Question ....would it be helpful if the LCMS increased private confession? I could very easily be wrong, but wouldn't this help to keep everyone more accountable?...clergy and lay-folk alike. I mean, it may help keep folks from getting that far down a dark hole like we have recently seen. Of course, I may be wrong...and there is probably no perfect solution.
To clarify, you're proposing an audit of online behavior for all pastors, seminarians, teachers, church workers, etc. ? I think there's a lot of value in what you're thinking. I, however, can't begin to think how complicated that would be for the LCMS to govern and implement (depending on the extent the synod adopted and who falls under the umbrella) let alone the fall out that would certainly ensue as discoveries of sexual sins, abuse, etc, are GOING to be discovered, albeit worth it for the sake of the church, to not have child abusers in the office of the ministry. I would say it shouldn't be specifically for "new hires" or seminarians, but everyone. But there's also a tentative/sensitive line, as you mentioned, where I think research into private lives may cross over into things the companies/researchers shouldn't know about someone, and inevitably they would. Whether they tell the LCMS those things are not, it is in a way breaching peoples private lives. It's not a matter of "well, what do you have to hide, why wouldn't you be okay with it?" It's a complicated thing, where I don't think really anyone would want anyone or any company knowing their private searches, even if they are 100% "pure" of search history. Also, we'd have to work through the chaotic process for how certain discoveries would look and be treated on paper. Even at a local church level, if the LCMS as a whole didn't accept this and it was a local congregation's choice to do, it's still something that I think would crack open a lot of struggles for how things should look on paper, how district presidents would be involved, etc. . All together, great post, I just think this is a very complicated and non black and white issue. Great topic to continue digging into.
The original version of this article included a comprehensive implementation recommendation, but I removed it due to heightened sensitivity within the corporation at the moment.
If it is pursued, it must be implemented with an external attestation function and intensive logging and alerting to detect any abuse. It should *never* be run from an office within the church body.
It should certainly apply to all via an annual "certification" where an individual confirms they are not groping minors or being a cam girl. The "promises" would be randomly tested against a viable sample of each roster category.
Refusal to certify could trigger a fast-tracked disciplinary process leading to termination.
If a random forensic digital investigation returns a positive result, it would have an escalation path that is extraordinarily careful to verify it is not a false positive. You would also have to consider if, say, a porn account has been dormant for 20 years, vs active in the previous week, and so on.
The goal should be meaningful pastoral care with accountability and kindness. Just as a pastor does not rush to send a sinner to hell, this would require an immense amount of wisdom, common sense, and firmness.
Thank you for the feedback, and for reading and engaging with it in the spirit it is intended.
I understand the desire to keep child predators from becoming shepherds in the church, but is the solution to treat all potential church workers as deviants that need to continually prove their innocence? I know pastors who have admitted to watching Game of Thrones. Is that a level of pornography that should keep them from ministry? I definitely think it is important for pastors to seek out a father confessor who is not afraid to give wise counsel, but this seems akin to requiring that father confessor to file a sin report to the church.
Digitally, we can also track calories consumed and body movement to make sure a pastor is not being lazy or gluttonous. We could require a body camera to record conversations and make sure a church worker is being a faithful witness and a good steward of his time. I guess I'm asking where the line of accountability should be and whether there are methods we can use to encourage and support our church workers rather than act as their accusers.
I think you proved my point. Everyone has their threshold on what they deem acceptable, and I don't think most pastors would thrive in an environment where they are scrutinized in this way.
Let's flip it around. Should we go to great and even uncomfortable lengths to protect our temporal projection of the Bride of Christ?
In the corporate world, I have to go to great lengths and incur high costs every year to prepare for an audit. I don't see it as placing me under suspicion, but as helping to uphold the integrity and reputation of my staff and me.
Unfortunately, the pervasiveness of digital deviance and the enormous risks it poses to a church mean we must adopt an intensive risk-management approach. As we have seen with Mohr, just the arrest and allegations have been catastrophic for the church's witness.
With its pederasty scandal, the Roman Catholic church took an approach of containment rather than eradication. Missouri cannot afford that risk because it has no RC cash pile or resources. The LCMS literally cannot afford a single additional arrest, and we have yet to see if any more victims may come forward.
So, rather than seeing it as treating everyone as a potential deviant, let's ask, "Will you sacrifice a little pride to help us secure the Church Visible from the prowling lion who seeks to devour the preaching office most of all?"
*edit: I saw in a previous comment you weren't suggesting this be implemented or run by the governing church body or one of it's offices, hopefully my remarks still make sense in light of my new awareness.
