Wolves in Shepherd’s Clothing Again

Perhaps the lack of any public rebuke contributed to our problem as well.

I’ll add to the list:

• Moral cowardice
• Stupidity

[Jim]

Jim wrote:

There are a number of congregational conditions that make ministries ripe for pastoral abuse:

• Over-emphasis of pastoral authority.
• “Great man” syndrome.

My point: For all the Jack Hyles and James McDonalds, there’s a crowd [of fools] following them!

Bingo!

It always amazes me why people choose to remain in these ministries, either as an employee or regular church member. Granted, it is more of a challenge to make a change as an employee, but as a regular church member … . Why? Why stay? Why put up with that stupidity? Why stay in that nonsense? By staying, aren’t you sort of enabling the situation?

[mmartin]

It always amazes me why people choose to remain in these ministries, either as an employee or regular church member. Granted, it is more of a challenge to make a change as an employee, but as a regular church member … . Why? Why stay? Why put up with that stupidity? Why stay in that nonsense? By staying, aren’t you sort of enabling the situation?

Because you’re taught (i.e. brainwashed) to believe that your church / your pastor / you have a monopoly on true biblical belief and practice and that all others outside of your church (or church orbit) are compromisers / liberal / disobedient. If you want to be rightly related to God, you must follow completely “the man of God.”

I’ve been in a situation or two where the pastor was, in my (probably not humble enough) opinion, way too big for his britches, and there are a number of reasons people stay. First of all, that is where their friends are—the church becomes a huge portion of their social networks. Second, it’s often hard to spot. My family was in a wannabe KJVO/TOB church where the “pastor” quite frankly did a heck of a job covering his tracks. It took us a while to see the pattern, and we left a week or two after (a) the “pastor” berated me because the communion bread wasn’t the little plasticy wafers he preferred and (b) the “pastor” put in a large display of KJVO materials.

Third, and this was also the case for us, churches tend to keep people busy enough so it’s hard to see the pattern developing around the church.

No argument that by staying as long as we did, my family did to a degree enable this particular abusive “pastor”. I fess up to that, should have seen it coming sooner. Failing to confront these things earlier did a certain amount of damage to not only my family, but also other families in that fellowship.

But that noted, I would plead for a certain amount of gentleness towards those caught in such systems, as there are reasons they stay. :^) (blessings, Martin—not trying to pick on you, just telling a story about what my family saw)

We were in one of these ministries for over a decade. It took us years to answer this question after we left.Here are some random observations.

-The pastor could be a “charmer” if he wanted to be, particularly at the first. He’d treat us to meals at restaurants we couldn’t afford, paid for with ministry funds, of course. Later this would take the form of us considering any form of positive recognition from the pastor as an encouragement, especially if we got mentioned in a sermon. (There were negative versions of this that kept us in fear.)

-People who left the ministry for any reason went into a sort of “black hole” and were never to be mentioned.

-Wages were extremely low, making the possibility of being able to afford to leave difficult.

-Add to the above that the ministry’s reputation outside “The Village” was such that its mention on your resume was a liability. (Imagine, “I was on staff with Jack Hyles for 15 years!”).

-Disagreement with and questions asked of leadership often got you put on the “bad list” and the fear of losing a job where you were living from paycheck to paycheck was real. If you weren’t an employee and disagreed, you’d be shunned and sometimes asked to leave.

-If you weren’t an employee, the atmosphere was still the same. Conformity and blind submission to the pastor’s decisions were expected. If there were votes on business matters (the church I was in didn’t have congregational votes on anything), there was never a negative vote–even when the pastor opted to mishandle finances. There was even humor. “All in favor, say Amen. All outside the will of God say no.”

-Finally, after a period of time, we actually convinced ourselves we were needed and necessary and the sacrifice was worth it for what were were doing for Jesus. “How can they get along without me?” “I’m doing a lot of good here.”

We finally left a church after …

• I found out from another one on the pastor’s staff that …
• The pastor referred to me in a derogatory way in staff meetings

How I found out:

• The “2nd man” (he was really one of the pastor’s Seven Dwarfs) …
• Was hospitalized for an extended period of time
• I visited him half a dozen times
• Friend to friend, he confided in me how the pastor referred to me negatively
• My “sin”: I asked to many questions (what he said: “the pastor doesn’t like to be challenged”)
• In my time there: I had never voted against anything either at congregational meetings nor in deacons’ meetings

Yes, I agree that for some people circumstances may hinder or prevent them from leaving a ministry with bad management. Yes, for many the necessity of feeding their family and keeping a roof over their head takes precedent over making a transition, despite the cesspool of stupidity surrounding them.

I did not mean to imply that all people who stay are enablers. Definitely not the case. I’ve been there myself.

Yet, I think the enabling question is reasonable in considering the question. True, perhaps now may not be a good time to leave, but at least you are evaluating the situation from multiple angles.

However, there are many - too many are blind (even willfully blind) &/or built their self-worth around the Big Kahuna that they put-up with obnoxious behavior from their leaders, which can be just as harmful, if not more harmful in some case to themselves and their family.

In my case, it was negatively affecting my and my wife’s health because it was a high-stress situation and full of perpetual & unnecessary drama. We prayerfully made the decision to leave and have never regretted it for a moment since. However, 3+ years later we are still paying off the financial impact of that transition.

I understand some people may not be able to do this for various reasons and some will disagree, but we who sit in the pews every week need to have a stronger identity in Christ, more robust discernment, and a stiffer backbone than to allow ourselves to be brainwashed or bullied into swallowing the idea that any church, ministry, pastor, person, or place of employment, etc.,etc. has all that regarding the will of God for us.

The FBFI has a task force working right now on the subject of pastoral abuse that we believe will identify more issues and provide helpful and reasonable recommendations for churches in not only reporting but preventing problems from occurring.

That’s great news, and I am looking forward to reading their findings if I can get a copy. I hope the FBFI continues to do more work like this.

Schaal is spot on. A lot of what he wrote described a toxic church we attended years ago, and as someone else explained, it was impossible to spot the problems from the “inside”. Leaving it cost us dearly, but I do not regret doing so.