ADDENDUM::Our Pastor is a Registered Sex Offender but God has Forgiven Him | The Way Forward

UPDATE 9/17/15::Regretfully the original cite for his article appears to have been lost as I believe Gerencser's blog site was hacked and postings were lost.

I forgot I had this OP concerning Yoakem (found while looking for something else).  What is interesting is the following comment, offering a possible bit of insight:

The problem is that pedophilia is seen as merely another flavor of “sexual immorality”. In the eyes of most purity teaching adherents, lust is lust, period. It doesn’t matter if a person’s lust is directed toward a child, because there is no concept of consent-based sexual ethics.
,,,
[T]he church simply lacks the awareness and education to identify sexual predators. This is why Christianity Today published a piece by a jailed youth pastor who described his rape of a teenager as “an affair”.   Mainstream evangelicalism lumps all sexual misconduct in the same box as all the other sins, so a rapist is no worse than a shoplifter. Somehow this makes all sinners to be on the same footing before a holy god, because all our righteousness is as filthy rags, etc
,,,
But this would explain why if a predator expresses appropriate contrition for any kind of past “moral failure”, he becomes a living testimony of god’s redemptive power. The apostle Paul was a murderer after all, so anyone can be used of God.

And so sex offenders are hired by naive, trusting churches, and continue to wreck lives until they get caught. At least this guy was turned over to authorities. In many cases it is the victims who are shunned and cast out.

To be "fair" this is the so-called "apology" that the Leadership Journal, which is an imprint of Christianity Today, posted in regards to the above article mentioned by the comment:

The post, told from the perspective of a sex offender, withheld from readers until the very end a crucial piece of information: that the sexual misconduct being described involved a minor under the youth pastor's care. Among other failings, this post used language that implied consent and mutuality when in fact there can be no question that in situations of such disproportionate power there is no such thing as consent or mutuality.

The post, intended to dissuade future perpetrators, dwelt at length on the losses this criminal sin caused the author, while displaying little or no empathic engagement with the far greater losses caused to the victim of the crime and the wider community around the author. The post adopted a tone that was not appropriate given its failure to document complete repentance and restoration.

Michael Stone over at Progressive Secular Humanist describes the original piece (of trash) :

Earlier this month, Christianity Today’s imprint publication, Leadership Journal, ran a post written by a convicted child sex offender and former youth pastor narrating his internal thought process as he went from youth pastor to child molester and convicted felon.

The account, written by an anonymous former youth pastor currently serving a prison term after pleading guilty to two felony charges, does not use the word “rape” once in the piece.

Nor does he mention the words “crime,” “law,” “statutory,” or “illegal.”

Instead, the author/rapist throws a pity party for himself. The title says it all “My Easy Trip from Youth Minister to Felon: The spiral into sin that destroyed my life and ministry.” The post is all about the rapist’s/youth minister’s pain and suffering, with no regard to the pain and suffering of his victim.

Reading the post, you would think the author had an “extramarital affair” with a consenting adult; in fact, that is how he characterizes his crime. Yet what the author refers to as an “extramarital affair,” was in fact the rape of a minor.

Now compare what Stone wrote in regards to the original versus the "apology." 

What's missing?

"Nor does he mention the words 'crime,' 'law,' 'statutory,' or 'illegal.'"

The word "crime" appears ONCE.  Just like the original, the apology passes this off as nothing more than "sexual misconduct," a "criminal sin."  The editors are more concerned with the perps mortal soul, "complete repentance and restoration" than with giving this whack job a platform to masturbate from.

The comment was on target, although she was being way too nice.

Our Pastor is a Registered Sex Offender but God has Forgiven Him | The Way Forward