Steve Lawson Was Not a Pastor, Elder or Even a Member at Trinity Bible Church: An Update

Six weeks have passed since Trinity Bible Church revealed that Steve Lawson was disqualified from “ministry activities” for having an “inappropriate relationship” with a woman who was not his wife, and a new report offers insight into why this whole situation has been so strange and murky.

According to pastors Derek Brown and Cliff McManis of Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California, on an episode of their podcast With All Wisdom, using information that has been “verified by the testimony of two or three witnesses,” Steve Lawson, though he previously served as a pastor of previous churches, was neither a pastor, nor an elder, nor even a member at Trinity Bible Church.

“He was not a pastor. He was not an elder at Trinity Bible Church, which we said. He was not the pastor or lead pastor of that church. He was not a member of that church.

How do I know all this? Because..I’ve been trying to get ahold of Trinity Bible Church in Texas for several weeks, and I finally got a hold of somebody that was willing to talk to me, who actually worked at the church, and they verified everything that we said.

They were reluctant to tell me that, but they agreed; he was not an elder, he was not a pastor. He was not the lead pastor. They kind of waffled when I said, “was he a member?” They didn’t want to tell me, but it was pretty obvious he wasn’t.

And they also agreed and acknowledged that as far as they know, the elders at their church are not the ones managing the Matthew 18 process with him of discipline because they can’t.”

Notably, the original announcement from Trinity reads, “The elders at Trinity Bible Church of Dallas regretfully announce that effective immediately, Steven J. Lawson has been removed indefinitely from all ministry activities at Trinity Bible Church of Dallas.”

Notice that while he was removed indefinitely from all ministry activities, he wasn’t removed from a position. He was removed from all ministry activities, but he wasn’t removed from being an elder or pastor.

So what was Lawson if he wasn’t their pastor or elder?

He was the regular guest preacher, otherwise known as the “Lead Preacher,” receiving a dispensation from the elders to preach the sermon and then depart once the message was done.

“What we know now is Steve Lawson didn’t want to be a pastor. He was a pastor at two previous churches that didn’t go well. There was division, there were church splits. It’s kind of an ugly history. And then he got to a point and said, I don’t want to be a pastor. And they honored his wishes, and he just was a teacher. He was a guest teacher at all these places, guest teacher at Ligonier and Trinity Church.”

The revelation tracks with what several members of Trinity Bible Church have reported to us, saying that Lawson’s scandalous affair opened their eyes to how problematic and challenging some of his behavior was, which was never really questioned or considered but now is glaring in light of this new exposure.

Members report that he would show up on Sundays, head straight to the back, preach the sermon, and then leave almost immediately after, rarely sticking around to shake hands or spend time talking to congregants because he had to “guard his time.”

Some exemptions were made for some of the young adult groups, but by and large, he was rarely around and was functionally inaccessible to the congregants- just like one might expect a guest preacher to be. They have speculated that this distance from the flock has played a role in him feeling he wasn’t accountable to them because they never really knew him, nor him them, and therefore was able to live a double life.

Because he’s not a member, elder, or pastor, the hosts suggest the church has no ability to hold him accountable in ways they would if he were, pointing out how this changes the conversation from groups that initially chastised others.

“But this is important because you go back to the very beginning when we were being lectured by all kinds of people, including G3 Ministries (who) made a statement early on and said we need to let the local elders at Trinity Bible Church handle this and the discipline process and the restoration process, and the rest of us need to just be hands off, be quiet, don’t ask questions. Literally. Leave it to the local church. And then Tim Challies in his panel said the same thing. It’s kind of a rebuke. ‘You Christians out there, quit trying to micromanage this. This is the local church elders’ responsibility. Trust them. They’re godly men.’ They’re saying that in ignorance. And so now Trinity Church admits, ‘we can’t do anything. So who’s holding him accountable?”

Brown and McManis explain why accountability is so important in a previous episode on the same topic:

“Steve Lawson needs to be held accountable because of James 3:1, and yet that’s the responsibility of the local church elders, and he’s a Bible teacher, but he’s not even a member of that church. So the local elders of Trinity can’t hold him accountable- he’s not cooperating. You say he has to be held accountable, and the question is, how? Yeah. I mean, how do you… He has no (unintelligible) place of accountability. He’s just been serving in all these areas of ministry, different ministries.

He’s a guest preacher at Trinity Bible Church. He’s at the D.Min program at the Masters Seminary, how are they going to hold them accountable, first and foremost? It’s not their responsibility; he’s not a member of Grace Church. And the seminary there is not a church. Ligonier is not a church, and he’s on the board there and the teaching fellow there. So do they hold them accountable? One Passion Ministries, that’s his ministry. He’s the man. He runs the thing. He’s the founder, CEO, and president. Who’s going to hold him accountable there? And how do you hold him accountable for a parachurch ministry?

So there’s really no ultimate accountability for not a member of a local church.

Those parachurch ministries don’t have a structure of church discipline like the church does, and Jesus handing the keys over to the church saying, ‘that’s our responsibility’ to hold someone like him accountable. And so no one has the instrument by which to hold him accountable, it seems, which is remarkable.”

Ultimately, the model of building the local church on the backs of guest preachers demonstrates a compromised ecclesiology that is so intrinsically and fundamentally flawed that it betrays a foundational problem. This whole notion of “I’ll preach at your church all the time but I won’t be your pastor” suggests Trinity Bible Church’s faulty ecclesiology is at least partially, if not significantly, to blame in this kind of situation, and explains why they are so reticent to speak up now.

As far as where Lawson is in this whole proecss, he has ghosted everybody and has been exceedingly uncooperative.

With most cases of the revelation of disqualifying sin, the guilty pastor fesses up and spills his guts, admits his faults, comes clean, repents, and the process of restoration back into the body begins. With Lawson, this has yet to happen, presenting a unique situation.

Reportedly, he presently resides in Tennessee, and his wife and daughter, the latter of whom just had a baby, his grandchild, remain in Dallas.