• The lead pastor of The Village Church in Flower Mound, northwest of Dallas, is on leave.
• Matt Chandler says he had an online relationship with a woman who was not his wife.
• He says the relationship was not “romantic or sexual,” but “unguarded and unwise”.

The senior pastor of a well-known evangelical church in Texas made a sad confession to his congregation on Sunday about an internet contact with a lady who was not his wife. He then announced an indefinite leave of absence.

The announcement comes amid ongoing disagreement within the broader denomination of his church, the Southern Baptist Convention, according to Matt Chandler, the lead pastor of The Village Church in Flower Mound, northwest of Dallas. In light of several issues with clerical sex abuse, the denomination’s officials disclosed earlier this month that the Justice Department is looking into a number of its key organisations.

Chandler said that his contact with the woman was “unguarded and imprudent,” not “romantic or sexual,” and that he “fell short” of his duties as a church elder.

He said that an investigation had begun this year, but he gave little specifics.

“A woman came up to me in this foyer a few months ago. She expressed some worry about the way I was DMing her friend on Instagram. I didn’t believe I had violated any laws by doing that, he continued. He pointed out that their conversation was known to both his wife and the husband of the woman he was emailing.

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According to Chandler, he immediately alerted the church elders and his wife about the woman’s concerns. The church’s leaders hired a private law company to look into the elder’s email, text, and social media communications history.

Concerns about the relationship, he explained to his church, “were basically about frequency and familiarity,” which manifested as “coarse and silly humour, some unbefitting of my function here as a lead pastor.”

According to the evaluation, Chandler’s use of language was not “proper” for a pastor. He broke the church’s rules against using social media, according to the elders, and fell short of the requirement that elders be “above reproach.”

Josh Patterson, the other head pastor of The Village Church, added that the investigation also revealed that the interaction with the woman was an isolated incident and not indicative of a wider pattern.

According to Patterson, the elders decided that his actions were not “disqualifying of an elder” and had not “risen to a level that would necessitate more severe chastisement.”

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