From: Liz and Wally Wakeman WallyLiz@aol.com
Who got it Wed, 23 Sep 1998 From: ROBERT S GARTLEY JR. rlgart@juno.com

PASTOR, WITH PRESIDENT CLINTON--- "WHY HAVEN'T YOU PLAYED THE ROLE OF THE PROPHET, NATHAN?" (This title provided by Steve Shultz, THE ELIJAH LIST)

I thought you might be interested in this letter we received from friend John Garlock. As I'm sure you know, MacDonald had his own adulterous lapse which removed him from the pulpit. Jay Leno and others have already exploited the fact that the President's spiritual advice is coming from an adulterous preacher.--Lloyd

Lloyd and Nita, Upon reaching home last night from Singapore and Burma, we found the following document we thought you would appreciate. Ruthanne and I met and had lunch with Gordon MacDonald and his wife Gail at a seminar in Singapore a few years ago. We were impressed by their genuineness, intelligence, and humility, as well as Gordon's communication skills. A friend has just forwarded the following document to us, and we felt you would like to see it, if you haven't already received it from some other source. With blessings and best wishes, John Garlock
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Statement by Gordon MacDonald, Senior Minister To the Grace Chapel Congregation, Lexington, Massachusetts Sunday, September 13, 1998.

We have passed through some of the saddest and most disquieting days of our lives this past week. Those of us who were living in the time of Watergate thought we'd seen the worst, but, in my judgment, these days seem far more serious.

We have watched a dimension of the personal and private life of President Clinton reach the light of day and become emblazoned on the Internet and in newspapers across the world. We have listened to the comments of statesmen, commentators, comedians and the so-called "person on the street." Here and there have been sobering and wise observations. Beyond those, however, has been the multitude of unthinking comments which either trivialize matters or dismiss them as inconsequential. Nevertheless, the issue of morality, of truth-telling, of personal integrity have suddenly become central issues for all people.

Not only have we seen Kenneth Starr's report, but we have seen the moving specter of a national leader standing before the country and, as it were, reenacting the biblical story of King David when he acknowledged, under the pressure of Nathan's probing, "I have sinned." This public statement of repentance given on Friday was remarkable.

I was present at the breakfast when the President spoke. The experience will always remain as one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. No one could have been present and retained a disbelieving, a cynical, a hardened attitude toward this man who opened his heart and acknowledged his realization of his sin. Regardless of what happens in the future, that was a moment when the President attempted to fulfill everything that is demanded in the act of public repentance.

For many there have been two inadequate reactions to what the President said: the one has been to engage in the offer of cheap, swift grace--a forgiveness that comes so quickly and freely that it provides no justice nor healing and spiritual redemption to the sinner. The other inadequate reaction has been that of dismissing the statement with a wave of the hand and assuming that it is a matter of political theatrics and manipulation. To this latter reaction I have to say with all candor, Christ-following people have an obligation to treat seriously any attempt by a self-proclaimed sinner who asks for forgiveness.

If the President's repentance is false or short-termed, that will show in time, and we will have to swallow hard and admit that we were taken in. It wouldn't be the first time nor the last that the Christian community extended its hand of grace and had it bitten off.

Some of you have been aware that I have had a number of personal encounters with President Clinton starting about eight months after he assumed the office of the Presidency. He had become acquainted with me through some of my books which he had read, and through mutual friends. On occasion we would dialogue about issues important to the evangelical community, and I was one of those who pointed out to him the ways in which he estranged many evangelicals from himself. But most of our communication has been about spiritual matters, and my intersection with him has been more of a pastoral one, certainly, as I will later emphasize again, not a political one.

From the outset I want to be perfectly clear that there are others whose involvement has been more frequent than mine such as Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church and my close friend, Dr. Tony Campolo. Until this moment I have chosen to keep my relationship to the President as confidential and quiet as possible. As someone has said, "you can talk to the President or you can talk about him, but you cannot do both."

On several occasions I have sat with the President either in the Oval office or in the more private sectors of the White House and discussed matters mainly of a spiritual concern. Those conversations have included his personal life as a father and husband, his desire to be a man responsible to God in the exercise of his public duties. I have prayed with him as I have prayed with many of you. I have listened to him pray. I have discussed topics of a biblical and a spiritual nature late into the night.

Those of us who have known the President have had our severe critics. "Why doesn't someone stand up and confront him?" has come the question more than once. "Why haven't you played the role of the prophet, Nathan?" I can tell you first-hand that those times have happened. But having done that, we have not chosen to rush to the public or to the press and disclose the content of conversations we consider private and personal. There are those who have gone from the presence of the President and immediately used the occasion to embellish their own notoriety before their constituencies. That is not the genuinely pastoral way. Some have demanded to know what has been said to the President as if they had some personal right. We have taken the position that these conversations are no one's business and will continue to do so.

My relationship to President Clinton until recently had always been rather loose and sporadic, and I was happy to know that there were others, such as the ones I previously mentioned, who talked to him more regularly.

