A tearful Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village Church (TVC) and president of Acts 29, on Sunday confessed an inappropriate online relationship with a woman other than his wife and said he is taking a leave of absence.
Though the relationship was not romantic or sexual, Chandler said it was “unguarded and unwise.” He added that TVC elders felt Chandler’s “inability” to see the relationship for what it was “revealed something not right, something unhealthy, in me.”
“The volume of exchanges and the familiarity, which played itself out in kind of coarse and foolish joking, is just not okay for someone who has been put in the position that God has placed me in,” Chandler said. “I don’t know if that’s tied to the pace I run, or the difficulty of the last six, seven years, but I agree with (the TVC elders). And so, in their grace to me and my family, they’ve decided—and again, I think they’re right—to put me on a leave of absence.”
Chandler, 48, has…
