Casting the First Stone
Although I am pulling up the rear, I’ve heard that late is better than never. Kimberla Lawson Roby’s novel, 1 of the 15 books in her “The Reverend Curtis Black Series,” Casting the First Stone, was released back in 2000, but I only just now read it. Being more contemporary and written from the perspective of Black life and Black church undercurrents, it hit closer to home and was therefore more relatable at times than something like Francine Rivers’ classic And the Shofar Blew (which I still often gift to aspiring or new pastors). The two novels cover similar ground albeit in different ways, but Roby’s work deserves a seat at the table because of its realism. To her credit (and without being vulgar or soap opera-esque, like a Real Housewives episode), the storyline has grittier detail, which helps to paint a fuller picture of the conflict at hand.
This debut installment introduces Rev. Black as a dangerous cocktail of T. D. Jakes, Steven Furtick, Robert Morris, Mark Driscoll, and David E. Taylor in the making. If he were real and operating in 2026, he would be prime material for the Christian investigative journalist Julie Roys to expose—something she does skillfully and for good reason. As Ephesians 5:11 instructs: “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”
Black lacks the pure talent and success, thus far, of the aforementioned pastors, so he’s not at their level of wealth, congregational size, name recognition, or influence. But he desperately wants it, and he seems willing to sacrifice anything—and I mean anything—and anyone to achieve his own brand of mega ministry success. He sees the church as a business, a fortune 500 spiritual machine, to make him rich and powerful. His spiritual, financial, marital, and pastoral ethics are utterly bankrupt. Quite simply, he is an objectively terrible leader and pastor, whose behavior should make any Christian—or really anyone at all—sick to their stomach.
What is worse, however, is that often enough it does not. And that should sound the alarm within Christian communities. In teaching homiletics and pastoral theology to seminarians, one of the most disappointing realities has been seeing how many of them display an admiration for, or attraction to, this embodiment of faith—or rather, faithlessness. I’ve had students who despite their sin, feel pastors and preachers like this really aren’t that bad. And this too, because it represents a breach of the gospel itself, should move us to weeping and mourning, and induce us to take boldly corrective action without apology. But for that we need ears to hear, eyes to see, and a will to act.
Rev. Black was obsessed with becoming a reverend and eventually leading a large church, in this case Faith Missionary Baptist Church on Chicago’s south side, with about 3,000 members. This is what led him to relocate his family from their native Atlanta. What he truly needed, however, was to allow the Spirit to work in him first simply as “Curtis.” Because of that distortion, his identity, priorities, and actions became completely warped. More troubling still, throughout Casting the First Stone there is plain evidence of how churches themselves can become sinful through either complicity or unchecked enablement.
Church leadership may be respectable in general, except when it comes to holding the pastor accountable through both proper support and crucial correction. As the chief servant-leader, the pastor should model a life that in positing himself as an example, points people to Jesus as the example. There is a serious problem when a pastor’s conduct becomes subpar—when he begins chasing women (or men, or both), stewarding finances negligently, becoming flashy and performative, or mistreating his wife and family. But when godly leaders fail to confront the situation directly, they are enabling a monster. Sometimes that confrontation must extend as far as removing someone from leadership if they refuse to repent and “get right.” It is not nuclear physics.
As a fellow pastor, I have zero tolerance for the kind of clergy Rev. Black represents. What pains me most is that he is not simply fictional. There is no reconciling a pastor who does whatever he wants, with whomever he wants, without any profound consequences. That is not love, nor is it what the gospel or the church, in Jesus’ name, is supposed to stand for.
Nevertheless, there are times when it appears that many of us enjoy the exploitation. If that sounds like a spiritual and psycho-social disease, that is because it is exactly that. As long as a pastor looks, sounds, or performs like “the pastor” we’ve fabricated—preaching revivals and building a platform, with the church growing numerically while on their watch—we’re liable to excuse virtually anything. But life in Christ was never meant to revolve around allegiance to personalities rather than the Lord himself, nor around idolizing control and wealth as they accumulate in our collective coffers.
It pains me to see how quickly some of my students look up to manipulative men (or women) who happen to preach, often proclaiming—though not always—an “other gospel” than the one contained in Scripture. At times, it can feel as though we enjoy both abusing and being abused. Depending on the day, our circumstances, and who is watching, we are all capable of functioning like Rev. Curtis Black—if not worse, redefining good as evil and evil as good.
Casting the First Stone by Kimberla Lawson Roby pairs well with Chuck DeGroat’s book When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse. Together, they dutifully expose how compromised shepherds and sheep can become, while also reminding us of our indisputable need for God, who, we’re told in Numbers 23:19, “is not a man, that He should lie.”
Whenever we standardize taking our eyes off Jesus, there is hell to pay, and it is never worth it. We wound ourselves and others, driven by the same self-seeking impulse that brought separation to Adam and Eve and produced the anxiety-ridden unraveling of Judas—a man whose implosion came from the inside out, depending on which Gospel account you read. In any case, he died a traitor’s death when he didn’t have to. Paul is good at issuing warnings. This one in Galatians 5:13 should draw us back home to God, like when we were kids and the street lights were about to come on: “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.”