Last Monday the President called me. He had read my book "Rebuilding Your Broken World" a second time and felt that there were things in the book that we needed to talk about. Having had some extensive experience in the subject of what we biblical people call brokenness, I could sense his own brokenness after the first few minutes of the conversation. Like most others who have been publicly exposed in a terrible sin, the President had faced up to the reality of his deeds in a series of steps--almost like descending a staircase. The first step had been his August speech in which he offered contrite words and then sought to put some of the blame for the situation on the backs of Kenneth Starr and his political critics. Many of us knew instantly that the speech had been a serious miscalculation, that it did not reveal a genuine sense of sorrow or contrition.

Within a few days it was obviously clear to him that this level of truthfulness was quite inadequate. That seems to have forced him to another layer of self-disclosure, first to himself and then to the nation. But it was clear that there were still miles to go. There was still too much emphasis on trying to control both the reality and the public's interpretation of it.

Then about ten days ago, the larger realities began to sink in, and the President began to see the full extent of what he and the rest of the nation were facing. He began to express himself no longer as the victim, no longer as the target of a conspiracy, but as a sinner with no defense or excuses. You heard him say this on Friday.

This is what I had sensed as we talked on Monday evening. That evening President Clinton asked me if I would become a part of a small (as little as three) accountability group that would deal with the spiritual realities of his life and help him walk his way through a personal restoration process. At this moment I believe it would be prudent to permit the other two members of the group to step forward and identify themselves at a moment they choose. When we reached the end of our phone conversation, the President invited me to come to Washington on Thursday, the night before the Religious Leaders' breakfast. I had been invited to the breakfast, but now the President sought a personal conversation.

On Thursday night it was my privilege to spend the night at the White House and to join the President and the First Lady for several hours of discussion. The President and I sat alone late into the night talking about the future, not in political terms but spiritual. The content of that conversation will be for the most part, totally confidential. From that conversation and one which he had the next morning with Tony Campolo, came the frame of the speech which Mr. Clinton gave on Friday morning. I went to bed that night awestruck at the providence of God which brought me to that position on that night. (As an aside: my room at the White House was the famous Lincoln Bedroom. In that room is a fireplace over which is a plaque noting the room as the place where President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. I mused for a while on the need that comes in the life of anyone who has sinned greatly for a spiritual emancipation proclamation--the one which comes from God when we cry out in the sorrow of repentance. As the old gospel song puts it concerning the cross of Jesus Christ: "Mercy there was great, and grace was free. Pardon there was multiplied to me. There my burdened soul found liberty - at Calvary.")

For the foreseeable future I will be visiting with the President on a fairly regular basis, by phone and by personal encounter. Of the three members of the group, I bring an understanding of what it is like to face the public scrutiny when one has sinned. I have gone through--and continue to go through--the breaking process. I have known both the remarkable grace of forgiving, restorative people and the lash of those who choose other options. I am in a position to talk the language of repentance and what it takes to find a deeper and more purposeful walk with God in the midst of a personal tragedy.

My role, along with the other members of this unique group, is not political. We are not concerned with the political ramifications of the hour, only the spiritual--which is to say that we are more concerned about Bill the man, the husband, the father, the working man, than we are about President Clinton. Others who have their experience in political leadership will have to deal with those matters.

No one will offer me any help by suggesting things I ought to say to the President about the political scene. My opinions about his future as the President are my own, and I will not speak about them with anyone except my wife and the members of the accountability group.

It is no secret that the President has been disliked from the start by a majority of evangelical Christians. His stand on abortion and homosexuality were the lightening-rod issues, and most people have taken an adverse posture ever since. I have been seriously troubled when I have listened to people talk about this President--not in the civil discourse of acceptable political and philosophical adversity, but rather in terms of hatred and vengeance. It has been easy for some to say that God's judgment will be upon this President. But will God's judgment not be upon a group of people who call themselves biblically-oriented but who permit such rancor in their hearts?

I have chosen to believe that every word of the president's speech on Friday was out of a genuinely contrite heart. I have seen his private tears, heard his personal words of remorse. And I have chosen to embrace this man, as a sinner in need of mercy. I have received him as I would try to receive any of you should you find yourself in a similar circumstances.

Have I worried about being used? Of course. Have I worried about those who might turn against me? Again, of course--and painfully so. Do Gail and I worry about seeing our names once again in print, as it was in Newsweek two weeks ago, reminding us of our own brokenness and shame eleven years ago? Again, of course.

Am I endorsing this President? No; that is not my intention in this statement. I have tried to keep this pulpit which I love free of political endorsements of any kind--much to the consternation of some and the suspicion of others. In 1988 this church, called Grace Chapel, held a most remarkable service called a Service of Restoration. It was a recognition that church leaders were choosing to encourage my return to the ministry of preaching the Bible. As part of the service my dear, dear friend, Dr. Vernon Grounds, challenged me to be a carrier of the gospel of the "Second Chance." He reminded me that Jesus was noted as a friend of sinners. And that the friends of Jesus are our friends. The congregation approved of his challenge enthusiastically. But no one would have imagined that that ministry of the "Second Chance," a friendship with sinners, might be focused on a President of the United States.