"secure the Church Visible from the prowling lion who seeks to devour the preaching office most of all?"
Brother, I pray that does not mean the priority of the Church is to serve the Church Visible. (And I appreciate the clarification of that language) The Church is secured from the prowling lion, already now, into eternity through the blood of Jesus. Full Stop.
I don't think you need me to tell you that, but it must be foundational to the conversation if the church visible is to have any encouragement to press on with a temporal decision as this.
From there you're request quoted above could be implemented, and even helpful, but if it is to come from an institution, without the relational capital of the body of Christ how can the Church Visible keep up such a law? We are called to endurance not overcoming through an institution, just for the sake of keeping the visible church intact.
To the point of risk-management, there are many risk prevention steps from per-seminary entrance, through seminary, exiting seminary, there may not be as many transitioning into different synodical positions, I'm not familiar with that process. Why is the critique left on the system?
In another comment you mention how the "goal should be to trust our pastors to be above reproach, while verifying this..." I agree! And there are steps before a first call that attempt to do this! From my anecdotal observation this is where we are failing, not in the system with lack of structure or accountability, but exercising it in good faith, in the Spirit to build up the body of Christ. People tend to slip through the cracks because we don't spend enough time with each other through the process of evaluation and verification.
In other words if the system allows me to check the box without sufficient relational capital the system will always fail us preventing us from "securing the Church visible from the prowling lion"...
I understand what you're saying, but there is a level of naïveté in not being muscular about our First Article responsibilities to keep danger and vice out of our churches. Just because the Church Eternal is safe and secure does not automatically secure the people who must worship in buildings and use printed hymnals, etc.
The point is not to secure the institution(s), but the vulnerable. Remember, the arrested guy had accumulated an enormous stockpile of relational capital.
The primary issue remains that Synodical grandees receive a different standard of justice than pastors who, in turn, have more rights and privileges than laymen. The purpose of the bylaws is fundamentally flawed, and the governance philosophy is archaic.
My comment about the Church eternal was not to diminish the need for better accountability and better ways to protect the vulnerable, not sure why that wasn't clear.
"The LCMS literally cannot afford a single additional arrest, and we have yet to see if any more victims may come forward."
That's not trying secure the institution first?
Which bylaws are flawed?
What do you understand the governance philosophy to be?
You would definitely be in the minority regarding me as an institutionalist!
We can recognize that an institution provides many good things. The ability to aggregate and organize to deploy things like seminaries and benefit plans, etc. There is a level of efficiency, cost of capital benefits, and overall ROI that you cannot achieve in a distributed system.
To ignore the threat to those things from lawsuits is unwise. The knock on effect from a near brush with bankruptcy should not be underestimated.
Bylaws: reactive and partial. For example, a DP can ship a man out immediately for sexual misconduct, but the SP cannot do the same to a DP.
Whether you are or not is not my debate. This is not a personal critique. It's an observation about the solution and what the solution tries to secure.
If I'm following your logic about the bylaw example given, a step in the right direction would be if the SP had authority to remove DP's for sexual misconduct, correct?
About governance philosophy from the article provided: "This high-trust assumption has ceased to exist and is entirely unrealistic and unwise to maintain." Have you read Walther's 1848 address to the Iowa Synod? Please reevaluate the statement about the archaic philosophy with that in mind. Perhaps you'll arrive at a different conclusion that the philosophy is not a problem but how we hold one another accountable face to face rather than bylaw to person/ system to person.
To answer your question about what the red line is. No one should request watch or browser histories. The goal should not be to sniff anything out.
The goal should be to trust our pastors to be above reproach, while verifying this with an annual declaration. Trust, but verify, and then randomly test.
The sports world is a good analogy. You're a great athlete, and we want to protect you from cheats trying to debase your achievements.
I appreciate this follow-up post. Seeing the reaction of people to the Epstein data demonstrates that people are quick to accuse and to create scapegoats when an injustice occurs. If I were a pastor, I would be nervous about having an AI overseer or even a group of people who were scrutinizing my every move to potentially use against me. It is not uncommon for there to be a contingent of people in a congregation who seeks to undermine a pastor they wish to see removed from his call.
There should not be any dossiers on any person unless a case of concern is developing. After randomized testing, all results would be bleached and discarded.
Slippery slope for certain. At what point does some AI bot read your thoughts before you enter the sanctuary. I sin on my way back to my pew from the communion rail. Great way to increase pastor shortage and further empty the churches. How many of you are now thinking I must have something to hide because "thou protest too much"?
