— Tim Cantrell

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“Stay out of my private life!”  We expect to hear that in the world, but not in the church.  Unsaved professionals might live a two-faced, double life – shining in public, while masking a home life in shambles.  But if there is any one place, amidst this world of lies, where we expect integrity and honesty, it is God’s house, “the pillar and support of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).  

That’s why we are rightly angered and dismayed every time we hear of hypocrites in the pulpit.  In recent years in Africa, there have been an appalling number of public scandals of high-profile preachers who are now biblically disqualified by divorce, yet they refused to step down or soon returned to the pulpit: Ray McCauley; Chris Oyakhilome; Enoch Phiri; Joshua Iginla; Aloysius Bugingo, and the shameful list of villains goes on and on.