Choosing Charisma Over Character
A Personal Story
An awful story has unfolded in the denomination I was part of when we were in New York. (I will avoid names for obvious reasons). A local church in Minnesota was pastored by two individuals who were also national leaders. Their son, who was on the church’s staff as a youth pastor, assaulted several young women in their church, and when these crimes were reported to the church’s senior leadership, Mom and Dad, they protected their son and blamed the victims.
The son, who is currently in prison, along with his parents, the local church and the denomination are all dealing with a civil suit.
I have a lot of emotions around this story. Most importantly, I am angry and feel horrible for what these young women had to endure. I hope they receive justice. I pastored in that denomination for 15 years, and for the first 10, you would have been hard pressed to find a bigger cheerleader for it. But, as in any relationship, the longer you are part of something, the more blemishes you begin to notice.
Our Connection to this Story
This story hits close to home because the dad in question was a major player in our family being told we were no longer welcome within the denomination when we moved to Ireland.
According to the reporting, it was shortly after our experience that reports began to be raised by others concerning his abusive leadership style. Those reports were essentially waved off and ignored.
What happened next, and how our story was part of a much bigger pattern, is something I haven’t shared publicly before.
When one of my friends back in the States tried to speak with this leader on our behalf, he reported that “he was very defensive”, despite acknowledging, “that nearly every single US to Europe church plant had failed” and that the system he oversaw “was dysfunctional and that you guys were just the latest illustration of that”.
We moved on. It was hard. Especially as we watched our teenage kids have to leave the youth group where they made their first friends in Ireland. That was one of the last church experiences for each of them.
Just When I Thought I Was Out, They Pull Me Back In
In 2022, I was in the States and heard from a couple of friends that an ‘anonymous’ story about me was being circulated at leadership gatherings by someone I had worked with closely. It was a misrepresentation of our Ireland story.
I wrote to the National Director to share my concerns, report that the story was untrue and request that it no longer be shared.
One friend reported that it was the national director who personally asked for the story to be shared again.
In our correspondence, I explained my history with the person telling the story, as well as the story of how we were forced out in Ireland.
He apologised that what my friends told me, “opened old wounds.”
He asked who told me, and wanted to know if they spoke to the person telling the story first.
He told me it seems that I am “still holding offense” based on what happened.
A fascinating part of this whole process is how many times blame was placed on us, and shame was used to keep us quiet and make us go away quietly.
He suggested I speak with the person mentioned at the start of this post and another leader who had played a role in our departure.
Finally, without permission, he forwarded my email to the person who had been telling the story.
That was when our correspondence ended.
Walking Away
It is bizarre to watch something like the story from Minnesota unfold. To be grieved, but not shocked, because you’ve experienced this person previously. And they are, at their core, who they are.
One final part of the story. Although it did not relate to the current issue in Minnesota, in 2023, Guideposts interviewed me regarding my experience.
After giving my report, I was contacted by — wait for it — the person who had been telling the false story about me (for simplicity, I’ll refer to him below as the storyteller).
Oh. It gets better.
His offer was that I send my allegations in writing so they could be forwarded to the guy from Minnesota.
I did not respond.
Although another national leader has followed up with a “form letter” email, I have not corresponded further.
Ironically, seeing how I was treated in this most recent process was illuminating and quite healing.
Choosing Gifting Over Character
One of the facets of that story that stands out to me is how gifted many of the people in this story were (are). The main couple became leaders at a national level because they were extremely gifted and charismatic. They were great speakers, they were innovative, and multiple pastors within their denomination looked up to them.
So when concerns about the way they led were reported, they were dismissed.
It is human nature to give the benefit of the doubt to our friends, as well as those we like who we perceive are ‘doing important work for the kingdom.” Recent church history, however, is littered with examples of abusive leaders being protected and their victims being cast out.
And as happens over and over, not just in this church, when a person’s platform grows, the capacity of others to ignore and excuse abusive and inappropriate behaviour does as well, which gives them access to harm more people.
I nearly wrote vulnerable people in the paragraph rather than more people. Which is true. But it isn’t simply vulnerable people.
If you are an inconvenience to them, they are willing to run you over.
A Feature, Not A Bug
Year after year, new stories emerge about a pastor or church leader, whether in a large church or a small one, using their role as a platform to cause harm to those they are supposed to shepherd.
One of my fundamental beliefs about abusive leadership is that it is “a feature, not a bug,” of most church structures.
If you are not familiar with the phrase above, it refers to software. A bug is there accidentally, and a feature is intentionally built into the design.
Abuse is not the goal. But it is often a natural outcome of our church leadership models.
I know that’s a bold statement, but I believe that when you place people within hierarchical structures and they see themselves as having authority over others, you are not only planning for problems, but you are also violating a clear command of Jesus (Luke 22).
A part of this has to do with hierarchical leadership models, a topic that will appear here with some regularity. (As it did last week).
However, it also has to do with the church planting model that has been popular over the past 30 + years, and not simply in the denomination that I was part of.
Finding A Church Planter
I planted a church in Ithaca, NY, in 1999. While I was there, I served as the church planting coordinator for Upstate New York. I also coached church planters. So, I am not critiquing this from the outside; I was part of the system.
There is a key trait a church planter needs to possess to get on the church planting track.
Everything.
Well, mostly everything.
They need to be able to teach and speak well in front of a crowd.
They need to be able to gather people.
They need to be able to lead.
They need to be able to raise money.
They need to be able to administrate.
You get the idea.
Now, there were two things a church planter in our system were told to avoid.
1) Write sermons. The head of church planting when I was starting out advised people to find someone whose sermons they liked and steal their stuff, because you won’t have time to be writing sermons at the beginning. (I could never bring myself to do this, which is maybe why our church never got all that large :)
2) Counselling. A phrase you would hear over and over is that if you are pastoring a church, “Counselling will eat your lunch.” In other words, do not start doing pastoral counselling.
Why This Is A Problem
The thing about gifted charismatic people is that they are gifted and charismatic. And people notice.
Put that person who checks all of the boxes above up on a stage every week, and surround them with people who are excited about their new church and see this person as the guy (it is usually a guy) who brought it into being, and all types of unhealthy social dynamics start to happen.
Those in the church will begin to say things like “This is the best church I’ve ever been to!” “Your sermons are so great!” And often when they invite their friends to come to their church, the pastor is the main selling point.
The problem for pastors is that very often, they start to believe it.
At this point, even if you have someone humble and who has good character, it is challenging to maintain it.
In 1 Samuel, the prophet mentions that King Saul was once small in his own eyes. But he had gotten to a place where he could do whatever he chose, even disobeying a direct command from the Lord and call it obedience. He was the divinely ordained king, and whatever he did was divinely ordained.
So now everything he does is justifiable.
And how dare you question God’s anointed!
Bad Systems
There is an oft-quoted leadership axiom: “The systems you currently have in place are perfectly designed to give you the results you are seeing.”
The hierarchical leadership structures of our churches and denominations reward charismatic, driven, aggressive and defensive leaders because they tend to get things done.
When I first began attending a church in this denomination regularly. I was leading a campus ministry at Cornell University and was invited to consider becoming a church planter.
That kicked off a two-year process where I was coached to plant a church. It also allowed them to get to know me.
At the exact same time, a person I had known for years also joined this denomination. He was charismatic and highly gifted. He had been a leader in our previous denomination, but was removed from his role without a public explanation.
He didn’t get put into a two-year process. He was fast-tracked (by the storyteller), and his existing ministry was adopted into the movement.
As you’d expect, within two years, the fast-tracked leader and his church were quietly removed from the denomination due to an assortment of serious abuses.
What Is Missing?
While the list of church planting traits is extensive, one thing that is not on the list: Character.
It simply was not screened for.
(Although in the early 2010s, the denomination began to check police records and do more extensive psychological testing because of some messy stories.)
When I was early in my church planting journey, the denominational leader at the time produced a document describing the differences between successful and unsuccessful church plants (I found a copy here).
This letter was in a report by the Leadership Network shortly after. (You can read that here).
Both reports examined why some church plants succeeded and others failed.
Here is one finding:
The pastors that struggle the most are more pastoral than hard-charging
and lack strong leadership skills.
To be fair, getting a church plant off the ground does require a level of willingness to plough ahead despite obstacles.
However, when this message is communicated over and over throughout your movement, you will end up with a particular type of leader.
The main reason I wanted to cite the report, however, is because between the two of them, the word Character appears one time.
In the denominational report, it notes that 45% of church planters deal with loneliness and depression, but ‘resilience in their character’ is one of the things that helps them deal with it.
That’s it.
Character is never mentioned beyond that.
When you stress being “hard charging”, discourage being “pastoral”,
and ignore character, you end up with the type of leaders I wrote about above.
Wrapping It Up
This has already gotten much longer than I imagined when I started. I will end it here. As you can probably guess, this is a topic we’ll be circling back to often.
If this raises questions or reminds you of your own experience, please feel free to comment.
Until next time.
Thanks for reading!