Why Don’t Churches Ditch Their Toxic Leaders?

The Leadership Dynamics That Perpetuate the Status Quo

Apr 27, 2024

“No one does more harm in the Church than he who has the title or rank of holiness and acts perversely.” -Gregory the Great

[This article is the second part of a new series on the topic of toxic leadership in the church, which is the topic I am teaching about at Pepperdine’s Harbor Conference this year.]

In my last post, I shared some quotes and insights from the leading experts who are all sounding the alarm about the crisis of toxic leaders in the church. As you may remember, there’s two key parts to this problem:

Too many toxic people are being given leadership positions in the church
Too many accountability groups (who have the power to confront the toxic behavior) are turning a blind eye to what’s going on.

As a result, too many innocent people are subjected to the painful sting of toxicity and abuse.

Two Sides of a Toxic Coin

Michael Kruger sees those two issues (toxic behavior and a lack of accountability) as the primary causes of the church leadership crisis:

“While most pastors are gentle, kind, and patient, others have a proverbial knee on the neck of their sheep. They’ve been doing it for years with little or no consequences. And despite the pleas of the people, other pastors and elders sometimes stand by and let it happen. They may even defend the bully pastor. In sum, the problem is not just the abuse. It’s also the larger context that allows it to continue unchallenged. So something needs to change.” -Michael Kruger, Bully Pulpit, p. xviii. Emphasis added.

Toxic leaders stay in their leadership positions because the only people with the formal power to hold them accountable fail to do so—and they may even defend the actions of those toxic leaders.

How does something like that happen in a church?
Why are abusive pastors allowed to continue harming people for years before something is done to stop them?
Why don’t elders immediately step in to put a stop to conduct that goes against the teachings of Christ?

As it turns out, there are some powerful dynamics at play that create a perfect storm of disbelief, rationalization, and overall inaction. But once you understand those dynamics, you start to see that there is an alternative path that churches (and their leaders) can take— a path towards honesty, humility, and health.

A Spectrum of Church Leadership Health

Let’s take a step back for a moment and talk about church dynamics and church health in general. We’ll start with the absolutely ideal situation and then move towards the more toxic situations and dynamics that sometimes play out.

1. The Impossible Ideal.

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” -Matthew 5:48 (NIV)

In an ideal world, every church leader would be just like Jesus. All the elders, minsters, volunteers, and leaders at every level would reflect the actions and attitudes of Jesus. If we could somehow attain this, the church leadership crisis would be solved immediately, because no one would act in a way that violated the teachings of Jesus. But I’m calling this the impossible ideal for a reason. We can’t actually live up to that high of a standard. Despite our best efforts, every leader is going to fall short in some form or fashion.

2. The Next Best Thing.

“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” -Psalm 139:23-24 (NIV)

Since no one is perfect, the next best thing would be a church where all the leaders were humble enough to admit their mistakes and address their toxic tendencies head on. Instead of denying, shifting the blame, or minimizing the seriousness of their sins, those leaders take full responsibility for their actions and work hard to do better next time. They are proactively exploring their stories, their character, and their toxic tendencies so that they can go to God and ask him for his help.

In all honesty, this is the best realistic scenario for churches. If your church has leaders like this, you’re in good hands!

3. The Danger Zone.

“When churches prefer giftedness over character, churches inevitably begin to overlook a pastor’s character flaws because he’s so successful in other areas. Leadership performance becomes the shield that protects the pastor from criticism.” -Michael Kruger, Bully Pulpit, p. 11.

The danger zone of church leadership is when you have a highly charismatic and outwardly successful leader who nevertheless has an unaddressed “dark side.” They might be popular, they might get things done, they might have a large following in the church, but there are certain things they do and say that are anywhere from toxic to outright abusive.

The reason this combination of charisma and toxicity is so dangerous is that churches just wouldn’t put up with incompetence and toxicity at the same time. Churches are quick to fire pastors who are incompetent jerks, but for some reason they have a long history of keeping successful jerks around for far too long.

In a healthy church environment, the group with the power to hold that toxic leader accountable would confront them clearly and in a timely manner, because no amount of outward success can excuse the abusive things they do and say behind the scenes.

