According to this article in the Roys Report,
The 47-year old lead pastor of an evangelical church in Wiconsin was arrested after soliciting a sex act with an underage girl. …
“These arrests demonstrate that the market for juvenile commercial sex is not confined to limited segments of society,” said Washington County attorney Kevin Magnuson. “The buyers come from all walks of life and each are responsible for the tremendous harm to the victims, their families and the public that sex trafficking causes.” …
“It’s a sad thing,” said the church’s associate pastor. “This is a lose-lose scenario for the community and the people impacted by it. The worst thing is what this will do to his family — and the church family.”
Unfortunately this associate pastor’s perspective is all too common in churches across the denominational spectrum.
No sir, the worst is not “what this will do to his family — and the church family”, but what this sort of thing does to the victims of sex trafficking and to the testimony of the Lord’s church, and that is where our focus should be, not on the perpetrator’s family and congregation (however painful and devastating this no doubt is for them), nor on the reputational and legal problems that may cause the local church and/or denomination.