Weak Leadership Isn’t Just Weak, it’s Dangerous
Here’s the thing about narcissists and weak leadership: they assume upon your silence. And that simply makes you complicit in the problem. A passive compliance to be sure. But the result is just the same. Weak leaders save their own skins in the end – at least for a time – and glibly allow other people to be churned up by the narcissist or toxic leader. That’s ultimately what makes them dangerous. People’s lives get wrecked. People’s spiritual lives get shipwrecked. And some people’s lives get ended, all because of weak leadership. And we see it time and time again in churches.
Weak Leadership
Time and time again we see bad leadership decisions made by weak leaders. And the church – and parachurch organisations attached to the church -, are sadly some of the worst offenders.
And the worst repeat offenders. Not simply the same leaders in the same places making the same mistakes. But other leaders in other organiations, knowing all of this, making those mistakes as well. It’s as if such weak leaders have never read books such as Chuck de Groat’s “When Narcissism Comes to Church“, or “Something’s Not Right” by Wade Mullen, or “A Church Called Tov” by Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer. Maybe they haven’t. That would be too “leadershippy” of them.
As I wrote about during my expose of The Crowded House abuses by Steve Timmis:
A national review is a good place to start. But if all it does is sweep the house clean, pare it down to order, then it will have failed. That’s all a legalistic process can do. It will simply prep the house for even greater problems. Do the leaders have the stomach to go the really dark, honest, self revealing places that they have learned to avoid over the past two decades? That will take a seismic shift in their collective will.
Narcissistic Systems
And that’s the problem with a narcissistic leader. He (and it usually though not exclusively is a he, especially in churches), creates and sustains a narcissistic system. That’s what empowers him. And often this involves some sort family system dynamic to make up for some sort of lack of his own in the past.
You know the way that plays out: “Hey we’re all in this together!” Until of course, you’re not, and you’re cut, and the water closes over you like the Titanic slipping under the icy Atlantic waters. Maybe you’ll get the odd awkward phone call, but it’s clear that no one wants to talk about the one thing that you want to address with them. It’s as if it never happened. It’s as if you never happened. You don’t matter. That’s what makes it so painful.
As my wife observes, it’s the secondary trauma of not being believed, or having the issue diminished that is sometimes even more painful than the initial wound. As she says “Imagine a mother hearing her son say that her husband is abusing him, and the mother not believing her son.” That secondary trauma embeds the primary trauma to an even deeper level.
Granted, not everyone in such toxic systems is a narcissist, but these people only stay within that system long-term, because they play a part in feeding the narcissistic dynamic. Oh they may do it unwittingly, but let’s face it, we don’t know the true self within ourself, lurking below with all of its foibles. This systemic problem gives rise to the enablers, the deniers, the insecure, and those who think that by staying and doing a great job they are something ameliorating, rather than exacerbating and prolonging the problem.
And that’s where weak leadership comes into the mix. If the narcissist is leader in all but name, and often they are, they will gather a firewall of respectability around them, by forming a facade, a leadership facade made up of weak leaders who will bend to their will. It’s the psychological and spiritual equivalent of money laundering. “Legit in five years.” All of that stuff.
Their primary concern is that if someone should come onto the scene and run a white glove over the furniture surface that there will be no tell-tale grubbiness on show. “Hey, I’m accountable to my board, nothing to see here!” and all that nonsense.
So the problem is not the narcissist per se, the problem is the weak leadership that refuses to deal with the problem . Which is why weak leadership makes for dangerous leadership. Why dangerous? Surely those weak leaders under the thrall of a narcissist are just as much victims that churn out of the mince-meat maker?
Well only partly. Here’s how they are a danger:
A Danger to the Institution
How does it go? “Deep painful change or slow painful death.” You don’t get to choose whether you have pain or not, merely the type of pain you are willing to accept.
And in my recent experience, weak leaders will kick the can of pain down the road for as long as possible before they ever gird their loins, take a deep breath and take some immediate and necessary pain.
And why is it necessary? Slow painful death of course.
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Will Feminists Win the Pulpit?
In days to come, Southern Baptists will have a decision to make. Will Scripture be sufficient to determine how Christ’s church should function, or will feminists win the pulpit and destroy what’s left of their churches?
As culture wages war against God’s design of a man and woman (males and females), the casualties from this battle are piling up. Any observation of the latest headlines exposes the damage this confusion brings. New storylines appear every day, from transwomen (biological men) destroying women’s sports to a confirmed Supreme Court Justice pretending she could not define her gender, which was why she was nominated for the position.
Once again, with a brand new week, we witnessed the successful impact of feminism on full display in two of the most unlikely places. While both sources were seemingly unpredictable and unrelated, a closer look revealed the opposite was true.
What Is a Woman?
Recently, audiences experienced the DailyWire movie, “What is a Woman?” While critics ignored the film, it received high praise from the massive audience who watched the documentary. If you haven’t watched the movie, you should. The movie provides a unique glimpse into the world of gender theorists, transgender surgeons, and gender identity experts, as Matt Walsh (the documentary’s focus) asks the question, “What is a woman?”
With this one simple question, viewers witness the verbal gymnastics, obfuscations, and outright cosmic interruptions in the vortex of reality, which initially serves as the movie’s charm. However, the seriousness of this dangerous ideology is on display toward the movie’s end as viewers learn about the long-term impact of puberty blockers and double mastectomies on girls as young as 15.
For the feminist proponents of transgender identities, the tactics required to hold such views are simple:First, they ignore the meaning of words. In this instance, this is accomplished by decoupling the word gender from sex. I will address this in greater length in an upcoming blog article.