4. The Nail in the Coffin.

“Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent— the Lord detests them both.” -Proverbs 17:15 (NIV)

In unhealthy church environments, supervisors and elder groups are slow to hold anyone accountable because the perceived cost of confronting a charismatic, outwardly successful minister is too high. And I am using the phrase “outwardly successful" on purpose because we really can’t consider things like preaching compelling sermons or doubling the size of the congregation an unqualified success if we know part of that package includes belittling other staff, abusing members of the congregation, and creating a toxic environment in the church.

Jesus warns us against gaining the world at the cost of our soul. I think something similar happens on the congregational level when oversight boards look the other way on the toxic behavior because of that leader’s ability to get things done.

“We frequently promote narcissists and psychopaths. Time and time again, we forgive them their arrogance. We bracket out their abuses of their power, because we feel that we need that power to get things done.” -Michael Jensen

Here’s what that can sound like:

Why rock the boat over some personality differences?
Why risk the chance of growing our church from 300 to 500 just because the pastor is a little rough around the edges?
Shouldn’t we give grace instead of coming down hard on people who mess up?
It sounds like those supposed victims are too sensitive!

This line of thinking, coming from the one group in the church who has the formal power to hold toxic leaders accountable, is the nail in the coffin. It both acquits the guilty (by failing to hold toxic leaders accountable) and condemns the innocent (by blaming the victims) — the two things God says he detests in Proverbs 17:15.

If you have a toxic leader who lacks the humility (or self-awareness) to repent of their sins matched up with elders who lack the resolve to hold them accountable, it creates the perfect storm of ongoing abuse.

Michael Kruger says this dynamic plays out far too often in our congregations:

“In story after story of abuse, the same tragic series of events play out. The abusive pastor engages in destructive behavior for years until someone finally has the courage to speak up. But even then, most churches do nothing. (And as we shall see in the next chapter, some churches attack the one speaking up.) Even if the church does something, it’s often a half-hearted, inadequate response. When the rare church finally removes a pastor for abuse, that just leads to the next questions: Why did it take you so long to act? Why did you tolerate this behavior for twenty-five years?” -Michael Kruger, Bully Pulpit, p. 61.

So Why Don’t Churches Ditch their Toxic Leaders?

There could be a lot of reasons for this, and sometimes they overlap.

A Faustian Bargain — The people who could hold the toxic leader accountable feel they need that leader’s ministry skills and charisma to thrive as a church, no matter the cost.
A Failure of Nerve — The oversight board lacks the skills or resolve to hold their toxic leaders accountable. They know how popular the toxic leader is and how painful it would be to lose them, so they hold back instead of speaking up.
Disbelief — Church members scoff at the idea that their popular, charismatic, highly successful leader could possibly be guilty of allegations that have come forward.
Whitewashing Narcissism — Churches have an inverted value system that reinterprets toxic traits as positive ones. They see relational red flags as the essential traits of strong leaders.
Manipulation — Toxic leaders build coalitions, cast doubt on the character and integrity of their victims, twist the narrative, and play the victim card in order to manipulate the oversight board into taking their side.

Addressing the Problem From Every Angle

There’s multiple sides to the church leadership crisis — the toxic things leaders do, the way we ignore red flags in the hiring process, and the lack of any real accountability for toxic leaders. To move the church forward in a healthier way, we have to make progress on all of these issues.

Here’s three things I’ll expand on in future posts that will hopefully address the problem from multiple angles:

Church leaders (at every level) need to take a hard look in the mirror. Every leader needs to confront their own toxic tendencies before those latent tendencies turn into actual abuse.
Churches (and their ministry search committees) need to do some soul-searching about the kinds of things they have typically looked for in potential ministers, and recommit themselves to prioritizing Christlike character above everything else.
Oversight boards (like the elders) need to get serious about taking preventative measures that can stop abusive people from having a leadership position to begin with. And, they need to commit to providing the real accountability that is necessary to confront toxic leaders and prevent any further abuse.

These issues work together to produce the church leadership crisis, so the way forward has to address all of them. I hope you’ll stay part of this conversation as we continue exploring the crisis of toxic leaders in the church and how we can start to chart a different path in our local congregations.

Following Jesus Together

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