Today I saw a news article about a prominent pastor, Creflo Dollar, who has a global television ministry on top of a 30,000 member church organisation in the United States. The news item depicted his insistence that he should never have been arrested for the alleged physical abuse of his 15-year-old daughter. He denied the charges, and his church seems to have provided him support.Where does that leave his two daughters, the one who called 911 and the other who corroborated her story?To me, there is no way to know what actually happened, and I am sure people are going to be trying to do that, with all kinds of statements. To me, the issue is that something went wrong in that family. Something got out of control. Something went splat.Being a husband, being a father, and also being the pastor of a church is like running for President of the United States. You belong to everybody, and yet you actually belong to nobody. Everyone has expectations of you. You please some and you annoy others. Some people don’t think you can do anything right. Your ability to actually get things done is limited by people who were “in government” before you entered the office, and such people are invested in keeping things familiar.The conflict in the church often gets picked up and played out in a parallel process in the family of the pastor. The pastor tries to make things match a Biblical model while the trustees just want to make sure somebody cuts the grass and turns off the lights. The pastor-father wants his children to embrace his Biblical faith, but they just want to have fun, go to a party, smoke weed, have sex, or belong to a group that never darkens the door of a church.Sometimes it goes the other way as well, where the conflict originates in the pastor’s family and then echoes in the relationships in the church. The pastor-father is secretly abusive and oppressive at home, demanding unrestricted obedience, and at church the pastor unleashes his anger when board members do not do as he wishes, members question his ability to preach or his orthodoxy, and people in general do not support his programmes.There are rules about the characteristics of elders, and a Biblical elder corresponds to what the local pastor would be in contemporary churches. Another list of rules pertains to the qualifications of deacons. These terms get mixed up in the application of such Biblical rules and titles in various churches. You can find elders. You can find deacons. Some churches have both.Some church leaders, whether they are pastors, elders, or deacons, appropriate other titles. They call themselves things like “bishops” and “apostles”, and there are theological reasons that get trotted out to support such a thing. It all boils down, however, to there being leaders and followers. Personally, I abhor all such titles, but I suppose there must be some way to designate who does what in the church.My point is that no-one is sufficient for the role. The role demands more from a human being than any human being can accomplish with 100 percent adequacy. Give all to the church, and your family suffers. Try to put your family first, and your church ministry will be less, because the fact is there is only one person trying to do all things, be all things to all people. On top of that, the Biblical model is a perfect model, but the people attempting to implement the Biblical model are imperfect people. As one person put it, “If you find the perfect church, do not join it, because you will wreck it.” There is no perfect church. There is no perfect husband. No perfect father. No perfect pastor. At some point the husband will fall short and disappoint. The father will neglect. The pastor will not reflect the parishioner’s idea of how things ought to be in the church.I believe the answer is to accept what is. There is a new form of psychotherapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and it has growing research support. ACT consists of experiential acceptance and promoting what some have described as the ability to make room for whatever private experiences are present whether they be comprised of thinking, feeling, remembering, or reasoning while pursuing personal values. Researchers cited a study using ACT for re-integration of combat veterans, and the ACT participants reported significant declines in symptoms of depression, anxiety and PTSD, with increases in relationship satisfaction. ACT has also been shown effective in the treatment of pain and stress.ACT is consilient (showing an overwhelming similarity) with the gestalt therapy tenet known as the paradoxical theory of change. By actualising oneself in the current moment, that is, by being what or who one is right now, one becomes what he or she can be in the next moment and the next, and then on out into the future.So, if, as a Christian leader, I simply accept what is, then I see people where they are, and I don’t try to get them to be something they are not. If someone cares more about the cutting of the grass than they do the text of the scriptures and its relevance, then that is the starting point for that person. There is no need to get mad about it, and it is futile to try to push that person into a Bible study he or she is not interested in. Sure, that person will likely still come to church and sit through whatever kind of service the minister throws together, but what is actually taking place in such a situation? It would be better to accept them as they are and start working within a meaningful relationship towards what they might become.The same goes for the pastor’s family. If the kids do not walk with the Lord, if they declare that they are not sure any longer that they believe in God, then that is the starting place for a parent, let alone for the parent who is also a pastor. If you throw the kids under the bus to protect a reputation or a position in the church, then something is out of balance. Something is not right. Something has gone splat.