Over the years since that service Gail and I have made ourselves available to literally hundreds of men and women in leadership whose lives have been dashed to pieces by their sins and mistakes. Hardly a week goes by that either Gail or I are not contacted by someone in the country who begins the conversation in words like these, "I don't know where to turn. No one around me knows how to handle the mess I'm in."

We have come to love the subject of grace because along with repentance It changes lives and refuses to permit Satan the ultimate victory. And we are in a situation now where it would appear that Satan is well on his way to victory. If he is, as the Bible says, the author of lies and confusion, he is doing a grand job at this point. Our world has never needed clarity of spirit and purpose as it needs right now. And yet we have never had so much confusion. I would quite imagine that Satan and his minions are cheering at this moment as they watch sin creating such havoc.

Gail gave me this verse from the Living Bible. Paul wrote to Timothy, "Again, I say to you, don't get involved in foolish arguments which only upset people and make them angry. God's people must not be quarrelsome; they must be gentle, patient teachers of those who are mixed up concerning the truth. For if you talk meekly and courteously to them they are more likely, with God's help, to turn away from their wrong ideas and believe what is true. Then they will come to their senses and escape from Satan's trap of slavery to sin which he uses to catch them whenever he likes and instead they can begin doing the will of God."

I am a small person in that very big world. But I will always try to stand for the proper balance of grace and truth and do all I can to see it work--if the sinner remains contrite and broken. When I talk about second chance I am not advocating any position regarding impeachment or resignation. Again, I am talking first of all about the second chance a sinner is to be given through grace in his personal life. The future of President Clinton's leadership will be in the hands of our Congress, and we must pray that God will give them corporate wisdom as they proceed. I just caution you to realize that none of the options facing the Congress is either obvious or easy. Don't dare fall for easy answers; there are none. Every conceivable answer has long-term ramifications for our nation, for this world.

I believe my actions in coming close to President Clinton on matters of pastoral concern is in complete conformity with the precedents of the Bible: from Daniel who served three profoundly pagan kings, to Samuel and Nathan who came close to two kings with startlingly different results.

I have taken the President's request to come to his side at this time very seriously. No one will know the hours of talk and prayer that Gail and I have invested this week as we have asked the hardest questions and tried to Imagine the worst possible things that could happen to us. But we've tried to keep in mind that we have a stewardship, and despite the possibilities of unfortunate things happening, we must take a stand for what we believe is right and go forward step by step until we feel the leading of the Lord to do otherwise.

Let me assure you of these things. We are surrounded by a small collection of the wisest, godliest associates here and from a few other places in the country. I am listening carefully to their counsel. And of course, I will continue to pursue my own careful accountability to our Board of Elders. I do not intend to make any further public statements about my relationship to the President apart from this one. Already I have refused to talk to the press on the basis that my connection to the President is far too private to disclose. I will do my best not to cheat Grace Chapel of its rightful claim on my time and energy. What expenses there are in terms of travel are not coming from any Grace Chapel budgetary fund but from private sources.

How might any of this affect you? It is possible that colleagues and friends of yours may take note of comments like the one made in the Boston Globe yesterday that your pastor is a "friend of Bill's." You can make that conversation into an opportunity to express yourself politically--or you can make it into an opportunity to express yourself spiritually. To say what I believe is the truth: that we are a people who believe that no person sinks so low and strays so far that they are not worth welcoming home when they come to their senses. This is the core message of our Bible; it speaks both to Presidents and paupers--and all of us who lie somewhere in between those two extremes.

We are a million miles from the end of this tragedy in Washington which will affect us and our children. But we have taken the first step in that journey this week. We have seen the worst news in the Starr report. And we have seen a tiny glimmer of hope in the words of a man who stood up and said "I have sinned," and then echoed the prayer we have been studying for the past three weeks (I hope you picked up on the connection): "Search me O God and know my thoughts. Try me and see if there be any wickedness sin in me and lead me in the life everlasting."

What do Gail and I need from all of you? Understanding. In this statement I have tried hard to think of every conceivable question and concern that you would all have. But I know that I have left something dangling somewhere. I am not the wisest of people; only the Holy Spirit of God would make some of us adequate for this task. So we need prayer like you have never offered it before. And we need a modicum of respect and Christian love even if a few of you are terribly upset with me that I have chosen to accept this responsibility.

To all of you, this is a unique opportunity to say how much Gail and I love you and love being a part of this community of Kingdom builders committed to pointing people to Jesus Christ. You have touched us at our lowest moments in life and our highest. And what shall this moment turn out to be? I don't know. But I believe I can count on all of you.