Bill Nikides

Abusive leadership in God’s House: A Growing Problem

While Honeysett focuses on how churches as a whole, and bodies of elders gradually lose their way to the detriment of the rest of the church, Kruger spends proportionately more time looking at the spiritual, emotional, and psychological state of the key leaders, particular senior pastors themselves.

Book review, Bully Pulpit: Confronting the Problem of Spiritual Abuse in the Church. By Michael Kruger. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2022. Kindle edition. Powerful Leaders?: When Church Leadership Goes Wrong and How to Prevent It. By Marcus Honeysett. London: IVP, 2022.
The author of Bully Pulpit, Dr. Michael Kruger a teaching elder ordained in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC), a professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte, NC, as well as serving as the seminary’s President. This work, a break from his more focused historical and theological texts, was named as a 2018 Gospel Coalition’s book of the year.
Bully Pulpit is a rough ride, apologies to Teddy Roosevelt. Kruger is a very careful scholar, but his work serves as an alarm bell. It is an amalgam of close Bible reading, personal experience as an elder in the church, and a compilation of news. As he proves his case that pastoral, or, perhaps more to the point, ordained elder abuse is not only possible but on the rise, he also addresses approaches to dealing with the problem.
His approach diverges from that of Marcus Honeysett’s Powerful Leaders? While Honeysett focuses on how churches as a whole, and bodies of elders gradually lose their way to the detriment of the rest of the church, Kruger spends proportionately more time looking at the spiritual, emotional, and psychological state of the key leaders, particular senior pastors themselves.
Before plunging into a catalog of dysfunctionality, the author identifies the vocational heart of the elder. This is summed up in the Old and New Testament descriptions of the shepherds of God’s people. The shepherds’ principle responsibilities are the protection and care of the sheep. This implies that shepherds sacrificially care for the flock. If it comes down to their own well-being or the needs of the flock, shepherds and under-shepherds’ calling includes the need to sacrifice themselves for others. This, of course, is no easy matter as most of those ordained as elders have families and that entails its own responsibilities. That fact, however, does not erase the elder’s call to shepherd the flock at sacrifice to himself. Eldership is a very difficult calling that not only the elder himself is called to, but his family as well.
Poor, corrupt, or false shepherds are outlined clearly in books such as Ezekiel and Jude. These are recognized by their sins of commission and omission. So, they do not feed the sheep, care for needy sheep, rescue sheep, etc. At the same time these false shepherds focus on taking care of themselves. This is rather like military officers who focus on their promotions and the perks that come with them, rather than the welfare and promotion of the men and women underneath them. In that way, members are means for a shepherd to gain his ends, his own success. Kruger and others recognize in biblical eldership both a burden and a joy. Another way of putting it is to say that the focus of the elder is not his own welfare; it is the welfare of the sheep. Of course, that means that the elder must be spiritually vibrant, even when hurting, so that he can care for the sheep. It is simply a matter of his ultimate priorities.
Abusive pastors are addressed as “bullies”, titles earned because they exercise leadership in coercive, manipulative, and deceptive ways that promote an excessive use of church politics. At the same time, they often do not openly appear to be bullies. Rather, they play to the crowd, publicly emphasizing their humility and even fallibility without ever deviating from achieving their own goals and plans. They play the hero but embrace their inner Iago. Their goal commonly is to isolate critics, both from each other and then ultimately from the church itself. Those who break with the imposed groupthink are gently marginalized until they either capitulate and rejoin the faithful followers or the isolation convinces them that they need to find another church home.
Kruger describes the outcasts as “refugees” that sometimes come together after their departure in order to find perspective and peace. Two thoughts spring to my mind when considering the authors words. First, they share their stories not out of a desire to gossip, but perhaps to convince themselves that they have done the right thing and they no longer trust the church as a place that truly listens. Secondly, they are still attached to the relationships summed up in the church they just left. They generally do not so sour on church that they reject the institution, but they are lonely. Others, those not specifically treated by Kruger, place as much distance as they can between themselves and the pain that the church represents to them. They cut their ties altogether and start again.
The leadership style that the author keys on is what we have come to know as narcissism. Kruger consults with studies such as Chuck DeGroat’s When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse1. These key on particular kinds of leaders described as “obsessively preoccupied with their reputation, influence, success. Rightness, progressiveness, relevance, platform, affirmation, and power.” If biblical leadership is modeled on the servant and the shepherd, these men focus on themselves. The good that they do is a dividend of self promotion. They are driven by an inner compulsion to protect and advance themselves that long predated their engagement with the church they pastor. They can be very aware of what they do and even the effect it has on others, but they are driven to ignore these consequences. Kruger illustrates this sort of leader by citing high profile ministers such as Steve Timmis, the former CEO of Acts 29 or Mars Hill. These celebrity personalities most clearly profile the sort of abusive pastors he wants us to recognize.
Bully Pulpit begins to transcend the world of journalism when he contrasts the standards that promote bully ministers from those highlighted in Scripture. First, he notes the absence of the requirement for strong leadership, vision casting, charisma or dynamism from biblical qualifications for ministers. Focusing on these traits makes the congregation blind to the far more significant character flaws. Kruger is careful to distinguish between limited gifts and character flaws. One may be extremely limited in the exercise of gifts but have a godly character more than sufficient for serving as a godly shepherd of the church. That is not to say that this excuses ministers from growing in both strengths and weaknesses, but it does underscore the need to concentrate fundamentally on the relationship with Christ that produces spiritual fruit seen in godly character.
The Congregation’s discernment of character is a weakness, however, because the congregation is not looking for it. Many congregations superficially settle for anything that allows the show to go on. So, Kruger concludes that leaders and in particular narcissistic leaders are not easily held accountable. In particular because narcissists excel in creating superficial relations with people who then become a sort of bodyguard that defend him against any sort of criticism. He is a very skilled performer on one hand who also has a highly developed strategic sense that knows who he needs on his side. When the critics emerge they are first confronted by the bodyguard.
