A Man Without Guardrails – Tidbits of Audacity

What the Miller’s Story Teaches Us About Accountability

Spoiler alert, details found in the documentary will be given here. If you’d rather watch the documentary, then read this, save this article for later.

Another pastor is under fire, but this time it’s worse than most. John-Paul Miller, pastor of Solid Rock Church in Myrtle Beach at the time, has been accused of some horrific things, that, by all accounts, likely happened.

Backstory

A 13-year-old girl, Mica, begins attending Solid Rock with her family. She continues in this church and becomes embedded into the culture there. Eventually, meets a young man, gets married at 18, and Pastor John-Paul marries them.

Mica gets on staff and some time after getting on staff begin having an affair with pastor PJ. PJ’s wife finds incriminating texts, pastor John-Paul confesses, and they divorce. Mica leaves her husband. Eventually, Mica and John-Paul begin an official relationship and ultimately get married.

Once married, pastor John-Paul began urging Mica to get a breast augmentation to be “as pretty as the other girls.” Once out of surgery, Mica had an adverse reaction to the anesthesia. She was hallucinating and speaking in ways no one could understand. She was eventually placed on medication and diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Where the Story Changes

Once in this condition, John-Paul began capitalizing on her weak mental state. His sexual desires had grown bizarre and he needed Mica to fulfill such fantasies. This involved homeless men and women to be included in their sexual escapades.

When Mica came to the realization this wasn’t healthy and she was being abused, she made an attempt to leave. This is where the stalking began. Slashed tires. More than 50 texts and calls in a day. She changes her number, he manages to find that number, and the stalking continued.

In the midst of this, an elder finds out that he is having multiple affairs with women from all over the country, including a woman in his congregation. She brings it to the rest of the elders and they do nothing. This is where the story turns for the worst.

He pushes her so aggressively, through his stalking, that she gets to a point where she believes the only way away from him is to end her own life. There is speculation that she didn’t pull the trigger. All evidence points to one person being there. I, personally, believe that she ended her own life as an escape from his relentless torment. John-Paul goes on to marry the woman he was already having an affair with.

John-Paul denies all of these allegations. But the sources are many different people that do not all know each other. It’s like someone once said to me, “If you say you don’t have bad breath, but 10 people all say you have bad breath, you probably have bad breath!”

Reactions

The copy and paste reaction to this was something along the lines of, “Of course, another pastor cheating and hurting!” And while this is true, it’s not because he’s a pastor, it’s because he’s a spoiled, sick, brat that never had consequences in his life carrying into his career as a pastor with no accountability to his elders.

It raises questions for me.

Why have elders if you’re not going to be accountable to them?
Why is the infraction almost always sexual in nature?
Exactly what does this say about the pastoring profession?

Elders

Elders in the church are traditionally installed to hold the pastor accountable. In some congregations they are the deciding factor in the pastor’s tenure, and at times, his salary. Other congregations place elders as spiritual leadership to oversee, but not to have final decision-making authority. In every church, they are looked to as spiritual leaders.

Sexual Healing

The fact that most sins committed by pastors are sexual in nature, I believe, has multiple elements. Often, in today’s era, if the pastor is successful, he is probably attractive. He’s visually presentable and easy to focus on during lengthy messages. Therefore, he gets “offers” from “options” regularly.

Also, according to the book of James, leaders in the church are to be held to a higher standard than the general population. This standard is often set so high by the general population that no one can reasonably meet such standards. Therefore, they attempt to exercise impulsive desires in secret, which allows the cultivation and excessiveness of such desires to burn out of control without guardrails in place to preserve proper alignment with the position they hold as pastor. Fire without a border will destroy everything in its path. A man without accountability will hurt everyone they encounter.

Representation of Pastors

The Bible teaches that leaders (pastors, elders, deacons) are to be a “man of one wife.” The Bible teaches us to lay your life down for her. To serve her. To treat her with the same kindness taught to us by Jesus. It teaches us to be a man of respect. To get your house in order prior to offering wisdom to someone else’s house.

Therefore, this man does not represent what it means to be a pastor, in the truest sense.

He represents a man that did not fully understand consequences.
He represents men who haven’t learned the art of delayed gratification.
He represents men who haven’t learned how to control impulses.

The Apostle Paul said, “I do what don’t want to do, and yet I don’t do what I want to do.” He was illuminating the ongoing struggle with our senses.

If A=B and B=C, then A=C. The reality is that pastors are people. People are messy. Therefore, pastors are messy. There are no perfect pastors. The only perfect person to ever live isn’t pastoring any church. And given that pastors are people, boundaries must be in place to correct and instruct pastors who have stepped out of the biblical qualifications of a pastor. Any human is prone to power, greed, and tyranny, if given the opportunity. Therefore, we must all agree to guardrails and accountability.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. And some will never attend church again because of this little cowardice manlet. There are roughly over 400,000 pastors in America. This man does not represent most pastors. This is a very rare case or else a Netflix documentary would not be needed.

My encouragement here is to not let this fool dissuade you from exploring church or continuing to attend. He doesn’t represent God or anything like God.

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger