By Jason Collum, AFA Journal staff writer
June 2001 – By all indications Victor was headed for great things in his career. At least he was until an addiction to pornography nearly cost him everything.
Victor’s problems began with the abuse of a credit card, calling phone sex numbers. He tried to stop, but like a cancer, his disease only went into remission. His problems recurred after a move with his wife and daughters to a new city, where added job stress, coupled with strong feelings of loneliness, led him to an escape he’d used before: pornography. He began to spend unlimited hours looking at porn on the Internet until finally his world caved in and he was forced to come face-to-face with the situation.
Victor’s story is an increasingly common one. One especially tragic aspect of his story is that Victor is a pastor.
‘We all have desires’
Though they may be placed on a pedestal and are called to a higher level of servitude, pastors are human too, and face the same temptations as others, says Pure Life Ministries [PLM] founder and president Steve Gallagher. But the added ease of access to pornography via the Internet is becoming a temptation too strong for many to resist. PLM was founded in 1986 to help men who are addicted to pornography and sexual sin.
Gallagher has seen an increasing number of pastors coming to his ministry for help, and says the problem can’t be ignored any longer. His beliefs are backed up by statistics.
According to a report in the Los Angeles Times:
Promise Keepers, the evangelical men’s movement, reports that one out of three men who attended its revival-like rallies in 1996 admitted they “struggle” with pornography.
A major Pentecostal denomination that operates a telephone hotline for pastors and their families says 25% of the calls involve porn addiction.
Focus on the Family, founded by Christian psychologist James Dobson, reports that one out of seven pastors who call its toll-free helpline say they are addicted to pornography.
“We all have desires,” Gallagher said. “But there are two basic types of men. First, there are people who have a natural propensity toward sex addiction or a heightened interest in sexual things. Then there’s another group, the typical all-American male, so to speak. They’ve come across it innocently. Sometimes a guy like that will run across it and first thing you know he starts going back and keeps going back. With the first group, the Internet’s just made it easier. The second group has just fallen into it or wandered into it.”
Victor may fall somewhere between those two groups. His first exposure to porn came when he was eight years old. His father, he said, had it just lying around. With that introduction, the seed was planted for what has become a lifetime struggle.
In his first position out of seminary, Victor was caught after he began using a church credit card to ring up hefty toll charges by calling phone sex lines. He sought counseling to solve the problem, and believed he had kicked the habit. He and his wife left that church and moved to a rural area in a Midwest state where his wife began attending a university. After she graduated, Victor re-entered ministry on a church staff.
“Pride started to enter into my life after I had a falling out with the senior pastor,” he said. “That started the downward spiral. We left that church and went to the church we’re at now. They saw whatever program my wife and I touched grew.
“At that point pride started growing, and I started getting the magazines. I then began getting on America Online and finding out different things I could do. And I started getting messages, and the pop-up screens. They would show tantalizing pictures. I would close them out because I didn’t want to see them, but then I’d start going back to them. I began living in a world of deception.”
Thus began Victor’s travel down the road which led him to PLM. “I moved from the Internet to phone calls. Finally, in February, [church officials] looked at my phone bill and saw a lot of minutes toward this one number, a chat/party line. I tried to manipulate the situation. I came forward and confessed [to the church], but I didn’t confess the whole thing; I just danced around it.”
Later, after entering PLM with his spirit completely broken, Victor finally made a full confession to his church.
Gallagher, who himself saw his life crumble from an addiction to pornography, said the point of brokenness is where a person has to be in order to truly begin recovery.
Hiding the problem
As with any addiction, those who are hooked on pornography are mercilessly bound to it and will go to great lengths to satisfy the need.
“A person starts to withdraw emotionally,” Gallagher said. “Pretty soon, they can’t see outside their own selfish, little tiny world. They just don’t have the wherewithal to be a good daddy, or husband, or whatever.”
Victor was accessing pornography, “at church, home, anywhere I could. That’s the way it is with porn addicts. If we get caught in one place or situation, we move to something else. It starts escalating. We can hide it for a little while. Then we become self-righteous with the pride, and are driven by the adrenaline of fear.”