A natural defense against this sort of reflexive, unthinking defense should be other authorities in the church such as elders. Commonly, however, these become a wall of defense for the corporate authority of elder boards or sessions rather than effective ways that ensure the rights of all of the members and pastoral accountability. When things go wrong in a church’s leadership, a plurality of elders becomes a sort of overstimulated immune system that kills the body rather than treats the disease.
Confrontation in churches dominated by “bully pulpits” becomes a tug of war with leadership on one side and disgruntled parties fighting over their rights. “Jesus’s ministry is paradoxical. You don’t lead by demanding your rights but by giving them up.” Kruger concludes, sadly, that “maybe we have hired men more eager to call down thunder than to don the servant’s towel and wash feet.”
Before continuing, Kruger does note in passing that the incidence of pastoral abuse appears to be on the rise. We should examine this; first to address whether it is it true. Are more pastors abusive than in the past or are we simply better informed via social media and more sensitive to the issue? The author clearly sees it as a mounting problem and I am persuaded that he is correct in his diagnosis. Key clinical studies such as the one reported on by Ball and Puls suggest it is. Theirs was an extensive look at the incidence of clinical narcissistic behavior in Canadian Presbyterian clergy. The results were noteworthy and concluded that clergy were five times more likely to demonstrate narcissism than did the normal population. Kruger’s goal in highlighting these grim facts is not to horrify congregations. It is to exhort them to take their own responsibilities for the health of the church by making sure that their own leaders are held to account for their actions or the lack of them.
“Narcissism in the Pulpit” published by www.epiclesis.org noted that “an inordinate percentage (of narcissists) make their way into Hollywood and into the pulpit.” This article also summarized the basic characteristics of clinical narcissists. These are exaggerated descriptions of self, lack of empathy, verbally abusing others, charm/flattery, confusion of love, contradictory statements, copying authorities, authoritarian, insincere emotions, immature conscience, hypersensitive to criticism, criticalness,  defensiveness, delusions of grandeur, workaholic, use of money, focus on power, sarcasm, impulsivity, territorial, and entitlement.
Let’s take some time to evaluate this list. First, it is difficult to distinguish the frontier between ordinary sin and psychological obsession. Likewise, all humans are, in Calvin’s words, “idol factories.” It is always hard to apply psychological language to the Christian’s understanding of the human condition grounded in the realities of sin and grace. It is vital to develop discernment and structures of accountability that do not give power carte blanche but it is difficult to gauge the depth of attitudes and compulsion.
This is compounded by the difficulty of recognizing problems before abusive leaders seize control of the church. Individuals disposed to the inclination to dominate are also masters of disguise. They flatter and charm. They can be good old boys if need be. They do not introduce themselves as Genghis Khan or Hannibal Lector. In truth, they may be far from both. They must however be recognized for what they are and they must be held accountable. Identifying them before they assume leadership is difficult at best, but churches must put in place means by which to deal with them. Elder boards and sessions always believe they are competent to spot predatory or abusive personalities. I agree with Kruger’s observation that this is rarely the case. Kruger’s observation simply is that these shepherding mechanisms rarely exist. And so, as Sonny and Cher used to sing, “the beat goes on”.
Finally, churches are obligated to take the responsibility of not only holding abusive leaders to account (that is not only restricted to powerful individuals but to pseudo-oligarchies as well), but to minister to them to what ever degree is possible. When abuse is discovered, or more often, patterns of abuse, it must be dealt with. That may require discipline or even dismissal, but the church must proactively have in place processes and structures to help both the abused and their abusers. Christ’s is the way of rescue and we follow him. Kruger, based on his many experiences with a variety of churches, mentions the necessity of reporting abuse beyond dedicated response teams or the local elders themselves. It is difficult but immensely important to avoid any suggestion of conflicts of interest.
An addendum to this is requiring a biblically-knowledgeable congregation of Bereans, capable of identifying and confronting (appropriately) scripture misuse. Abusive pastors, Kruger notes, use scripture as a weapon against critics. It is the job of elders and the people to hold the pastor’s scriptural feet to the fire. Perversely, Kruger notes that Reformed churches that excel in preaching grace generally do so as they increasingly downplay total depravity. That just takes down the church’s necessary defenses. The pastor’s friends, promoters, and sometimes even family are given the responsibility of his oversight. That rarely works in preventing church abuse.
Finally, Kruger addresses the necessity to provide care for the intimidated and abused. What books such as Kruger’s describe is not what we generally label as ‘peacemaking”. These problems are matters of the church not relational conflict overseen by MT 18. Individual complainants should not, in this case, simply be isolated and dealt with serially. Their difficulties, if substantiated, particularly by outsiders, point to systemic sin not episodic conflict. Because of that, the imposition of MT 18 serves as a gag order stifling dissent rather than a means by which individual conflict can be resolved.
Books about Christian leadership are commonplace and books dedicated to dealing with pastoral abuse proliferate at a rapid pace. Marcus Honeysett’s Powerful Leaders?, however,  provides an instant contrast to the legion of these I have read. It also approaches abusive leadership in a very different, though compatible, way to that of Michael Kruger.
He summarizes the common approach that describes leadership as “influence.” The popular guide to business negotiation, Getting to “Yes” comes to mind. According to that book, the purpose of negotiation is “getting what you want”. Like so many  Christian leadership treatments, the point revolves around accumulating sufficient influence to get Christian churches or parachurches to do what a leader or leaders want. In the popular understanding of leadership, skills and competence prevail.
Honeysett fires his first shot over that bow, quoting Mark 9:35: “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all” (NASB). Citing Jesus’ rebuking of the apostles’ ambition in James and John, Honeysett says bluntly that Christian leaders are not “Jesus’ top generals”. Rather, Christians in leadership positions are led by the Holy Spirit to create bodies of “Christ-besotted worshippers”. Leaders are servants fundamentally, under-shepherds to bring the flock to  feed on God. Skills and competence lack the moral leverage to produce the kind of deep, spiritual Christ-followers that are needed.
