Church Welcomes Back ‘fallen’ Leader Who Had Affair

By JoAnne Viviano
Columbus Dispatch
July 12, 2012

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/07/12/church-welcomes-back-fallen-leader-who-had-affair.html

A Columbus megachurch has welcomed back a former associate pastor who spent about 18 months in counseling and reflection after it came to light that he had a sexual relationship with a woman he was counseling for sex addiction.

Steve Robbins has fully repented and is returning as a church member “who is loved and welcome and restored to fellowship,” Vineyard Columbus’ senior pastor, Rich Nathan, announced in closing his weekend sermon on “Disciplining and Restoring Fallen Leaders.” Robbins will not be on staff.

“We’re going to do something that you have never seen before, and that is a public restoration of someone who walked away and now is coming back home,” the pastor said to applause as he welcomed Robbins on stage and embraced him.

Robbins, 62, was asked to break off contact with the woman and to refrain from worshipping at the evangelical Christian church pending the counseling and reflection, Nathan said when reached by phone on Monday.

The woman and her family filed a lawsuit in Franklin County last year against Robbins, the church and the church’s national body — the Texas-based Vineyard USA. They allege Robbins took advantage of his position to have an affair with the woman in 2010 and that church leaders knew or should have known about the relationship.

The woman’s attorney, Edwin Hollern, said the family no longer attends a church of any faith because they no longer trust people who claim to do God’s work.

“The Vineyard has never reached out in any meaningful way to help my clients despite the severe emotional trauma that they have sustained,” he said.

Robbins was fired in February after the woman’s husband told Nathan about the affair and Robbins acknowledged it, Nathan said. Leaders then decided to reveal it publicly.

Nathan said Vineyard leaders did not want to be like “all the other institutions in society that spin and cover,” referring in his sermon to the Catholic Church scandal involving the sexual abuse of children by priests.

“The church also needed to see that there was a way back and that the church was a place of restoration,” he said.

Church member Bob Byrne of Reynoldsburg, a former Catholic, said the way the matter was handled made him proud to be part of Vineyard, which draws about 8,000 worshippers each weekend.

“Vineyard applied the principles of the Bible, and this past weekend I experienced the most powerful moment in 40-plus years of church-going,” Byrne, 45, said in an email.

Robbins was one of about 30 associate pastors at the church, which is based on the Northeast Side outside Westerville and has sites in Dublin and the Ohio State University area. His attorney, Eric Rosenberg, had no immediate comment.

Hollern has said the affair ended when the woman, who is listed as “Jane Doe” in the lawsuit, entered an out-of-state facility to treat her addiction and that the family sued, in part, to recover counseling costs.

A trial date has been set for August, but the matter is on hold pending a ruling in a bankruptcy case that Robbins and his wife filed in federal court in Columbus.

Contact: jviviano@dispatch.com