A Pastor, a Baseball Player, His Wife, and the Scandal That Won’t Fade Away

If you’re from Chicago, then Ben Zobrist is arguably best known as the Cubs player whose clutch hits helped bring the team its first World Series trophy in over a century back in 2016. Zobrist was named the World Series MVP that year as well.

Before he retired in 2020, though, Zobrist regularly spoke about his faith, organizing Bible studies and appearing at Christian events.

That’s why it came as such a surprise a couple of weeks ago when he filed a public multi-million-dollar lawsuit against the pastor who had been counseling him and his wife… for reasons that were shocking:

The complaint alleges Byron Yawn, a Nashville businessman and former pastor of Community Bible Church, was offering pastoral care and friendship to the former major league baseball player while having an affair with Zobrist’s wife.

…

Yawn also served as director of Zobrist’s charity.

By his actions, Zobrist alleges, Yawn “breached his fiduciary duty toward the Plaintiff as well as his duty of confidentiality and trust that existed by virtue of his pastoral relationship with the Plaintiff.”

The complaint also alleges Yawn proposed a budget for Zobrist’s charity that would pay him $36,000 a year and used his role at the charity to spend time with Zobrist’s wife.

It went from personal drama that’s no one else’s business to a religion story involving an allegedly shady pastor. What makes everything even more prone to rumor is that, due to the legal proceedings, no one’s talking.

Julianna Zobrist announced yesterday that she wouldn’t be speaking publicly about the matter:

I am choosing to protect my children’s hearts by not saying hurtful things about their father in public. My attention is focused on caring for them during this difficult time, and I refuse to divert my energy to slinging mud and publicly reveal personal details of my previous relationship in order to score sympathy points.

I don’t personally care about the details of their marriage. Without knowing more, it would be unfair for people to assume they know who the heroes and villains are. Plus, as I said before, it’s their business and they deserve privacy for the sake of their family as they work through all this.

The pastor, on the other hand…

Yawn’s attorney said he’s “looking forward to setting the record straight,” though he’s not commenting further for now. Whenever he can speak, though, it’s bound to be a fascinating story of how even devout faith doesn’t prevent people from committing what they would consider sins.

(via Religion News Service. Screenshot via YouTube)