The popular focus on influence rather than spiritual embodiment in leaders creates people who develop churches that do not reflect their creator, but rather, look like their leaders. In Honeysett’s words, the wolves in sheep’s clothing we are aware of are far less dangerous than the wolves in shepherd’s clothing. False sheep do less damage than false shepherds.
The Bible’s treatment of leadership is clear but complex. Leadership, under God’s direction, can be a blessing, but the Bible has just as many examples of ungodly leaders and false shepherds as it has good ones. Leadership, therefore, can be a blessing or a curse.
The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord GOD: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them.
“Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: As I live, declares the Lord GOD, surely because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: Thus says the Lord GOD, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them. (Ezekiel 34:1-10)
Regardless of the apparent risks, God desires and appoints leaders who can indeed represent his will faithfully to his people. In other words, good leaders represent and reflect God to them.
Jesus himself is described as leader and savior by Stephen (Acts 5:30-31). He is the leader who leads by serving however (LK 22: 26-27). Other leaders may be like David, a commander of his people (Isa. 55:3-4), whose flawed hearts belong to God and, in the presence of sin and personal failure, they model lives of repentance for us. Hezekiah modeled repentance and humility so that God saved Jerusalem from the Assyrians. His brilliant leadership had nothing to do with the rescue. God merely heard the prayer of a heartbroken king and rescued his people (2 Kgs 2;1-6). The Book of Judges was filled with leaders, both good and bad (but mostly bad).
The Bible also distinguishes between leaders and elders. Neither were primarily administrators. Churches today blur the clear distinctions between scribal or administrative oversight functions from the core descriptions and responsibilities of elders and leaders, but elders in particular. It seems to me that lumping the categories of leader (especially understood as influencer), elder, and administrator, you create serious risks for cross-contamination.
Honeysett notes that biblical leaders in the church today are those who nourish and equip the flock. Implicit in this is the requirement of leaders such as elders to actually know their own people well enough to encourage and equip them. Equipping itself is an active term. Those who equip are actively equipping. This level of interaction takes time and trust. If either are not present, the leadership enterprise fails. Time and trust have no substitutes in shepherding.
The author introduces us to four features in the church that safeguard the godly integrity of leadership and protect the body from leadership misuse. These are (1) accountability, (2) plurality, (3) transparency, and (4) embodiment.
Leaders lives must be open books lived in the midst of the congregation (2 Tim. 3:10). Their leadership is not characterized by decisions made offsite behind closed doors, in secret. In other words, leadership is fundamentally formal and it is not easy. The point Honeysett makes is that creating leadership that is primarily informal and relational tempts leaders to make expedient decisions that bypass normal channels of checks, balances, and oversight. Appropriate leadership is a difficult balance and in need of constant maintenance. It also places leaders under pressure, because distance from the battlefield is harder to come by. The good news, however, is that it drives leaders into deeper relationships with Christ through prayer, genuine friendships (rather than tactical ones), and the Word. As a pastor, I know that a frequent, though unnecessary,  casualty of ministry is an active and vibrant spiritual life. In order to achieve appropriate accountability, leaders need to be transparent and the only way to achieve this is by guarding and building up the heart.
Honeysett separates accountability from transparency in his list, but they logically interrelate. The difference, he explains later in his book, is seen in accountability being linked primarily to formal structures that ensure it. Visibility and transparency are virtues, but adequate means must be implemented to ensure the integrity of the exercise of leadership. Who oversees the leadership? In our case, we have a Book of Church Order that augments the Westminster Standards and, underneath that as a foundation, the Bible itself. In other words, there are three tiers of formal, directive oversight. But, these are all self-reporting. In other words, leaders are responsible primarily to themselves and each other for conformity to the rules. If the inner circle of leaders is functioning well, the leaders hold each other to account.
As a Presbyterian teaching elder, plurality just makes sense. It distributes the load better. It ensures that every conflict in a church is not me contra mundum. In other words, every difference of opinion is not personal. It also creates a greater opportunity for wisdom through a plurality of wise counselors. That is the theory at least. Part of Honeysett’s purpose is to also describe what happens when pluralities become ineffective or even harmful. For the moment, it is important to grasp that plural leadership was intended to bless not curse. It can be a beautiful thing.
A potential complication results when the small group of leaders/elders is geographically separated from accountability to the wider sphere of leaders. Isolated churches easily develop dysfunctional social, cultural, and leadership patterns. When all you know is who you are, you become the new normal. In these cases, it is incumbent on local leadership to reach out and create wider webs of effective accountability. In other words, if you are ineffectively overseen, though, on paper, it seems that you are, go the extra mile to erect formal, visible procedures with the authorities over you. The absence of these leads to breakdowns in leadership and that means ineffective shepherding.
Embodiment means that leadership is actively on display in the church community. You can see it exercised in the midst of the people. People see decisions being made publicly. Shepherds shepherd visibly. People know exactly what kinds of things their shepherds do. As a missionary, I became acquainted with what sociologists and anthropologists term ‘power distance”. It describes the gap between leaders and followers in terms of power or influence. In a Presbyterian church, there is a difference between elders and members but not an extreme one. The elders are, after all, representatives to God from among the people themselves. Elders are representatives of the people to God and from God to their people.
The heart of the book describes the “slippery slope” from the accountability, transparency, plurality and embodiment that characterizes legitimate leadership to the murky world of dysfunctional, illegitimate leadership. Honeysett describes the slide as the replacement of transparency with secrecy and concealment, the cutting off of any meaningful collegiality, leading to leadership isolation, power imbalances from “on-high” and the corruption of accountability through concealment and cover up.
So much of this is familiar to me. I am an old man. My wife and I have pastored churches, and been pastored in many others. We have seen the good and the bad. I have trained church planters on five continents for over 20 years. In a way, I did not need too many illustrations to understand Honeysett’s argument. What makes the book special, I would add, indispensable, however, is it’s careful description of the transitions from legitimate  to illegitimate, from godly shepherding to abuse. The identification of the slippery slope is the book’s greatest value.
