to order at 7:12 P.M., Pastor Hamilton having been delayed by an unusually long line at Starbucks. The meeting began with the reading of the minutes from the March meeting. Mrs. Woodstock asked for a motion to accept the minutes. Mrs. Blickensderfer pointed out that “blithering” is spelled with only one r. Mrs. Woodstock asked for a motion to accept the minutes as amended. The motion was made by Mrs. Voss and seconded by Mr. Fox, and carried by a vote of 7 to 1. Under Old Business, Pastor Hamilton mentioned that the light bulb in his pulpit reading lamp is still burned out. Mrs. Woodstock asked him whether that was the reason he had embarrassed the whole congregation during the Psalm last Sunday. Pastor Hamilton answered that it was. Mrs. Blickensderfer said she thought the light-bulb problem had been remanded to the Building Committee. Mr. Sholes said that no record of any such remandment appeared in the minutes of the March meeting. Mrs. Blickensderfer said she didn’t think “remandment” was a word. Mr. Fox thought that the pulpit was under the jurisdiction of the Worship and Music Committee. Mrs. Yost thought that the lighting was the responsibility of the Evangelism Committee. Mr. Fox wanted to know what sort of dunderhead thought lighting had anything to do with evangelism. Mrs. Woodstock pointed out that it made no difference, since the Building Committee, the Worship and Music Committee, and the Evangelism Committee were all Mrs. Voss. Mrs. Voss answered that she didn’t know anything about electricity, and if people wanted her to take care of something they should tell her about it instead of expecting her to read their minds. Mr. Dhiatensor said something in the language he speaks, which we think might be Portuguese. Pastor Hamilton said that the replacement of a light bulb was really a very simple matter, and that he would have taken care of it himself except that the last time he bought something for the church he was informed that he could not be reimbursed unless the expense had the prior approval of Council. Mrs. Woodstock asked him whether he really believed that Council would have given its prior approval for an espresso machine. Pastor Hamilton thought Council would have, since the machine was essential to his continued effectiveness as a minister of the Word. Mrs. Woodstock asked him whether he believed in the Tooth Fairy as well. Mr. Sholes said that the matter under discussion was the light bulb, and not the espresso machine, which had already been discussed at length at the January meeting. Mrs. Voss was of the opinion that someone should just go out and get a light bulb and be done with it. Mrs. Woodstock asked her whether she was volunteering. Mrs. Voss repeated that she didn’t know anything about electricity. Mrs. Blickensderfer asked whether the church didn’t have any spare light bulbs sitting around in the closet. Pastor Hamilton reminded Council that the lamp in the pulpit uses a halogen bulb, and thus ordinary spare light bulbs are of no use. Mrs. Woodstock thought that the next time the church bought a lamp, someone ought to make sure it took regular light bulbs like normal people use. Pastor Hamilton said that there were many advantages to halogen bulbs. Mr. Dhiatensor became very agitated and spoke rapidly about something, then stomped out of the room. Mrs. Voss wondered whether “halogen” meant something obscene in Spanish. Mrs. Yost said that she had always thought he was speaking Romanian. Mrs. Blickensderfer said that at any rate someone ought to apologize to him, because Mr. Dhiatensor seemed like such a nice man. Mr. Fox moved that Council convey its apologies to Mr. Dhiatensor for inadvertently offending him. The motion was seconded by Mrs. Blickensderfer, and carried by a vote of 7 to 1. Mr. Sholes asked who was going to write the letter. Mrs. Woodstock thought that would be the responsibility of the Worship and Music Committee. Mrs. Voss said that she didn’t know Spanish, and anyway she couldn’t type. Mrs. Woodstock said, fine, she would write the letter herself. Mrs. Yost moved that Council authorize Mrs. Woodstock to write a letter of apology to Mr. Dhiatensor on behalf of Council. The motion was seconded by Mrs. Voss and carried by a vote of 7 to 1. Mrs. Woodstock asked Mrs. Underwood if she would mind explaining, purely for Council’s information, why she had to vote no on every damn motion. Mrs. Underwood said that it was quite clear that no one else on Council cared about the health of the congregation, which was threatened daily by an onslaught of communicable diseases. Mrs. Woodstock said that the vote on a new hand dryer for the women’s restroom had been taken in February, and most of Council had decided that paper towels were good enough for them. Mrs. Underwood said that was fine, but they shouldn’t expect her to cooperate with a Council that didn’t care if the entire congregation died of bird flu. Pastor Hamilton asked whether any decision had been reached in the matter of the light bulb. Mr. Fox said he didn’t think so. Mr. Sholes said that the problem was figuring out what sort of bulb the lamp used. Mrs. Voss suggested that someone could just take the old bulb to a store and find one like it, although she added that she herself didn’t know anything about electricity. Mrs. Woodstock asked for a motion to authorize someone to go to the hardware store with the bulb, and come back with a new one. Mr. Sholes said the problem with that was that no one knew how much a new bulb would cost, and until Council knew the cost it would be impossible to authorize the expense. Mrs. Woodstock asked him what he would suggest. Mr. Sholes suggested that an ad hoc committee could take the bulb to the hardware store, obtain the information about how much it would cost to replace, and report the cost to the next meeting of Council. Otherwise he didn’t see how it would be possible to authorize the expense. Mrs. Woodstock asked him whether he would be willing to be part of the ad hoc committee. Mr. Sholes said that he would, and suggested that Mr. Fox would be a good second member. Mr. Fox explained that, for reasons he would rather not discuss, he was no longer welcome at Blandville Hardware. Mrs. Yost volunteered to go with Mr. Sholes to the hardware store, if he promised not to exceed the speed limit on State Street. Mrs. Woodstock asked for a motion to form an ad hoc exploratory committee consisting of Mr. Sholes and Mrs. Yost for the purpose of taking the burnt-out light bulb to Blandville Hardware and finding out how much it would cost to replace, the cost to be reported to Council at the May meeting, at which time Council would be in a position to be able to authorize the expense of a new light bulb. The motion was made by Mrs. Voss and seconded by Mr. Fox, and carried by a vote of 7 to 1. Christopher Bailey , a Lutheran, writes about everything from Arthurian mythology to wireless networking. He spent a decade on the Upward Path in corporate America, but now must be counted among the backsliders.

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