July 18 weekend 2025 spirituality column

Speeding Pastor Can't Hide Sins

I want to caution you that if you're driving this summer, be careful out there. The roads aren't just filled with drunk drivers.    

Sometimes they're filled with reckless pastors—as they were 25 years ago in Brentwood, Calif. During the late 1980s, I was the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in town. No, this wasn't the Southern California Brentwood of O.J. Simpson fame. This was the sleepy, rural Brentwood in Northern California where strawberries were first bioengineered.    

As our town was somewhat secluded, I would often drive a few hours to  attend ministers' conferences in one of the San Francisco area cities. It was on    my return from one of those conferences that I found myself on the wrong end of the law.    

It was about 2 a.m. one Friday when I drove into the Brentwood city limits. There were no stoplights at the time and thus little to impede my return home.    However, the town was full of stop signs.    

Before I continue, let me hasten to add I was 27 years old, fresh out of seminary. With somewhat invincible thinking, I reasoned there are only Ten Commandments.     

To me, everything else seemed more of a suggestion.    Posted along the final half-mile homeward stretch of Walnut Boulevard was what seemed like three suggestions: stop signs about 100 yards apart.    

And at 2 a.m., it certainly seemed as though a young minister, eager to  return to his young bride, ought to be allowed passage through the signs at about 25 mph. Not exactly fast enough to be reckless, but fast enough to draw the attention of a fairly sleepy police officer.    In a red flash, the officer pulled me over and began to question my memory.    

"Do you recall seeing the three stop signs you just blew through?"    "Yes," I said, sheepishly producing my license.    

For the next several minutes, we played 20 Questions, and he quickly discovered I was a pastor.    

"What church?" he asked.    

"The Southern Baptist church—but probably not for long."    

"Why is that?" he asked.    

I reminded him the town newspaper usually published police reports, and it was difficult to imagine my parishioners reacting favorably to the news that their pastor had blown through half the stop signs in town.    

He apparently heard my concern because he generously reduced my infraction to running only one stop sign.    

But as he did, he posed a question that has guided me much of my career.    

"Do you suppose that your church members never been ticketed?"    

His question implied that a church that doesn't realize it has a flesh-and-blood pastor would be a church that has long been asleep.    

In the years since, I've come to realize that not only is it a sin to think of yourself as incapable of sinning, but it may be worse to think of yourself as someone who'd never want to be discovered sinning.    

No, I'm not suggesting we display our sins in a way that makes us seem more human. I'm only suggesting we don't attempt to hide our sins in a way that makes us less than human. 

Because, as my mom always said, echoing Numbers 32:23: "Your sin will find you out."    

Not long after that, The Brentwood Press published a story about speeders with a picture of an unsuspecting car driving down Walnut Boulevard.  

The story featured a car which very much resembled mine and was headlined "Walnut Boulevard Problem With Speeders."    

Guilty, again. 

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Column excerpted from my book, "Thriving Beyond Surviving."

All of my books can be ordered on Amazon. Autographed copies can be obtained on my website www.thechaplain.netor by sending a check for $20 for each book to 10566 Combie Rd. Suite 6643 Auburn, CA 95602.

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