The slide from transparent legitimate authority to leadership characterized by personal power, insecurity and self-protection takes a number of forms. Honeysett describes “regulatory capture” for example that takes place when the leader and the men who oversee him become too closely and relationally intertwined. In this case, the leader and those holding him accountable become so close that accountability becomes meaningless. Analogously, when the leader becomes too closely aligned with the dominant culture of the church and its “priests”, honest critique becomes impossible.
The first step in the slippery slope is often the “non-transparent use of relational authority”. Honeysett quotes Chuck DeGroat’s description of “fauxnerability”. In this case, a leader calculatedly showcases  vulnerability and “messiness” in order to gain sympathy with people. It is designed to increase personal influence by showing people how human and vulnerable one is, even though the calculated nature of its use demonstrates an intelligent intention to deceive. The author juxtaposes this performance with 2 Corinthians 4:2 which condemns such displays of deception. Why do it though? Why mischaracterize yourself?
It is motivated by a desire to manipulate people to get what you want. Leaders corrupt their offices and the structures of the church when they attempt to informally and non-visibly take control of the life of the church, its procedures and policies. I think Honeysett’s general point is that it does not make much difference whether that manipulation is a tendency baked into the personalities of individual leaders or it emerges as an expedient in order to be more efficient. In other words, leaders with extreme issues such as personality disorder and “normal” men who mean well, will stoop to unwise methods that result in dysfunctional leadership. It is a slippery slope. Anyone can get out of control and crash when sufficient care is not exercised.
Eventually, the systems of oversight in the church or organization shift subtly from protecting “gospel integrity” to protecting the underlying organizational culture and its leaders. It becomes an ecosystem of dysfunction and deceit. It’s participants, members and leaders alike, may not recognize what has happened to them. It becomes, in that sense, truly lost. It turns in on itself. Maintaining the system replaces shepherding God’s people. Honeysett’s work has the virtue of describing two sets of circumstances. One is an extreme example with leaders who are, in effect predators. They can correspond to the high profile cases that litter the news. The other example are of good people who make bad decisions that develop dysfunctional momentum as things race to the bottom. This, I believe, is far more common and far more tragic in the sense that it is so preventable.
Men become wolves who speed the decline of their ministries and their churches by looking and sounding just like godly sheep. Honeysett cites Jude (12-13) to say that bad shepherds say good things and look attractive,  but only show their genuine selves when they are challenged or cornered. Winsomeness becomes coercion if the leaders’ control is challenged. The need to maintain control leads to even greater isolation and secrecy. Challenging the status quo becomes dangerous and an arsenal of tactics can be unleashed in order to smother dissent. Social isolation becomes a potent weapon in intimidating any potential whistleblowers. Critics become invisible to both the leaders and, by design, to everyone else. The author uses a psychological acronym to describe the approach to silencing dissent. DARVO, denying that anything is wrong, attacking the challenger, and reversing the roles of the victim with the offender are practiced to maintain control.
The author describes church cultures (tribes) as “echo chambers” who become more concerned with maintaining the social order than they are with the people that inhabit them. They become analogous to bodies whose aggressive, over-stimulated immune systems kill them rather than the disease they try to defend themselves from. The church devolves into groupthink that challenges critical examination or internal reformation.
The final part of the book contains series of questions that can easily become checklists for leaders and members to diagnose the health of their churches. These are useful in facing who you are or have become. Implicit in them are also approaches that can be undertaken to repent and rebuild. Honeysett has given the church an incredible gift in helping each church see itself as an particular, and in some ways, unique, culture. There are patterns of relationships and structures of influence that not only created it, but serve as control mechanisms over it. The title Powerful Leaders? itself becomes a somewhat ambiguous statement. Do distorted leaders distort the church or does the church distort them? Do these coercive, manipulative men own the systems that oversee or are they owned by them?
Honeysett describes healthy churches as analogous to healthy biological cells that are semi-permeable. They filter out harmful elements but are open to outside influences that promote their health. The lack of dynamic exchange between the inside and outside  leads to “fossilization”. These churches fail to change and therefore cannot grow. As Honeysett says, “willful blindness becomes genuine blindness”. Churches are frozen in time, having chosen to maintain a fictional view of themselves. He does not, however, think that things have to end up in that sorry state. They can thrive if they reject the impulse to perpetuate the cultural “pecking orders”, “repenting often, forgiving often and delighting themselves in the Lord.
That is, in effect, the bottom line. Healthy churches know the Lord. Prayer and repentance drive them. They are clear about their mission and their beliefs. They have relatively little cross-contamination. They live in the world but they are not intimidated or attracted by it. Powerful Leaders? makes a spectacularly useful contribution toward reminding churches of their priorities and the pitfalls associated with forgetting them. I highly recommend it.
How shall we sum things up? First, of course, we must recognize that leadership abuse in the church is deadly to its health. It undermines its worship and casts a pall over its legitimacy. The church is created in the image of God in the sense that it is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. We are to resemble our creator. Abusive leadership deflects attention from the God we were designed to reflect. We only see fallenness expressed in power and deceit. True pastoral abuse appears to put the lie to the church’s claim to embrace the holiness and love of God. That is a fatal failure if not corrected by genuine public repentance.
Interestingly, a study of Generation Z young adults (approximately 20-29 years of age) consistently reveals the need for institutions to demonstrate authenticity. In “What Gen Z Looks For in a Church” by Carri Gambill, the author a Gen Z young adult, notes the constant desire for authenticity, fueled I am sure by a skeptical view of institutions (like churches) and practices, that is only really affirmed by truly participating in the ordinary life of these. To her mind, that means being a participant in ministry not an audience entertained by it. Her parents were content with being consumers. Gen Z, according to her, want to really experience what is real. The point is that abusive, opaque, non-participatory power is exactly the wrong way to face the future. Obsessing with the Sunday performance and a giant list of church-based activities does not feed the need.
