We are hearing more and more about pastors who are abusive, not physically or sexually, but in terms of spiritual abuse and abuse of authority. These are toxic pastors who create a toxic church environment and leave spiritual casualties in their wake.
Many of the stories that we hear are from large, megachurches. That does not mean that there are no toxic small church pastors but there is some correlation between toxic pastors and fast growing churches.
Here is the thing about toxic pastors, they don’t come across as toxic right away. If they did, they would never get hired. Rather, they seem to have the qualities desired to quickly grow a church.
These qualities include putting the vision first, even over the needs of individual people. It is also about being confident in one’s understanding of the vision and not getting distracted by other voices. They are willing to make the tough choices, even if that means that some people get hurt.
These are the same qualities that help any organization or business grow and they work for pastors as well. There are church leadership experts who remind us that to grow a church, we need to move from the shepherding model to the entrepreneurial model of pastoral leadership.
These principles work and they will help grow a church, at least in size. But there is a danger to it.
When a pastor is very successful in growing a church, and when hurting people has been one of the acceptable costs to that growth, this can lead very easily to becoming a toxic church. The success itself is intoxicating and people become tools with which to further that success.
This sounds like I am criticizing large and successful churches. I am not. There are some very healthy pastors of some very healthy and large congregations.
I am only saying that in the quest to quickly grow a church, there can be choices made that may fit best with someone we might describe as a toxic pastor. Pastors of churches of all sizes need to continue to check on our motives and our means by which we lead our congregations.