We are dealing with a very specific and narrow concern. We have reached the whole "this is why we can't have nice things" stage.
Nobody is asking for a thoughts download. We just want people placed in positions of trust to know that it's no longer just trust, but verify.
I am preparing an article on the damage these cases do to private confession. Let's just say that I would never risk private confession when there is a risk he will bail out of the office and there goes the confessional seal.
In this male bashing culture, where a simple accusation of child abuse by a vindictive woman can ruin a man's life whether the accusation is true or not, the idea of restricting a person from a job or any position of authority, secular or religious, because it is automatically assumed that viewing something will automatically result in reprehensible, abusive, criminal behavior, is at best a slippery slope leading to a thought police state. So, to be an elder at a church, you have to turn over your hard drive? To who? And what do they get to do with that information? How would you enforce any restriction on that? And if you refuse then everyone assumes you are guilty of indulging in heinous on-line sexual self-gratification and you become an anathema in your own church. And of course you will voluntarily leave, again guilty or not. Looking at a woman with lust is certainly a sin but does it automatically turn you into an active rapist if you cant stop that particular thought sin? Implementing these draconian types of demands to give up personal privacy will increase the pastor shortage exponentially, and eventually completely empty the churches. Think human nature and unintended consequences. It is possible to completely destroy something good by trying to make it perfect. Perfect and sinless doesn't exist this side of heaven. We go to church to receive forgiveness. This does not mean that I don't think protecting the young and vulnerable is of utmost importance. Just stay out of my brain. Judge what I choose to do despite my sinfulness. My opinion here makes me suspect, right?
There are many helpful suggestions here that would help curb and guide us towards better living Thank you.
In the beginning of the article it was mentioned there were two pastors arrested and charged the same week. Is there a source for both of those?
Mohr: https://www.adcrucem.news/p/lcms-district-president-arrested
Koester: https://mitchellnow.com/news/236632-former-huron-pastor-due-in-court/
Koester was last June
Apologies, pls see the correction to the story. Koester was Jun 2025 not Jan 2026: Koester: https://mitchellnow.com/news/236632-former-huron-pastor-due-in-court/
Two arrested?
Apologies, pls see the correction to the story. Koester was Jun 2025 not Jan 2026: Koester: https://mitchellnow.com/news/236632-former-huron-pastor-due-in-court/
I know about Mohr, but who's the second one?
Apologies, pls see the correction to the story. Koester was Jun 2025 not Jan 2026: Koester: https://mitchellnow.com/news/236632-former-huron-pastor-due-in-court/
Thanks!
Question ....would it be helpful if the LCMS increased private confession? I could very easily be wrong, but wouldn't this help to keep everyone more accountable?...clergy and lay-folk alike. I mean, it may help keep folks from getting that far down a dark hole like we have recently seen. Of course, I may be wrong...and there is probably no perfect solution.
It may definitely help to remove some of the rote comfort with corporate confession.
To clarify, you're proposing an audit of online behavior for all pastors, seminarians, teachers, church workers, etc. ? I think there's a lot of value in what you're thinking. I, however, can't begin to think how complicated that would be for the LCMS to govern and implement (depending on the extent the synod adopted and who falls under the umbrella) let alone the fall out that would certainly ensue as discoveries of sexual sins, abuse, etc, are GOING to be discovered, albeit worth it for the sake of the church, to not have child abusers in the office of the ministry. I would say it shouldn't be specifically for "new hires" or seminarians, but everyone. But there's also a tentative/sensitive line, as you mentioned, where I think research into private lives may cross over into things the companies/researchers shouldn't know about someone, and inevitably they would. Whether they tell the LCMS those things are not, it is in a way breaching peoples private lives. It's not a matter of "well, what do you have to hide, why wouldn't you be okay with it?" It's a complicated thing, where I don't think really anyone would want anyone or any company knowing their private searches, even if they are 100% "pure" of search history. Also, we'd have to work through the chaotic process for how certain discoveries would look and be treated on paper. Even at a local church level, if the LCMS as a whole didn't accept this and it was a local congregation's choice to do, it's still something that I think would crack open a lot of struggles for how things should look on paper, how district presidents would be involved, etc. . All together, great post, I just think this is a very complicated and non black and white issue. Great topic to continue digging into.
The original version of this article included a comprehensive implementation recommendation, but I removed it due to heightened sensitivity within the corporation at the moment.