Protecting abusive, excessive, or haughty leadership also creates a defensiveness that makes us deaf to the prophetic warnings issued to our world-compromised churches by God. Rather, we double down on our rightness rather than rediscover the need to repent.
These two books represent depressing reading. They expose the growing ugliness in the body of Christ. That is very uncomfortable and it is very necessary. I believe they should be in every elder’s library. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
1 See R. Glenn Ball and Darrell Puls, “Frequency of narcissistic personality disorder in pastors: a preliminary study.” Nashville: Paper presented to the American Association of Christian Counselors. (26 September 2015).
Bill Nikides is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and serves as a church planting strategist with Reformed Evangelistic Fellowship.
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Review: ‘Powerful Leaders?: When Church Leadership Goes Wrong and How to Prevent It’

The heart of the book describes the “slippery slope” from the accountability, transparency, plurality and embodiment that characterizes legitimate leadership to the murky world of dysfunctional, illegitimate leadership. Honeysett describes the slide as the replacement of transparency with secrecy and concealment, the cutting off of any meaningful collegiality, leading to leadership isolation, power imbalances from “on-high” and the corruption of accountability through concealment and cover up.

Powerful Leaders?: When Church Leadership Goes Wrong and How to Prevent It. Marcus Honeysett. London: IVP, 2022.
Books about Christian leadership are commonplace. Marcus Honeysett’s Powerful Leaders? provides an instant contrast to the legion of these I have read. He summarizes the common approach that describes leadership as “influence.” The popular guide to business negotiation, Getting to “Yes” comes to mind. According to that book, the purpose of negotiation is “getting what you want.” Like so many Christian leadership treatments, the point revolves around accumulating sufficient influence to get Christian churches or parachurches to do what a leader or leaders want. In the popular understanding of leadership, skills and competence prevail.
Honeysett fires his first shot over that bow quoting Mark 9:35: “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all” (NASB). Citing Jesus’ rebuking the apostles’ ambition in James and John, Honeysett says bluntly that Christian leaders are not “Jesus’ top generals”. Rather, Christians in leadership positions are led by the Holy Spirit to create bodies of “Christ-besotted worshippers.” Leaders are servants fundamentally, under-shepherds to bring the flock to feed on God. Skills and competence lack the moral leverage to produce the kind of deep, spiritual Christ-followers that are needed.
The popular focus on influence rather than spiritual embodiment in leaders creates people who develop churches that do not reflect their creator, but rather look like their leaders. In Honeysett’s words, the wolves in sheep’s clothing we are aware of are far less dangerous than the wolves in shepherd’s clothing. False sheep do less damage than false shepherds.
The Bible’s treatment of leadership is clear but complex. Leadership, under God’s direction, can be a blessing, but the Bible has just as many examples of ungodly leaders and false shepherds as it has good ones. Leadership, therefore, can be a blessing or a curse.
The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord GOD: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them.
“Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: As I live, declares the Lord GOD, surely because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: Thus says the Lord GOD, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them (Ezekiel 34:1-10).
Regardless of the apparent risks, God desires and appoints leaders who can indeed represent his will faithfully to his people. In other words, good leaders represent and reflect God to them.
Jesus himself is described as leader and savior by Stephen (Acts 5:30-31). He is the leader who leads by serving however (LK 22: 26-27). Other leaders may be like David, a commander of his people (Isa. 55:3-4), whose flawed hearts belong to God and, in the presence of sin and personal failure, they model lives of repentance for us. Hezekiah modeled repentance and humility so that God saved Jerusalem from the Assyrians. His brilliant leadership had nothing to do with the rescue. God merely heard the prayer of a heartbroken king and rescued his people (2 Kgs 2:1-6). The Book of Judges is filled with leaders, both good and bad (but mostly bad).
The Bible also distinguishes between leaders and elders. Neither were primarily administrators. Churches today blur the clear distinctions between scribal or administrative oversight functions from the core descriptions and responsibilities of elders and leaders, but elders in particular. It seems to me that lumping the categories of leader (especially understood as influencer), elder, and administrator, we create serious risks for cross-contamination.
Honeysett notes that biblical leaders in the church today are those who nourish and equip the flock. Implicit in this is the requirement of leaders such as elders to actually know their own people well enough to encourage and equip them. Equipping itself is an active term. Those who equip are actively equipping. This level of interaction takes time and trust. If either are not present, the leadership enterprise fails. There are no substitutes for shepherds for time and trust.
The author introduces us to four features in the church that safeguard the godly integrity of leadership and protect the body from leadership misuse. These are (1) accountability, (2) plurality, (3) transparency, and (4) embodiment.
Leaders’ lives must be open books lived in the midst of the congregation (2 Tim. 3:10). Their leadership is not characterized by decisions made offsite behind closed doors in secret. In other words, leadership is fundamentally formal and it is not easy. The point Honeysett makes is that creating leadership that is primarily informal and relational tempts leaders to make expedient decisions that bypass normal channels of checks, balances, and oversight. Appropriate leadership is a difficult balance and in need of constant maintenance. It also places leaders under pressure because distance from the battlefield is harder to come by. The good news, however, is that it drives leaders into deeper relationships with Christ through prayer, genuine friendships (rather than tactical ones), and the Word. As a pastor, I know that a frequent, though unnecessary, casualty of ministry is an active and vibrant spiritual life. In order to achieve appropriate accountability, leaders need to be transparent and the only way to achieve this is by guarding and building up the heart.
Honeysett separates accountability from transparency in his list, but they logically interrelate. The difference, he explains later in his book, is seen in accountability being linked primarily to formal structures that ensure it. Visibility and transparency are virtues, but adequate means must be implemented to ensure the integrity of the exercise of leadership. Who oversees the leadership? In our case, we have a Book of Church Order that augments the Westminster Standards and, underneath that as a foundation, the Bible itself. In other words, there are three tiers of formal, directive oversight. But these are all self-reporting. In other words, leaders are responsible primarily to themselves and each other for conformity to the rules. If the inner circle of leaders is functioning well, the leaders hold each other to account.
