Bruxy Cavey has resigned from The Meeting House—a Canadian megachurch based in the west end of the Greater Toronto Area—where he has been the senior pastor for the last quarter century. This came at the unanimous request of the The Meeting House's board, following the report of an independent investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct. Those with little to no ties with Canadian evangelicalism might not understand the significance of this event. For good or (as now seems more likely) ill, Cavey is probably the single best known and most influential evangelical minister in Canada. He has been for some time. He was our answer to men like Bill Hybels and Mark Driscoll. And as someone based in downtown Toronto and involved equipping persons for ordained and lay ministry, this strikes a little close to home. So, as someone involved in such work, I have some reflections.
Now, at the outset, let's face reality. Cavey led this church from a single congregation meeting in a public school gymnasium to a megachurch with upwards of twenty campuses spread throughout southern Ontario (an area roughly the same square mileage as Alabama, but with three times the population). When was the last time that you heard of a church board unanimously asking someone with that sort of track record to resign without really good evidence of misconduct? Heck, when was the last time you heard of a church board unanimously asking someone with that sort of track record to resign, even if they did have really good evidence of misconduct? Any disinterested analysis should suggest that the investigation's report simply leaves little room to defend Cavey.
I say this not to villify Cavey, but rather to get at my first reflection. Too often, an institution's first instinct in the face of serious allegations against a prominent figure is to circle the wagons. We saw this in Canada not too long ago, with the revelations surrounding Ravi Zacharias' misconduct. Rumours of this misconduct had been swirling for years, and Ravi Zacharias International Ministries spent at least $1,000,000 of funds (largely generated by donations) to cover the costs of defending Zacharias. This is certainly not right, and to be absolutely fair to the Meeting House there is to the best of my knowledge no evidence that they engaged in a comparable effort to cover up misconduct committed by Cavey. But it does bring me to a second—perhaps more crucial—reflection.
This second reflection is a warning: beware the guru. I vividly remember a conversation twenty-some years ago, in which my interlocutor gushed over how brilliant Zacharias is. I was told that the man was a philosopher, an anthropologist, a...the list went on. I was told that he taught at Oxford and Cambridge. I was told a bunch of stuff about Zacharias, the primary unifying theme of which is that it was all bullshit. Ravi actively cultivated this image of the great intellectual, going as far as to style himself as Dr. Zacharias. But in reality, he didn't hold a single advanced degree, and wasn't qualified to take the courses that he claimed to have taught. For his part, Cavey doesn't so much claim to be an intellectual, but he certainly delighted in being a celebrity preacher—despite the fact that (much like Zacharias) he lacks an MDiv, which is the industry "norm" for working pastors. Both men were punching above their weight, while trying to present themselves as better than those who belonged in that class. There's a lot to beware of there.
The mention of degrees gets at a third reflection: pastoral formation. There's a reason that the Catholic church and mainline Protestant denominations require intensive formation before one is ordained and can serve as clergy in a church. As noted above, most require at least a Master of Divinity. Cavey doesn't come up to this norm, having only a Master of Theological Studies. While the MDiv and the MTS often overlap significantly, there's a notable difference between them: the former is geared fully towards preparing persons for pastoral ministry, whereas the latter is not. Usually, the MDiv is three years and the MTS two: and it tends to be precisely those courses that focus upon the work of ministry that make up the difference in length. What this means is that Cavey might very well never have taken a single course specifically geared towards pastoral ministry. These are the courses in which two things happen: first, the student learns what constitutes appropriate pastoral conduct; and second, qualified specialists are placed in a position to evaluate whether the student is capable of such conduct. This training does not guarantee that someone will be a good pastor, but it does go a long way to increasing the probability of their success.
Bruxy Cavey will of course have his defenders. Himpathy is strong with our culture. Truth is, he's probably just another pathetic man who gets ahead on manipulation rather than ability. That he does so isn't the real story. The real story is that so many have let him.
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