Coral Ridge worshippers urged to keep the faith
FORT LAUDERDALE — A week after their pastor resigned after admitting to an extramarital affair, worshippers at one of South Florida’s most prominent churches were urged Sunday to set aside doubts and fears and keep the faith.
“The recent news has dismayed us, perplexed us,” Assistant Pastor Adam Masterson told several hundred congregants at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. “Remember that God has the plan, not us.”
Tullian Tchividjian, grandson of Billy Graham, stepped down from the post he has held since 2009 after admitting to what church officials called the “moral failure” of adultery. In a statement Tchividjian issued to The Washington Post, he said he sought the comfort of a friend after learning that his wife Kim had been having an affair.
In response, Kim Tchividjian said, “The statement reflected my husband’s opinions but not my own.”
Masterson sought to reassure the flock that while the news “has us reeling, backpedaling a little bit,” the fallout from the resignation remained a mystery that could not yet be understood.
To make his point, Masterson turned to the Bible and Mark 8:22, the parable of Jesus’ two-stage miracle of restoring sight to a blind man in Bethsaida, a fishing village on the Sea of Galilee.
After Jesus spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked if the man could see anything, according to Mark.
“He looked up and said, ‘I see people; they look like trees walking around,’ ” the man replied.
“Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored and he saw everything clearly,” Mark says.
The moral, said Masterson: “We once could see fully and clearly, and now we are not so sure” because of “this news, this development.
“What is the reaction of Christ? ‘Focus on me,’ ” Masterson said. “He says, ‘You can’t see fully right now, but I do.’ ”
Masterson told worshippers, “God will allow us to see exactly what we need to see when we need to see it. We only see a part of the picture.”
That message was good enough for Jack and Cathy Prenner, congregants from Lighthouse Point, who both said they were disappointed to learn of Tchividjian’s resignation.
“When things are bad, that’s when people lean on God,” said Cathy Prenner, with her husband, a real estate broker. “People mess up. But there are so many Godly men and women here, and I feel that [power] working in the congregation.”
Tchividjian’s resignation comes a year after Pastor Bob Coy, founder of Calvary Chapel, one of the largest megachurches in the United States, also stepped down after admitting to an extramarital affair. In an address to the congregation in 2014, another pastor explained that Coy had “committed adultery” and “committed sexual immorality, habitually, through pornography.”