As a Presbyterian teaching elder, plurality just makes sense. It distributes the load better. It ensures that every conflict in a church is not Bill contra mundum. In other words, every difference of opinion is not personal. It also creates a greater opportunity for wisdom through a plurality of wise counselors. That is the theory at least. Part of Honeysett’s purpose is to also describe what happens when pluralities become ineffective or even harmful. For the moment, it is important to grasp that plural leadership was intended to bless not curse. It can be a beautiful thing.
A potential complication results when the small group of leaders/elders is geographically separated from accountability to the wider sphere of leaders. Isolated churches easily develop dysfunctional social, cultural, and leadership patterns. When all you know is who you are, you become the new normal. In these cases, it is incumbent on local leadership to reach out and create wider webs of effective accountability. In other words, if you are ineffectively overseen, though, on paper, it seems that you are, go the extra mile to erect formal, visible procedures with the authorities over you. The absence of these leads to breakdowns in leadership and that means ineffective shepherding.
Embodiment means that leadership is actively on display in the church community. You can see it exercised in the midst of the people. People see decisions being made publicly. Shepherds shepherd visibly. People know exactly what kinds of things their shepherds do. As a missionary, I became acquainted with what sociologists and anthropologists term ‘power distance.” It describes the gap between leaders and followers in terms of power or influence. In a Presbyterian church, there is a difference between elders and members but not an extreme one. The elders are, after all, representatives to God from among the people themselves. Elders are representatives of the people to God and from God to their people.
The heart of the book describes the “slippery slope” from the accountability, transparency, plurality and embodiment that characterizes legitimate leadership to the murky world of dysfunctional, illegitimate leadership. Honeysett describes the slide as the replacement of transparency with secrecy and concealment, the cutting off of any meaningful collegiality, leading to leadership isolation, power imbalances from “on-high” and the corruption of accountability through concealment and cover up.
So much of this is familiar to me. I am an old man. My wife and I have pastored churches, and been pastored in many others. We have seen the good and the bad. I have trained church planters on five continents for over 20 years. In a way, I did not need too many illustrations to understand Honeysett’s argument. What makes the book special, I would add, indispensable, however, is it’s careful description of the transitions from legitimate  to illegitimate, from godly shepherding to abuse. The identification of the slippery slope is the book’s greatest value.
The slide from transparent legitimate authority to leadership characterized by personal power, insecurity and self-protection takes a number of forms. Honeysett describes “regulatory capture” for example that takes place when the leader and the men who oversee him become too closely and relationally intertwined. In this case, the leader and those holding him accountable become so close that accountability becomes meaningless. Analogously, when the leader becomes too closely aligned with the dominant culture of the church and its “priests”, honest critique becomes impossible.
The first step in the slippery slope is often the “non-transparent use of relational authority”. Honeysett quotes Chuck DeGroat’s description of “fauxnerability.” In this case, a leader calculatedly showcases vulnerability and “messiness” in order to gain sympathy with people. It is designed to increase personal influence by showing people how human and vulnerable one is, even though the calculated nature of its use demonstrates an intelligent intention to deceive. The author juxtaposes this performance with 2 Corinthians 4:2 which condemns such displays of deception. Why do it though? Why mischaracterize yourself?
It is motivated by a desire to manipulate people to get what you want. Leaders corrupt their offices and the structures of the church when they attempt to informally and non-visibly take control of the life of the church, its procedures and policies. I think Honeysett’s general point is that it does not make much difference whether that manipulation is a tendency baked into the personalities of individual leaders or it emerges as an expedient in order to be more efficient. In other words, leaders with extreme issues such as personality disorder and “normal” men who mean well, will stoop to unwise methods that result in dysfunctional leadership. It is a slippery slope. Anyone can get out of control and crash when sufficient care is not exercised.
Eventually, the systems of oversight in the church or organization shift subtly from protecting “gospel integrity” to protecting the underlying organizational culture and its leaders. It becomes an ecosystem of dysfunction and deceit. It’s participants, members and leaders alike, may not recognize what has happened to them. It becomes, in that sense, truly lost. It turns in on itself. Maintaining the system replaces shepherding God’s people. Honeysett’s work has the virtue of describing two sets of circumstances. One is an extreme example with leaders who are, in effect, predators. They can correspond to the high-profile cases that litter the news. The other example is of good people who make bad decisions that develop dysfunctional momentum as things race to the bottom. This, I believe, is far more common and far more tragic in the sense that it is so preventable.
Men become wolves who speed the decline of their ministries and their churches by looking and sounding just like godly sheep. Honeysett cites Jude of those that say good things and look good but only show their genuine selves when they are challenged or cornered. Winsomeness becomes coercion if the leaders’ control is challenged. The need to maintain control leads to even greater isolation and secrecy. Challenging the status quo becomes dangerous and an arsenal of tactics can be unleashed in order to smother dissent. Social isolation becomes a potent weapon in intimidating any potential whistleblowers. Critics become invisible to both the leaders and, by design, to everyone else. The author uses a psychological acronym to describe the approach to silencing dissent. DARVO: denying that anything is wrong, attacking the challenger, and reversing the roles of the victim with the offender are practiced to maintain control.
The author describes church cultures (tribes) as “echo chambers” who become more concerned with maintaining the social order than they are with the people that inhabit them. They become analogous to bodies whose aggressive, over-stimulated immune systems kill them rather than the disease they try to defend themselves from. The church devolves into group think that challenges critical examination or internal reformation.
The final part of the book contains a series of questions that can easily become checklists for leaders and members to diagnose the health of their churches. These are useful in facing who you are or have become. Implicit in them are also approaches that can be undertaken to repent and rebuild. Honeysett has given the church an incredible gift in helping each church see itself as a particular, and in some ways, unique, culture. There are patterns of relationships and structures of influence that not only created it but serve as control mechanisms over it. The title Powerful Leaders? itself becomes a somewhat ambiguous statement. Do distorted leaders distort the church or does the church distort them? Do these coercive, manipulative men own the systems that oversee or are they owned by them?
