Real Life Ministries processes suicide of Pastor Gene Jacobs, founder says he’s in Heaven
Days after one of his campus pastors was found dead by authorities from an apparent “self-inflicted gunshot wound” in Idaho, Jim Putman, founder and senior pastor of the multi-campus Real Life Ministries, comforted his grieving parishioners Sunday with a promise that though the campus pastor’s suicide is a sin, he believes he is in Heaven.
After failing to show up for an early morning meeting at his church on April 23, Pastor Gene Jacobs of Real Life Ministries Silver Valley, which is part of the multi-campus Real Life Ministries megachurch, was found dead by authorities hours later with a “self-inflicted gunshot wound” in a mountainous area south of Pinehurst, authorities said.
A recording of Putnam’s message at Real Life Ministries Silver Valley shared on YouTube shows the church’s senior leader working through the shock of Jacobs’ death in a service that was so packed, some attendees could only find standing room.
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Putnam’s message, which he anchored in Psalm 73, highlighted the struggles of the worship leader and prophet Asaph, with bitterness and envy after seeing the wicked prosper. Putnam used the Scripture to drive home the narrative that it's common for followers of God to struggle with their faith and even commit sins like Jacobs in the process of that struggle.
“What's true is Gene absolutely believed every word he said, and what's true is every word he said concerning Jesus in the Scripture is true. What's also true is that people can fail and struggle,” Putnam said.
“People can make mistakes. People can get caught up in emotion. People can have thoughts run through their mind that are not true. Knowing Gene, he may have thought, ‘People will be better off without me. I'm really a problem. I can't share this with other people because they already have enough burdens of their own. I don't want to add one more thing because somebody didn't stay in the church, or somebody made a mistake. It was really my fault,’” Putnam said. “He could have believed that it was really his fault, that if he had just done a better job, then, certain things wouldn't have gone the way they went.”
Putnam argued against the position of some in Christian culture that any believer who commits suicide will not go to Heaven. He called the position “unbiblical.”
“Now, you might have been taught that because somebody commits suicide that means they're in Hell, and I want you to know this. That's not biblical,” he said.
“There is a version of Christianity that says that you're saved until you sin and then you're unsaved until you confess it, right. And then you're saved again, and you go back and forth. And Heaven help me if I say something rude to my wife. Step out, trip on my front steps, land on my head, break my neck, and I'm dead and I didn't have the time to say I'm sorry,” the Real Life Ministries founder illustrated.
“Heaven help me. I mean, how could you walk around in confidence? How many times in a day would you have to say, ‘God forgive me’ … I don't know about you, [but] it takes me a while to think through stupidity.”
While calling Jacobs’ suicide “stupid” and “wrong,” Putnam insisted that “Gene is with the Lord.”
“Is it possible for Gene to have been in a bad place and made silly decisions based on lies in his head? Yep. Absolutely. Was Jean dead wrong if he did that? Yes, he was wrong,” the senior pastor said.
“This room is evidence that he can be wrong about ‘people will be better off without me.’ Are we better off without him?” he asked the church.
Putnam told the church that Jacobs would not choose to intentionally hurt anyone because that’s not the kind of person that he was.
“What Gene did was listen to the devil,” Putnam said while urging the church not to entertain lies, slander and gossip about why Jacobs might have killed himself.
“We know where Jean is because when Gene did what he did — again you're not lost because of sin, you're lost when you refuse Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, when [you] reject Jesus — and I can tell you this with confidence, Gene never did that. Never would do that. Didn't tie the two things together,” Putnam said to amens from the congregation.
He argued that Jacobs’ suicide should not be used to discount his ministry in the church because the heart of his ministry is Jesus and Scripture and that’s what believers should focus on – not on his sin, but on the life, he lived for Christ.
“What he did, if this is true, what he did was wrong and stupid. It does not discount all that he has said, and he has done. Gene has been used amazingly in this town, in my life, in people around this country,” Putnam said.
“We will not allow people to question Gene’s … salvation and we will not allow people to discount what God did through Gene in this place and in this time because he's made a difference in all of our lives, and we will stick to the Word.”
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