Al Mohler mourns sin of 'dear friend' Steven Lawson, promotes Billy Graham rule for young men in ministry
'I didn't see this coming,' theologian says
Southern Baptist theologian Al Mohler has some advice for young men in ministry who want to avoid the fate of Pastor Steven Lawson and others alleged to have engaged in sexual misconduct: don't allow yourself to be alone with a woman.
The 73-year-old Lawson, lead preacher at Trinity Bible Church of Dallas and president of OnePassion Ministries, was removed from ministry in recent days after an alleged "inappropriate relationship" with an unidentified woman.
Mohler, 64, shared his advice Tuesday following a chapel service at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he serves as president.
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While Mohler declined to refer to Lawson by name, he called him a "dear friend" who is a "well-known preacher" and admitted he "did not see this coming."
"I want to share that I did not see this coming, and for the sake of history and anyone who may hear this, I don't want to send them Googling for a name, but I also didn't want to turn it off, so I won't use a name," said Mohler. "I'll simply say this preacher is well-known, a man who has preached right here from this platform, and a dear friend with whom I have preached all over the country and many parts of the world. I didn't see this coming."
Mohler said while he couldn't have predicted his failure, there were some signs in retrospect, including the amount of time Lawson spent traveling alone.
"When a catastrophe like this falls upon us, you can look backward and connect some dots, but they didn't appear until you look back," he said. "One of those patterns is just an awful lot of time traveling alone and the exposure of being all over the world alone. I just want to speak from the heart and say this kind of catastrophe — the fall of this house — is very great."
He also warned his audience that while the sins of men in ministry in the past may have been revealed in a slow drip, the emergence of instant communication through the internet and social media results in a more immediate and public scandal that ultimately brings "disrepute upon the Gospel."
"I honestly think it's not so much that more is happening, but that more is being immediately communicated everywhere with social media and the digital revolution," said Mohler. "Beware, your sins will find you out, and your sins will be broadcast across the world in a matter of seconds on social media platforms."
Not only did Mohler say those who are called to ministry should "be absolutely horrified" by Lawson's fall, but they should also take heed to what's known in contemporary Christian circles as the "Billy Graham rule."
He urged those looking to go into ministry to "make certain there are protections and policies in your life, which means the avoidance of certain patterns in your life that would expose you to this kind of vulnerability and this kind of temptation and this kind of sin."
"I want to speak more bluntly than I have ever spoken in this chapel before," Mohler said. "I want to share with you a word that was shared with me by a man I won't name, a very, very honorable name in Christian ministry. His words were these: 'You will not have sex with a woman not your wife, if you are never alone with a woman not your wife,'" he said.
"That's simple math. I'm not going to ask you to repeat it, but I want you to think about it. The moment we allow something to happen, we expose ourselves to a temptation greater than we can resist."
Mohler, who appeared with Lawson, John MacArthur and late theologian R.C. Sproul in a number of Reformed events over the years, including the 2012 and 2017 Ligonier conferences, also suggested Lawson's sin is "as grievous as it looks, and honestly, it's almost always worse than it looks."
Following the initial report about Lawson on Sept. 20, several allegations about Lawson's affair have surfaced, including a report from Phil Johnson, executive director of MacArthur's Grace to You, who suggested Lawson was engaged in a long-term extramarital affair.
According to a series of now-deleted X posts, Johnson wrote that Lawson only informed the elders at Trinity Bible Church after "the girl's father had confronted Steve and threatened exposure."
"This was not a noble confession of sin," Johnson added.
In another reply on X, Johnson said the woman was in her late 20s and was not a member of Trinity Bible Church. He also said while the nature of the relationship had "strong romantic overtones," both Lawson and the woman "insist no literal fornication was involved, but their tie to one another was adulterous in spirit, if not in fact."
Johnson later deleted the X thread but not before it was captured in a screenshot and shared across the platform.
"In deference to the elders of Trinity Bible Church of Dallas, I removed the comments I posted this morning regarding the Steve Lawson scandal," Johnson wrote Wednesday evening. "Those elders shepherd the local church Lawson belonged to, so their pastoral duty takes precedence over mine."
"These are godly men, committed to the truth of Scripture, and I'm fully confident they will do the right thing," he added. "They have every right to set their own pace."
With more than 40 years dedicated to ministry as a prominent figure in the Reformed/Calvinist Evangelicalism movement, Lawson formerly served as a teaching fellow at Ligonier Ministries and as the dean of Doctor of Ministry Studies at The Master's Seminary but has since been removed from both websites.
A frequent speaker with MacArthur at TMS events, Lawson often appeared in front of MacArthur's congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, for The Shepherds Conference and other events.