Honeysett describes healthy churches as analogous to healthy biological cells that are semi-permeable. They filter out harmful elements but are open to outside influences that promote their health. The lack of dynamic exchange between the inside and outside  leads to “fossilization”. These churches fail to change and therefore cannot grow. As Honeysett says, “willful blindness becomes genuine blindness.” Churches are frozen in time, having chosen to maintain a fictional view of themselves. He does not, however, think that things have to end up in that sorry state. They can thrive if they reject the impulse to perpetuate the cultural “pecking orders,” “repenting often, forgiving often and delighting themselves in the Lord.”
That is, in effect, the bottom line. Healthy churches know the Lord. Prayer and repentance drive them. They are clear about their mission and their beliefs. They have relatively little cross-contamination. They live in the world but they are not intimidated or attracted by it. Powerful Leaders make a spectacularly useful contribution toward reminding churches of their priorities and the pitfalls associated with forgetting them. I highly recommend it.
Bill Nikides is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and serves as a church planting strategist with Reformed Evangelistic Fellowship.
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What Happens When God Comes to Town

An idol is anything we desire more than God, love more than God, or fear more than God. That, all too often, is what we would see if we looked in a mirror. Times such as these are God-given opportunities to shed ourselves of the excess baggage of our sinful narcissism so that we can fix our gaze on Christ who is more beautiful than all our comprehension.

And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. (Acts 19:11-20)
Who is this God?
The story gives us leads. It takes place in the city, Ephesus, near the shores of the Aegean Sea. It is a rich, cosmopolitan, multicultural place with a large Jewish minority. Most people, however, are pagans and proud of it. People compete over their devotion. Locals bragged, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” That was only a hint of the city’s devotion. There were a host of deities that competed for popular devotion. There was a pecking order with Diana (Artemis in Greek) at the top, celebrated in a temple that dwarfed the Parthenon, with ranks of lesser gods, spirits, demons under her.
All of the sacrifice and incense can be misleading. We get the impression that these people considered the gods and the world they represented the most important things in their lives. That has everything backward. People did not worship deities or spirits, they bribed them to get happy lives in return. If the god was too strong to push around, you bribed her to get her on your side. Lesser spirits could, however, be bullied if you had the right leverage. That was what Luke was telling us. He described a community of people who wanted life to work for them.
They got experts to help them do that. We call them exorcists. If we take a closer look at this, we can see what the people thought of their gods. The gods had to be feared but they could be managed. Gods were capricious. You never knew if they were for or against you. Offerings helped get them on your side. When speaking of the gods or spirits, the point was to make them work for your good. The Greco-Roman world was all about human flourishing. Religion, in all of its forms, existed to order society. The unseen world was always treated as a reality, whether it’s observance was genuine or just a polite fiction, the point was the peace of the polis.
Acts 19 describes Paul performing miracles, to include healing, in the name of the Lord Jesus. Some exorcists, piggybacking on Jesus and Paul’s reputation and success command an evil spirit in their name to obey the exorcists’ command. It does not go well as we see. Rather than obeying the exorcists, he gives them a mauling and strips the clothing from their backs, before they run for their lives.
The performance of Paul and his connection to Jesus, now risen from the grave as we see earlier in Luke and Acts, describes the enthusiasm related to the many miracles performed in Ephesus, things that were seen in public. Thus far, all we know is that this Jesus and his servant Paul perform miracles. In other words, they are seen to do things not things normally accomplished by most of us. Paul heals people in Jesus’ name for instance. There is more, however.
If that is all we are told, we could characterize both men as healers, something the exorcists, the Sons of Sceva, claimed for themselves. But Luke gives us more to work with. Not only does Paul succeed in Jesus’ name, but the Sons of Sceva don’t. The reasons for that are easy to see. Sceva is not a name found on any of the high priests’ roles. If he is physically related to a high priest, he is misleading about his credentials.
You can fool a lot of people but you can’t fool an evil spirit who knows the Son of God the hard way, in the heavens. Rev. 12:7-11. describes the scene. The hosts of heaven fought Satan and his minions and threw the latter down to earth where they attempt to convict humans of crimes already paid for by Jesus. The evil spirit took a beating at the hands of Jesus and his army and never forgot that lesson.  When the exorcists tried to bully him in the name of Jesus and Paul, the spirit knew a fake when he heard one.
This time the evil spirit gave the beating. He reminds me of two brothers I know. Both were amazingly gifted athletes and martial artists, wrestlers, judo masters, etc. Their dad was one too. When I asked him what the difference was between them, he noted greater power in one and greater speed and cunning in the other. Either could beat us. That is the point. Evil can always beat us if we enter the ring alone.
The point we cannot afford to miss is that fakes are fakes. They are as fulfilling as a bowl of plastic fruit. They may be full of themselves but they are empty of life. There is no life-giving power in them. Their bag of tricks has a bottom. Their authority is counterfeit. When they see Jesus face to face at the final judgment, he will do exactly what the evil spirit did. Who are you? I have never known you? This is my heavenly home, and you do not belong here.
If we face evil in Christ we are not alone. We are greater than any army. Satan cannot grapple with us without taking a beating at the hands of Christ who fills us.
Luke in Acts goes on to say, that the drubbing of the frauds, following closely on the heels of the miracles and genuine healings combined to induce fear and faith. People who meet Christ for real are forever changed. His Spirit breathes into them. Christ himself fills them. How does anyone live with business as usual when that happens? We see two great realities, facts greater than any other. We see ourselves as we really are and we see Christ in all of his majesty as he really is.