Victor has been in the PLM program for one month of a six-month commitment, and is leaning wholly on God now to re-establish his life. “It’s [more than] a place to deal with the sexual addiction; it’s a place to let God come in and take care of life.” He and his wife told their daughters the entire story. “They know of my past and the struggles I’ve had. Their prayers are that God will heal my hurts. They’ve been surprisingly supportive.” His wife continues to recover from the ordeal as well. “My wife’s supplying mercy. I’ve put it in my heart that I either find God, or I leave and never go home again. I don’t want my wife or children to go through this again.”
While he is in recovery, his church is helping support him and his family by paying half his salary, “and that’s simply God’s grace, because I don’t deserve it.”
Both Gallagher and Victor agree the church must no longer turn its head from the problem of pastors and pornography.
“The church has to want to decide to handle it,” Victor said. “A lot of [churches] just put their heads in the sand. The pastor’s job is a lonely job, and many pastors really don’t know who to turn to. Who pastors the pastor when he’s in sin?
“I think very few men know what to do. The church doesn’t know what to do. It’s not like an appendectomy; it takes time and work. It takes accountability to your life and learning to be humble. The church has got to wake up because it’s only going to get worse.” 
Should the church be concerned about a few dirty pictures?
By Ed Vitagliano AFA Journal news editor
There are so many critical issues with which concerned Christians can be involved. Do we really need to slap something else on our plates?
Restraining the explosion of pornography in our culture is one of those subjects that might seem unworthy of the church’s time and energy. After all, everyone sitting in the pews knows that a man or woman looking at some dirty pictures on Saturday night is probably not the kind of person who will be sitting in a church pew on Sunday morning. Right?
Not so fast. Pornography, with its intrinsic potential to ensnare anyone, is quickly becoming available to everyone. The Internet alone presents web surfers with numerous opportunities for anonymously encountering porn.
According to a recent Zogby International survey, conducted for Focus on the Family, one out of five survey respondents said they had visited a sexually-oriented web site. That means a staggering 40 million Americans may have viewed online porn.
If such numbers are sufficient to cause the church to see the fields as white unto harvest, it should also understand the threat posed by such numbers. The poll said 18% of those who are married had looked at online porn. For the church, the possibility of yet one more potentially lethal threat to marriage stability ought to ensure its action. If the church will not respond to this problem, who will?
The problem, as it turns out, is that some of the Christians who should be liberators might themselves be held captive by pornography. The Zogby poll revealed the disturbing fact that almost one of out five (17.8%) of those who self-identify as born-again Christians had also visited sexually-oriented websites.
If Christians are coming under the power of this scourge, how can the church fulfill its commission to preach release to the captives outside the church walls?
Christians, of all people, should endeavor to live lives of sexual purity. That’s not always easy, however. Even though most churches probably maintain a strict, biblical interpretation of sexual morality, individual Christians are working, playing, and raising their children in the midst of a sex-crazed culture.
Many pastors may feel unequipped to handle such issues, however, even when someone approaches and openly confesses his need for help. However, there are ministries which can help clergy help their parishioners. Pure Life Ministries (AFA Journal, 1/01), for example, has a “Pastor’s Resource Kit” for that purpose.
The need for spiritual help in combating porn may be more acute than anyone has suspected. Focus on the Family revealed another shocker: according to a press release that accompanied the Zogby survey results, a significant number of the nation’s clergy may be succumbing to the sticky sexual strands of the worldwide Web. Focus spokesman Steve Watters said that “one out of every five individuals who call a phone line specifically set up to counsel families in Christian ministry admit to having a pornography problem.”
For those believers – clergy and parishioners alike – who find themselves already trapped, there is hope. See below for a list of ministries that specifically help Christians overcome the devastation of sexual sin.
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Pornography addiction prevention/recovery resources
Pure Life Ministries
P.O. Box 410
Dry Ridge, Ky 41035
800-635-1866
www.purelifeministries.org
Ministry is dedicated to breaking the power of sexual addiction through the truth of God's word and the power of Jesus Christ.
Stone Gate Resources
11509 Palmer Divide Road
Larkspur, CO 80118
www.stonegateresources.com
Ministry of personal restoration for fallen Christian leaders. Provides counseling, guidance, and consultation to the pastor, spouse, church, and denomination. Seminar topics include understanding moral failure, understanding sexual addiction, surviving the internet/cybersex.
