The problem as I see both the recent Priest scandals and with this incident is the WILLINGNESS of the sheeple in the congregation to totally rely on someone else for their education in faith. Very seldom do I see christians conducting their own education. Rather, they rely on the clergy to TELL them what is right and wrong and when the clergy backs it up with a scripture or two - often taken out of context - the sheeple accept it as truth without conducting their own research.
This "absolute trust" leads to an environment where behaviors are not questioned or supervised. The clergy and pastors are allowed to have a free hand in the running of the church without oversight. In my particular involvement, I found that the pastor had been able to push through a number of changes to the Church's constitution that made is removal near impossible (he was removed anyway). Also, he had managed to consolidate almost all power into the office of the Sr. Pastor without any oversight. It was necessary to correct this by distributing powers and adding checks and balances to the constitution.
While the age of the pastor is only a minor issue to me, I would be concerned that a pastor would be taking children from the church. Our revised constitution made specific rules for the custody of children and what could and could not be done. One of the first rules was that parents would be the first notified of any misconduct. Teachers, Church staff, and Ministerial staff were NOT allowed to punish children in any way. This policy was adopted to clearly articulate to the staff acceptable behaviors. It sounds to me that this church has never addressed such issues.
As such, it exposes the church to lawsuits. I think that churches should review their constitution for a balance of powers and review their policies with a view of preventing conduct that would expose the church to a lawsuit. Such reviews may take a more cynical approach that maybe uncomfortable, but they are of great value in preventing things like this in the first place.
On a side note - Having been through the most basic process of creating a small constitution, I now have much greater appreciation for our founding fathers and the task that they faced. I would imagine that a simular exercise for a class on American History would be a great teaching tool.
Just my .02
Amen, brother, amen.