We often attempt to relativize “fear” as reverence or awe, but I think this is a wasted effort on our part. “Fear” as it is described is visceral more than it is intellectual. It is the appropriate response of any created being made in God’s own image when he or she runs straight into God. It is more than shocking. When I was a kid, I got into fights all of the time. I simply counted my opponents and sized up the situation. Then I jumped into battle. When we turn the corner and run into God with our eyes open, we experience fear at the most basic of levels. We know instantly that it is no contest. Our fakery is exposed and we get stripped of all of our sins and our virtues.
That leads to a second thing. We, like the Ephesians, must repent of ourselves, repent of our sinful dispositions, repent of anything that gets in the way of our running with Christ. I started reading a little gem written by R.C Sproul, Saved for What? He wisely reminded people who identify with Christ, not only what they get saved to, a very popular sermon topic, but also what they are saved from. He reminded readers of an Old Testament passage not often quoted by churches that like to promote healthy self-acceptance, a flourishing life in the here and now. It was pretty jarring. Here it is:
The great day of the LORD is near,near and hastening fast;the sound of the day of the LORD is bitter;the mighty man cries aloud there.A day of wrath is that day,a day of distress and anguish,a day of ruin and devastation,a day of darkness and gloom, ‘a day of clouds and thick darkness,a day of trumpet blast and battle cryagainst the fortified citiesand against the lofty battlements.I will bring distress on mankind,so that they shall walk like the blind,because they have sinned against the LORD;their blood shall be poured out like dust,and their flesh like dung.Neither their silver nor their goldshall be able to deliver themon the day of the wrath of the LORD.In the fire of his jealousy, ‘all the earth shall be consumed;for a full and sudden endhe will make of all the inhabitants of the earth. (Zeph. 1:14-18)
We are saved, it is true, from the grip of Satan, but more importantly, we are saved from the wrath of a righteous God. The life in Christ is not a kind of spiritual amnesia. When we live in union with Christ, we become increasingly sensitive to the sin that led to the cross. We recognize our own sin, begin to loath it. It burdens us. We are desperate to divest ourselves of it. This is the life of repentance. It is not pessimism. It is not self-flagellation. Repentance is a gift. It reminds us that God really saved us from our sin and continually works in us to unearth the sins we keep buried. These, of course, torment us, but the grace of a righteous God who loves us by not tolerating our sin produces transformed life that bathes us in joy.   When we lose sight of this, the grace of a holy God who continuously shows us our sin to cleanse us of it, salvation becomes nothing more than human flourishing. Some people look at donuts and others see the holes. I am the latter. I notice that, year by year, repentance disappears from our pulpits.
Grace changes meaning from human flourishing that uses God as a means to human happiness as an end to lives devoted to God the source and end of our happiness. So much preaching reduces Christ to being the means to another end, our happiness. What if we already have what we want? What if we are content? When COVID struck, we rediscovered misery, but we felt no connection between our unhappiness and any deficiency in our relationships to God. Lest there be any misunderstanding, I am not suggesting a straight-line connection between any particular, personal sins and a global pandemic. I am saying, however, that few if any of us saw the onset of the disease as an opportunity to reflect on the state of our relationship to Christ. How could we? We were already obsessing about our own health, the danger posed by others, the impingement of our freedom, etc.
Did we consider the larger issues? We live in the grip of a therapeutic age and evangelical churches too often resemble health spas rather than surgeries for sin-sick patients. We are self-satisfied. We are proud. We are content that we are loved without giving much thought to our sinful self-centeredness. COVID did not bring out our sacrificial love. A lot of churches became battlegrounds. Many shrank. Now that we seem past the worst of it, we rush to put it behind us. We are just fine. We work so very hard to be cheerful. The order of the day is ““be upbeat”. We double down on what we were before we closed down and hibernated.
Were we really that ok? Did we stop needing a savior? Sproul compares our complacency over our sins to someone who doesn’t need a fireman because his house isn’t on fire. We no longer fear God, neither himself or his judgment. We fear dying and the pain on the way down, but that is as far as it goes. We resent the reminder that we even need mercy. Sproul illustrates our problem by comparing false and true Old Testament prophets. False prophets stuck with a message of happiness and joy. True prophets were a pain in the neck. They had the unwelcome habit of proclaiming the day of the Lord as judgment. Why? Because they did not know grace and the one who brings it? No. They knew it better than most of us. The difference between them and us is that they kept God, in his fullness, in view. We don’t.
We want grace, all the time. We don’t want repentance and the holiness it produces. Impenitence gets papered over as we rush to acceptance. But God, the God of all holy love is not in it. Bread and circuses are closer to our hearts. We need to rediscover the fear of God that cones with the life of God. Every now and then, we conservative Calvinists mention fear, but it often dies Flew’s “death of a thousand qualifications”. We describe the fear of God as “reverence” or “respect”. Not even close! Isaiah knew what the fear of the Lord looked and felt like.
And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isa 6:5)
Sproul comments on this: “It seems that every person who encounters the living God in Scripture suddenly loses his self-composure and experiences a severe identity crisis.” How can anyone ever go back to business as usual when they experience the presence of God? The only way we manage it is by discounting the seriousness of our sin. We push it out of view, a relic of the past.
When we put our faith in Jesus, God cloaks us with the garments of Jesus, and the garments of Christ’s righteousness are never, ever the target of God’s wrath. But we never put the cart before the horse. When we do, we underestimate our sin and we take God so lightly. If we stand for anything, we stand for cheap dollar store grace.
But it seems to have made no impact on them whatsoever. It’s exactly, Jesus said, what Isaiah foretold: “You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; for the heart of this people has become dull” (Matt. 13:14–15; see also Isa. 6:9–10). (Thad Barnum)
We fear COVID or Russia more than God.
We worship nothing more than our health and dread death.
An idol is anything we desire more than God, love more than God, or fear more than God. That, all too often, is what we would see if we looked in a mirror. Times such as these are God-given opportunities to shed ourselves of the excess baggage of our sinful narcissism so that we can fix our gaze on Christ who is more beautiful than all our comprehension.
Bill Nikides is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and serves as a church planting strategist with Reformed Evangelistic Fellowship.
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