If it is pursued, it must be implemented with an external attestation function and intensive logging and alerting to detect any abuse. It should *never* be run from an office within the church body.
It should certainly apply to all via an annual "certification" where an individual confirms they are not groping minors or being a cam girl. The "promises" would be randomly tested against a viable sample of each roster category.
Refusal to certify could trigger a fast-tracked disciplinary process leading to termination.
If a random forensic digital investigation returns a positive result, it would have an escalation path that is extraordinarily careful to verify it is not a false positive. You would also have to consider if, say, a porn account has been dormant for 20 years, vs active in the previous week, and so on.
The goal should be meaningful pastoral care with accountability and kindness. Just as a pastor does not rush to send a sinner to hell, this would require an immense amount of wisdom, common sense, and firmness.
Thank you for the feedback, and for reading and engaging with it in the spirit it is intended.
I understand the desire to keep child predators from becoming shepherds in the church, but is the solution to treat all potential church workers as deviants that need to continually prove their innocence? I know pastors who have admitted to watching Game of Thrones. Is that a level of pornography that should keep them from ministry? I definitely think it is important for pastors to seek out a father confessor who is not afraid to give wise counsel, but this seems akin to requiring that father confessor to file a sin report to the church.
Digitally, we can also track calories consumed and body movement to make sure a pastor is not being lazy or gluttonous. We could require a body camera to record conversations and make sure a church worker is being a faithful witness and a good steward of his time. I guess I'm asking where the line of accountability should be and whether there are methods we can use to encourage and support our church workers rather than act as their accusers.
I think you proved my point. Everyone has their threshold on what they deem acceptable, and I don't think most pastors would thrive in an environment where they are scrutinized in this way.
Yeah I can see your point:-)
Let's flip it around. Should we go to great and even uncomfortable lengths to protect our temporal projection of the Bride of Christ?
In the corporate world, I have to go to great lengths and incur high costs every year to prepare for an audit. I don't see it as placing me under suspicion, but as helping to uphold the integrity and reputation of my staff and me.
Unfortunately, the pervasiveness of digital deviance and the enormous risks it poses to a church mean we must adopt an intensive risk-management approach. As we have seen with Mohr, just the arrest and allegations have been catastrophic for the church's witness.
With its pederasty scandal, the Roman Catholic church took an approach of containment rather than eradication. Missouri cannot afford that risk because it has no RC cash pile or resources. The LCMS literally cannot afford a single additional arrest, and we have yet to see if any more victims may come forward.
So, rather than seeing it as treating everyone as a potential deviant, let's ask, "Will you sacrifice a little pride to help us secure the Church Visible from the prowling lion who seeks to devour the preaching office most of all?"
*edit: I saw in a previous comment you weren't suggesting this be implemented or run by the governing church body or one of it's offices, hopefully my remarks still make sense in light of my new awareness.
"secure the Church Visible from the prowling lion who seeks to devour the preaching office most of all?"
Brother, I pray that does not mean the priority of the Church is to serve the Church Visible. (And I appreciate the clarification of that language) The Church is secured from the prowling lion, already now, into eternity through the blood of Jesus. Full Stop.
I don't think you need me to tell you that, but it must be foundational to the conversation if the church visible is to have any encouragement to press on with a temporal decision as this.
From there you're request quoted above could be implemented, and even helpful, but if it is to come from an institution, without the relational capital of the body of Christ how can the Church Visible keep up such a law? We are called to endurance not overcoming through an institution, just for the sake of keeping the visible church intact.
To the point of risk-management, there are many risk prevention steps from per-seminary entrance, through seminary, exiting seminary, there may not be as many transitioning into different synodical positions, I'm not familiar with that process. Why is the critique left on the system?
In another comment you mention how the "goal should be to trust our pastors to be above reproach, while verifying this..." I agree! And there are steps before a first call that attempt to do this! From my anecdotal observation this is where we are failing, not in the system with lack of structure or accountability, but exercising it in good faith, in the Spirit to build up the body of Christ. People tend to slip through the cracks because we don't spend enough time with each other through the process of evaluation and verification.
In other words if the system allows me to check the box without sufficient relational capital the system will always fail us preventing us from "securing the Church visible from the prowling lion"...
I understand what you're saying, but there is a level of naïveté in not being muscular about our First Article responsibilities to keep danger and vice out of our churches. Just because the Church Eternal is safe and secure does not automatically secure the people who must worship in buildings and use printed hymnals, etc.
The point is not to secure the institution(s), but the vulnerable. Remember, the arrested guy had accumulated an enormous stockpile of relational capital.
