Shock of the Day: Megachurch pastor had sex with a minor.

I can’t believe it. A man of God breaking laws and taking sexual liberties with an impressionable follower? No. That can’t be.

The only shocking thing here is that Dr. Jack Schaap is a Baptist and not Catholic.

The former pastor of an Indiana megachurch is under investigation for having sex with a member of the church when she was only 16, according to USA Today.

Jack Schaap, 54, was dismissed as the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Hammond after he admitted having a relationship with the teenage girl, who is now 17. He had been employed by the fundamentalist church for nearly 30 years.

“At this time, we deeply regret the need to announce that First Baptist Church has dismissed our pastor, Dr. Jack Schaap, due to a sin that has caused him to forfeit his right to be our pastor,” the church said in a statement.

(full story)

I’m glad they fired him and all, but this dude has been creepy for years and nobody batted an eye.

First a smidge of background so you can get a sense of how big this church is. Five years ago it placed 24 on the list of the 50 most influential churches in America. During the 1970s, their weekly attendance hit 30,000 and Time magazine declared their Sunday School the largest in the country, if not the world. This church is enormous.

Now.

Dr. Schaap, like so many other pastors, thinks once you have a certain number of followers, you need to write a book, because obviously you have important things to say that people have to hear. In 2005, he wrote a book called Divine Intimacy. Please read this excerpt and tell me you’re not totally squicked out.

The person who deeply loves Christ understands that when He receives Christ as Saviour, it is a spiritual intercourse. A person receives the body of Christ. A Christian is the female gender in the spiritual realm, and God is the male gender of the spiritual realm. When a person receives Christ as Saviour, he is receiving Christ as a lover.

::wow::

I might be an atheist, but I remember communion and that’s definitely not how they taught us. I didn’t know I was having sex with Jesus. I thought I was cannibalizing him. Wasn’t I supposed to be eating flesh and drinking blood?

He keeps going.

Psalm 119:30 says, “I have chosen the way of truth: they judgments have I laid before me.” That word laid is a sexual term which literally means the same thing as a man laying with a woman. God was saying that God’s laws should be as initmate as a marriage partner in a sexual liaison. “I have stuck unto they testimonies: O LORD, put me not to shame.” That word stuck means “the act of a man entering his wife”; it is sexual intercourse. God says that the Word of God should be the Christian’s lover, and nothing should be closer to him than the Bible. The Words of God are supposed to be the most intimate lover of his life.

I’m sorry, but the Words of God are dusty as hell. If I’m gonna get “stuck” by a book, at least let it be something sexy like Lady Chatterly’s Lover. Or Twilight.

But really though. Y’all are surprised he took some liberties with one of the girls in the congregation? Get it together, First Baptist.