But I’m still thinking about Christmas Eve because I know how difficult and despairing a night it can be. It is a grim reality for a lot of us that this night, and the season around it, sharply contrasts beauty and distortion, delight and despair, hope and emptiness.

As someone who led a congregation for two decades, I experienced Christmas Eve as the most poignant and sentimental night of the church year. A sweet night, rich with meaning and feeling.

Yet I know that for many of my colleagues, this last Christmas Eve was also a night of inner turmoil, of soulful mourning. For all the love and joy they sought to convey to others as they engaged in sincere and thoughtful ministry, for them it was a night of dispiriting hopelessness.

Because a lot of ministry leaders are struggling with hidden compulsive sexual behaviors and they’re stuck. I know, because for a long time, I was stuck, too.

How are they stuck? They’ve stumbled into patterns they can’t break without real help from others. And they can’t tell others what their struggles are without risking judgment, scorn and unemployment. They feel genuine remorse and guilt. They’re awash with shame. They want to live a different life. But they are just so badly stuck.

For them it’s been this way all year. But now Advent comes on and then Christmas. In the northern hemisphere darker days, too. Chill and excitement. Anticipation and celebration.

And dread. Such dread. Because of the disparity.

Most of my colleagues who struggle with compulsive sexual behaviors are really good people. They’re sincere about their calling and their service. They want to help others and honor the one who’s called them.

And they feel so badly about some of their choices, thinking they ought to be able to harness that bad feeling for life-change, but finding the exact opposite is true. The more they hate how they live, the more stuck they are.

So on Christmas Eve they lead the carols and tell the story and light the candles and love the ones God came for. And inwardly they writhe with self-loathing or shut off feeling. Because who can long tolerate this inner turmoil?

But that very turmoil is ultimately what this night is actually about, isn’t it?  One who loves us so much—not because we’ve got it together, not because we perform well—but because of his heart of love, comes to be with us in our brokenness, in our mess. And not just to be with us in it but to help us through it.

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” John tells us (1:14) and he was full of grace and truth.  And there it is. The hope. The promise. The reason for keeping on.

But something has to change. He brings truth, yes, and grace, but he does it “among us” meaning we receive these gifts together. Dropping judgment, ditching shame, helping each other open the gifts. We have to change how we do life together.

Think again about Christmas, and the radical love that brings it about. If we’re so loved, how should we love each other?

I wrote Ashamed No More (InterVarsity Press, 2012) to help all of us learn how to deal with sexual brokenness in our culture. Read it, give it to others, and contact me to come share with your group.

I was a student at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California when Leadership Journal came on the scene in 1980. I’ve been a fan ever since. So when they asked to excerpt some of my story from my book, Ashamed No More, for the Fall 2013 issue (http://bit.ly/1fQBgnn) you can imagine it was a bittersweet opportunity. On the one hand, to have something I’ve written published in a journal I so respect and that circulates among so many of my peers is an exciting thing. On the other, the story is about my brokenness and struggles and is terrifically humbling.

Yes, I see the irony. I want to be a success, to have my peers value my contributions to the church.  But the Gospel isn’t about me and my accomplishments. Genuine service in Christ always comes out of humility. Like anyone else I’d like to be admired and honored. But to be healthy and growing I have to face reality. The Gospel of Jesus ceaselessly brings us back to these twin truths:  we are not really as good as we’d like to think we are; and we are more wildly and extravagantly loved than we have any idea we are.

So my story, really, isn’t much about me. It’s about God and others. That’s the spirit in which it is offered, and the spirit in which it will best be used. We grow most steadily when we regularly are checking our motives.

Leadership Journal allowed me to add a “sidebar” to the excerpt from the book, one which addresses ministry leaders and clergy specifically. For space it had to be edited down. Here is the full sidebar I wrote. If you care for a healthy leadership of Christian ministry in all it’s forms, campus leaders, youth leaders, pastors, church and missions and ministry organizations staff, please read this and forward it to everyone you know. We have an enormous challenge in front of us to help all our servant leaders.

The Struggle Clergy Have

That we have enormous numbers of faithful, called and good people in Christian leadership today who are struggling with compulsive sexual behaviors is beyond dispute. In most cases, they are struggling alone, ashamed of the affliction they have unintentionally developed, frightened of the consequences should their thoughts and actions become known. 

Throughout the history of the people of God, a number of us have stumbled into compulsive sex as a lifestyle (think of Samson) or have made serious errors of sexual judgment (think of David). That is the reality of human nature, and those who haven’t struggled with their sexuality have struggled with something else.  We are all broken people and we all need mercy.

However, one of the consequences of the Internet is that the very human and very natural vulnerability we all have around our sexuality is being exploited by a seemingly endless supply of anonymous and highly addictive sexual images, material and avenues of sexual connection.

Ministry leaders are not immune. In fact, what I’ve learned as I’ve pursued my own recovery and become available to help others is that clergy are particularly vulnerable. Because of the link between spirituality and sexuality, personal wiring, previous wounds, burnout and boredom, I believe ministry leaders are especially susceptible to stumbling into a compulsive misuse of their sexuality.

Once a leader’s sexual thinking and behavior has become compulsive, alarming messages, moralizing and threats will not be effective in helping them change.  These tactics only make the addiction worse. What is effective is honesty and love, specific tools and healthy community.  These are non-negotiable.

Fortunately, help is emerging from different sources, and ironically clergy searching for help can find some on the Internet. A few of the sites that offer hope and help are:  Samson Society; Operation Integrity; Seven Places Ministries; Faithful and True; XXXChurch; ASI247; and Covenant Eye’s Breaking Free blog.  These sites are all easy to find with simple web searches.

But why can’t the church become the place of truth and grace, of safety and invitation, of nurture and healing that Jesus calls it to be?  It’s time to train and equip all of our leaders at every level how to understand compulsive sexual behavior and how to help people work through it to healing and health. 

And especially we must help our leaders.  Tenderly and carefully freeing and restoring all of our servant leaders is a genuine way to honor the heart of the One we serve.  Remember it was said of him, “a bruised reed he will not break and a faintly burning wick he will not quench.” 

 –T. C. Ryan