Next, they redefine the meaning of the word(s) they ignored. For example, feminists will redefine gender as a social construct so that they can abandon all of the traditional feminine roles attached.
Then, they declare autonomy, apart from the God who created them. The declaration of autonomy allows them to determine what they will be.
Finally, they require the world to accept their position as truth. Any opposition to their view will be shamed through name-calling (bigot, sexist, transphobe) or legal action.What Is a Pastor?
In the next unlikely place, the Southern Baptist Convention demonstrated feminism’s slow creep through the church doors and into the pulpits of the largest evangelical convention in the world.
In May 2021, after ordaining three women as pastors, Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, came under fire as images from the ordination service appeared on social media. By June 2021, during the annual Southern Baptist Convention, calls to disfellowship Saddleback Church had reached the convention floor. The Credentials Committee, which reviews such requests, was set to respond during the 2022 convention in June.
In addition to three women pastors, Rick Warren has selected a husband and wife pastoral team as his successor at Saddleback Church. The growing concern is that Saddleback is not the only Southern Baptist Church engaged in this practice. Internal reports suggest that a number of churches have women with the title of pastor or co-pastor alongside their husbands in leadership. Furthermore, studies suggest that many Southern Baptists would welcome a woman pastor.
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When Evil Is Called Good
Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Tuesday, March 8, 2022
There is a clear push to grant LGBTQ+ ideology a favored legal and cultural status that enforces it without compromise. It also labels any and all dissent as morally evil. You don’t have to be an Old Testament prophet to see where this is all heading, or at least where those in power hope it is heading.Last week, three news stories threw into sharp relief the ambitions of the sexual revolutionaries who govern the United States. First, there was the predictable outrage from the usual elites concerning Florida’s Parental Right in Education Bill, which would significantly restrict the teaching of LGBTQ+ ideology to schoolchildren. Second, it emerged that Washington State has a policy preventing teachers from revealing a child’s gender transition to parents. And third, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki condemned a directive from Texas governor Greg Abbott that calls on state agencies to protect Texas minors by investigating cases of children receiving “abusive gender-transitioning procedures.”
Each story reveals a particular aspect of the current sexual revolution. The criticism of Florida shows just how deeply the progressive elites have imbibed the notion of expressive individualism. Actress Kerry Washington condemned the Florida law, declaring that “Children deserve to be who they want to be. To be their true selves.” That such a statement makes sense to her and presumably to many of her 5.5 million Twitter followers testifies to how the notion of authenticity, tied to a sexualized notion of childhood, is now unquestioned orthodoxy in our culture.
Washington State’s policy is a reminder of how deeply government agencies have bought into trans ideology, and how they are using it to drive a wedge between parents and children. By the state’s own philosophy, the child is the gender he or she claims to be. So the state holds that the child defines who he truly is, but that the child’s parents have no right to know. That is disturbing in the extreme.
As to the Biden administration’s attitude toward the Texas directive, the president and his entourage seem to believe it is inappropriate, and indeed morally disgusting, to investigate institutions involved in gender transition to see if they conform to current Texas law. Psaki said that Abbott’s guidance was “designed to target and attack the kids who need support the most.” Our administration believes that loving and caring for trans kids apparently means enabling them to do irreparable damage to their bodies at an age when they have no idea what the consequences will be later in life. The lobbyists have so perverted the narrative, and the current administration has so enabled that perversion, that yes, evil is called good and good is called evil.
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Will You Not Grieve Over This
Are you, as a Christian, complacent, laid back, and couldn’t care less about what is happening in both the world and the church? If so, you may well need to repent and ask God to share his broken heart with you. We should be grieving heavily over all that we find happening, especially in these increasingly dark days. Woe to us if we do not.
God’s people are meant to image God. We cannot resemble him in terms of things like omnipotence and omniscience, but we can and should resemble him in moral and spiritual ways. As we grow closer to God, his mind should be our mind, and his heart should be our heart.
That is, we should rejoice in what he rejoices in. We should love what he loves. We should hate what he hates. And we should grieve over what he grieves over. The things that concern God should concern us. That is one test to see if we are growing in grace and becoming more Christlike.
Thus if God hates certain things, we should hate them too. That does not at all sound like something most folks today – including most Christians – would ever countenance however. Such talk is totally foreign to them. ‘Christians hate? No way.’ ‘God hates? No way at all!’
But both are fully biblical. There are plenty of biblical passages to support both. But I speak to this matter in much more detail here: billmuehlenberg.com/2016/11/23/divine-love-hate-part-one/
And here: billmuehlenberg.com/2020/09/12/yes-we-should-hate-evil/
But in this article I want to look at another way in which we are to imitate, to mirror, God. God grieves over sin and evil and wickedness – and so should we. That God grieves is clearly taught in the Bible. Let me mention just a few passages here.
Way back in the early chapters of Genesis we read about how grieved God was over wayward and rebellious mankind: “The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain” (Genesis 6:6). Wow.
And God can be grieved over those he has chosen to use: “Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel: ‘I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions’.” Samuel was troubled, and he cried out to the LORD all that night” (1 Samuel 15:10-11).
The Spirit of God can be grieved: “In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. Yet they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. So he turned and became their enemy and he himself fought against them” (Isaiah 63:9-10). And Paul quotes that passage in Ephesians 4:30: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”
Jesus also was grieved by various things. In Mark 3:5 we read this: “And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.”
God’s people also grieve over the things that God grieves over. Just the other day I again read about this in Nehemiah. Consider what is found in Neh. 2:1-3.
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