The primary issue remains that Synodical grandees receive a different standard of justice than pastors who, in turn, have more rights and privileges than laymen. The purpose of the bylaws is fundamentally flawed, and the governance philosophy is archaic.
My comment about the Church eternal was not to diminish the need for better accountability and better ways to protect the vulnerable, not sure why that wasn't clear.
"The LCMS literally cannot afford a single additional arrest, and we have yet to see if any more victims may come forward."
That's not trying secure the institution first?
Which bylaws are flawed?
What do you understand the governance philosophy to be?
You would definitely be in the minority regarding me as an institutionalist!
We can recognize that an institution provides many good things. The ability to aggregate and organize to deploy things like seminaries and benefit plans, etc. There is a level of efficiency, cost of capital benefits, and overall ROI that you cannot achieve in a distributed system.
To ignore the threat to those things from lawsuits is unwise. The knock on effect from a near brush with bankruptcy should not be underestimated.
Bylaws: reactive and partial. For example, a DP can ship a man out immediately for sexual misconduct, but the SP cannot do the same to a DP.
Governance: my proposal https://www.adcrucem.news/p/how-institutional-governance-has
Whether you are or not is not my debate. This is not a personal critique. It's an observation about the solution and what the solution tries to secure.
If I'm following your logic about the bylaw example given, a step in the right direction would be if the SP had authority to remove DP's for sexual misconduct, correct?
About governance philosophy from the article provided: "This high-trust assumption has ceased to exist and is entirely unrealistic and unwise to maintain." Have you read Walther's 1848 address to the Iowa Synod? Please reevaluate the statement about the archaic philosophy with that in mind. Perhaps you'll arrive at a different conclusion that the philosophy is not a problem but how we hold one another accountable face to face rather than bylaw to person/ system to person.
To answer your question about what the red line is. No one should request watch or browser histories. The goal should not be to sniff anything out.
The goal should be to trust our pastors to be above reproach, while verifying this with an annual declaration. Trust, but verify, and then randomly test.
The sports world is a good analogy. You're a great athlete, and we want to protect you from cheats trying to debase your achievements.
I appreciate this follow-up post. Seeing the reaction of people to the Epstein data demonstrates that people are quick to accuse and to create scapegoats when an injustice occurs. If I were a pastor, I would be nervous about having an AI overseer or even a group of people who were scrutinizing my every move to potentially use against me. It is not uncommon for there to be a contingent of people in a congregation who seeks to undermine a pastor they wish to see removed from his call.
There should not be any dossiers on any person unless a case of concern is developing. After randomized testing, all results would be bleached and discarded.
Slippery slope for certain. At what point does some AI bot read your thoughts before you enter the sanctuary. I sin on my way back to my pew from the communion rail. Great way to increase pastor shortage and further empty the churches. How many of you are now thinking I must have something to hide because "thou protest too much"?
We are dealing with a very specific and narrow concern. We have reached the whole "this is why we can't have nice things" stage.
Nobody is asking for a thoughts download. We just want people placed in positions of trust to know that it's no longer just trust, but verify.
I am preparing an article on the damage these cases do to private confession. Let's just say that I would never risk private confession when there is a risk he will bail out of the office and there goes the confessional seal.
In this male bashing culture, where a simple accusation of child abuse by a vindictive woman can ruin a man's life whether the accusation is true or not, the idea of restricting a person from a job or any position of authority, secular or religious, because it is automatically assumed that viewing something will automatically result in reprehensible, abusive, criminal behavior, is at best a slippery slope leading to a thought police state. So, to be an elder at a church, you have to turn over your hard drive? To who? And what do they get to do with that information? How would you enforce any restriction on that? And if you refuse then everyone assumes you are guilty of indulging in heinous on-line sexual self-gratification and you become an anathema in your own church. And of course you will voluntarily leave, again guilty or not. Looking at a woman with lust is certainly a sin but does it automatically turn you into an active rapist if you cant stop that particular thought sin? Implementing these draconian types of demands to give up personal privacy will increase the pastor shortage exponentially, and eventually completely empty the churches. Think human nature and unintended consequences. It is possible to completely destroy something good by trying to make it perfect. Perfect and sinless doesn't exist this side of heaven. We go to church to receive forgiveness. This does not mean that I don't think protecting the young and vulnerable is of utmost importance. Just stay out of my brain. Judge what I choose to do despite my sinfulness. My opinion here makes me suspect, right?
Please read my outlined points below.