Maggie was excited to finally bake a cake with her mother. They carefully prepared all of the ingredients: fluffy flour, sugar as fine as powder, a pinch of salt, creamy butter, fresh eggs, a bit of vanilla, and some baking powder to help it rise. She mixed it all together, put the batter in a cake pan, placed it in the oven, set the timer, and waited for her delicious cake.
After 30 minutes, Maggie checked the oven—expecting a golden-brown cake, ready to be iced. To her great disappointment, it was still only a cake pan filled with batter. She had all the ingredients to make a cake, but she forgot to turn on the oven.
A cake requires not only all the right ingredients but also the proper environment for it to bake. Abusive churches are similar—but rather than bringing the delight of a freshly baked cake, it harms all those who partake. An abusive pastor or an abusive congregation needs an environment susceptible to abuse in order to “thrive.” What does such a culture look like? Here are five marks of a culture susceptible to abuse.
Also, we should note that just because these are present, it does not mean that your church is abusive. To use our cake analogy, you can have an oven on—set to the perfect temperature—but it will not produce a cake without all of Maggie’s ingredients placed in there.
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To be clear, I think it should be relatively difficult to fire a leader. Scripture tended to require multiple witnesses to bring an accusation. 1 Timothy 5:19 echoes this when it says not to accept an accusation against an elder unless it is supported by two or three witnesses. There are exceptions to this (as in cases of abuse), but for the most part, we should be slow to fire our leaders. The church is not a business, and your pastor is not a CEO.
However, if there is no structure in place to hold leaders accountable or, when necessary, to remove them, it leaves the church vulnerable to unchecked power. Sometimes, churches can look as if they have these structures in place—a board of elders, etc. But what kind of say does the congregation have on selecting those elders? Is there a way to be certain that the board is not filled with “yes men”? Can the church bring an accusation to the entire church apart from the board of elders?
Most pastors and elder groups are humble shepherds who have a heart for the local body of believers. This means that even if the “oven” is on, there will not necessarily be abuse. And to be honest, such a structure likely allows for good pastors to thrive without being slowed down by checks and balances. It’s why some churches move in this direction and why we see some of these churches grow quickly. But it’s like the old saying that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Even great men are men at best. We should have good structures in place to protect us from ourselves.
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There is something that narcissists engage in called vulnerability. It’s a term coined by Chuck DeGroat. The idea is that it seems to be vulnerable, but it’s really a way of protecting secrecy. He calls it an epidemic among pastors and describes it this way:
…pastors (and many others) who are emotionally intelligent enough to share a general "messiness" about their lives (often in broad strokes admitting weakness and need) but who are radically out of touch with their true selves. They've dressed up the false self in a new garment - the garment of faux vulnerability, with the accompanying Gospel vocabulary of weakness, need, brokenness, dependence, idolatry, and more.
This means that it is possible that things appear to be transparent, but the real question is what happens when you ask questions. How are you viewed? Are your questions viewed as an imposition? If there is a culture where leadership believes that the congregation will learn things on a “need to know” basis, where information is tightly controlled, this makes us susceptible to abuse.
There are things that leaders need to keep close to their chest. We often know things about people that it would be inappropriate to share. We are more in the “know” on some issues, and we cannot share everything. There are rare times when “trust me” is appropriate. But it’s usually pretty rare. A culture with a lack of transparency is a massive red flag.
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In an abusive relationship, control is often maintained through imposing arbitrary rules. Telling you what you can and cannot do is the basis of many abusive relationship rules. It’s all about control. In an abusive relationship between two people, there will be several crazymaking rules. To an outside observer, they will be strange, but to the one inside the relationship, it is the means of survival—no matter how predictable they become.
It is similar within an abusive church. If you’re in such a church you will not be able to easily identify this. All of the rules will likely be at least loosely connected to the Bible. But upon further inspection, you’ll find that even if they are in Scripture, the culture is swarming with legalistic thinking. Is the air thick with fear and shame? It may not be as of yet, and you might be doing a good job of following the rules, but eventually, legalistic cultures are ripe for spiritual abuse.
The gospel, not just talking about the gospel, will provide an environment where spiritual abuse is not given room to breathe. The gospel puts to death the fear and shame, which is a necessary ingredient in all abuse.
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One of the hallmarks of an abusive relationship is isolation. Abusers like to isolate their victims so that they do not know what health looks like. Furthermore, they like to create a relationship of dependency. What does this look like in a church setting? You will have little knowledge of how other churches do things. Any relationship with other churches will be viewed as suspect. You will not be partnering with other churches for missions. And you’ll begin to believe that only your local church could lead to your spiritual growth.
This can happen in churches of any size. Small churches can detach from others by considering other local churches as doctrinally suspect. That’s not to say that doctrine doesn’t matter, but I would say that many churches—even if differing on secondary or tertiary matters—are indeed faithful to the core tenets of the gospel. A smaller church will be susceptible to abuse if hearing from these outside sources is frowned upon or non-existent.
Likewise, larger churches can create an exclusive mentality by looking down upon smaller churches. They will not participate in events which they cannot host. They become a bit like Michael Scott in The Office, refusing to sign a paper that says he learned something but willing to sign a paper that says he taught something. This, too, can create isolation and leave a church subject to abuse. We need the varying experiences of churchgoers from other expressions to speak to our own situation. It keeps us from being isolated and not able to see when something goes amiss.
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When missions are out of balance, people are seen as projects instead of individuals with intrinsic worth. Churches can drift into a view of missions where saving souls is like getting a notch on your built and proving your worth. In such a scenario, the people you are sharing the gospel with are mostly objectified. This inevitably creates an “us” vs. “them” mentality. On occasion, this will lead to isolation. At other times, it will lead to increased missions in order to save and transform “them” so that they’ll become like us.
It may not be readily apparent how this makes a church susceptible to abuse, so let me explain. Abuse can only thrive when people are objectified. A culture that objectifies people who are on “the mission” is only one short step away from objectifying the people who are on the mission. Your worth as a member can be tied up to how well you are adhering to the church’s mission. Congregants may experience pressure to conform, fearing that independent thinking or engaging in mission differently would make them less devoted or even disloyal.
Such a church can easily be divided into “us” vs. “them”—with the “us” being those who are passionate about following the church's mission, and the “them” those who are reluctant. Add a certain type of leader to this equation, and you have a recipe where some of the church experiences spiritual abuse. Their fidelity to Christ will be questioned, and their loyalties will be certain around personalities instead of Christ.
It's far better if the mission is organic and centered around the person of Christ. And when we engage others, we do so by respecting them as holistic persons.
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Spiritual abuse can be complicated. It’s possible that the culture itself is fostering abuse, and a well-meaning pastor or well-meaning congregants are unknowingly cultivating such an unhealthy culture. Sometimes, the system itself creates abusive situations. Good shepherds and faithful congregants should look at these things.
To use our analogy from earlier, we want to make sure that even if someone puts together all the ingredients for spiritual abuse, there is no oven in which to bake it. Be wary of those trying to turn up the oven and create this kind of atmosphere. Abusive cultures should be changed instead of coddled. If you see these in your congregation (pastor or people), it doesn’t mean spiritual abuse is happening—but it does mean you should analyze these things and seek to bring change.
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