Michael Reid

Michael Reid, senior pastor of the church formally known as Michael Reid Ministries formally known as Peniel, has resigned. This follows the revelation that he has been having an extra-marital affair.

I'm finding this news hard to deal with. I find it hard to deal with because I have, in my very limited experience of the man, found him almost impossible to respect. His ministry, as far as I could see, was one based on anger, fear and condemnation - I haven't ever heard of him acting out of love or selflessness, save in the promotions handed out by his own ministry. I found him to be hipocritical and false, and too full of anger to do much good.

I am not enjoying writing this, because I realise that it comes across as very bitter, and I don't want to be a bitter person. But people I know and love have been attacked by Reid, and I find it hard to have much sympathy for him.

However, I realise that this is not the right attitude to have. It is not as Jesus would see the situation, and I realise as I write how un-Christlike my thoughts often are. Whatever my personal opionions of the man, he was created by the same loving God that created me. Though I can point out his flaws, it is humbling to realise that I am just as much in need of a saviour as he is. Whatever his weaknesses and fears, God loves him as much as he does me. So who am I to condemn?

My baser instincts tell me that it serves him right. If anyone was owed a fall from grace, it was him right?

Wrong.

If anyone deserves a fall from grace, it is me. It is you, the reader. It is Michael Reid. It is every single one of us. The nature of grace is that it is undeserved. Grace is to be given something that we don't deserve. Each and every one of us deserves to fall from God's grace, and yet, by some miracle, not one of us does. God saves us, even though we have done nothing to earn or merit salvation.

Christ told the hypocrites not to point out the splinter in someone else's eye, when they carry a log in their own. Perhaps in the past this teaching might have been deservedly aimed at Michael Reid for his own ministry. But right now, it is deservedly aimed at me - for thinking that I am better, and have more authority to cast judgement, than someone else.

Reid has been knocked off the high horse he built for himself. I pray that God will knock me off of mine. And I pray that for Reid, as for myself, that as we fall, we will find ourselves caught by grace.