Is My Pastor a Bully?
00:00:00.000 | Several dozen questions have come in over the months on the abuse of pastoral
00:00:08.400 | authority. Matthias is one such listener who wrote in to ask us this, "Pastor John,
00:00:12.960 | how do I know if my pastor is a spiritual bully? What does this look like?"
00:00:18.560 | This is an extremely delicate subject, because just to talk about it can
00:00:26.400 | signify in some settings on the one hand an over sensitivity to healthy pastoral
00:00:34.360 | authority that is not bullying at all, but someone might accuse a pastor
00:00:40.560 | wrongly of bullying just because they don't like his tone of voice or he seems
00:00:46.000 | to be a little bit more firm than they grew up experiencing by their dad. On the
00:00:54.120 | other hand, there are bad shepherds. The Bible makes it clear that there are. Our
00:01:01.080 | experience today makes it clear that there are. There are bad, abusive shepherds
00:01:06.360 | who don't love the flock. We know this from prophets in the Old Testament.
00:01:12.600 | We know it from abuses in the New Testament. They abuse their position, use
00:01:17.320 | it for an ego trip or the need for control or even more sinister and sick
00:01:23.280 | harm done to others. So the question is very, very important, and we can fall off
00:01:32.360 | the horse of truth on either side of minimizing it or maximizing it when it's
00:01:39.040 | not really there. So I think the best approach is to ask, "Where does the Bible
00:01:45.360 | have an equivalent to bullying? What's the biblical?" I mean, the word bullying
00:01:49.440 | doesn't occur in the Bible, but the reality is there. The word is all over
00:01:54.840 | the place in the New Testament, and it might be helpful just to point out a few
00:02:00.520 | things that bullying is not, and see where we go from there. It's not the
00:02:09.120 | rightful use of authority that sometimes today we call leadership. There's no such
00:02:16.080 | thing as leadership that doesn't lead or ruling that doesn't rule or governing
00:02:21.640 | that doesn't govern. There really is governing in the church. So 1st Timothy
00:02:26.720 | 517, "Let the leaders who rule or govern well be considered worthy of double
00:02:31.320 | honor," or 1 Thessalonians 512, "Respect those in the Lord who labor and are over
00:02:38.880 | you in the Lord and who admonish you," or Titus 215, "Declare these things, exhort
00:02:45.760 | and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you." So there's a place for
00:02:50.920 | strong leadership, even rebukes. People don't generally like to be rebuked.
00:02:56.960 | Titus 113, "Therefore rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith," or
00:03:02.800 | 1 Timothy 520, "For those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all
00:03:07.560 | so that the rest may stand in fear." So the first thing to say is that we need a
00:03:14.840 | biblical, robust view of authority and leadership and even forceful words at
00:03:21.920 | times, lest we accuse a pastor of bullying when the problem may be that we
00:03:27.520 | didn't grow up in a family with any firmness in discipline and therefore
00:03:31.400 | we're hypersensitive to any tone of voice that's different than our mother's
00:03:35.040 | soft exhortations. But let's do the opposite. Now let's turn to
00:03:41.160 | passages that describe the kinds of things that might be involved in
00:03:46.760 | bullying and how a pastor should not have them. So a pastor seeks to use his
00:03:55.640 | authority to build up, not tear down. 2 Corinthians 10:8, "Even if I boast a
00:04:01.480 | little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave me for building you up and
00:04:06.200 | not for tearing you down." Is authority in the church being used for tearing
00:04:12.080 | people down, belittling people, or is it clearly in the hands of love that is
00:04:18.880 | building the people up? One of the reasons you have to rebuke one person in
00:04:23.560 | the church is because they're hurting the sheep, they're hurting other people, and
00:04:26.680 | out of love and the up-building of the other people you may have to get tough
00:04:30.840 | with a sheep herder or destroyer or a wolf in sheep's clothing. He's patient
00:04:37.920 | and kind. He doesn't have a short fuse. 1 Thessalonians 5:14, "We urge you,
00:04:44.280 | brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient
00:04:49.960 | with them all." Is the pastor a temper problem or is he patient with all? He's
00:04:58.000 | not quarrelsome, but gentle, a good teacher. That is, he explains things to
00:05:04.480 | win people over. He doesn't just push his ideas through because there is ideas. He
00:05:09.240 | explains and tries to win people over. So 2 Timothy 2:24, "The Lord's servant
00:05:15.160 | must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently
00:05:21.000 | enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness." This is the opposite of
00:05:25.960 | bullying, right? God may perhaps grant them repentance, so he knows God does
00:05:31.000 | repentance producing. He doesn't do it, he can't make it happen by his
00:05:34.440 | forcefulness. "That they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the
00:05:39.440 | devil, having been captured by him to do his will." So the great work of
00:05:43.880 | deliverance in the church is done by not being quarrelsome, being kind, teaching,
00:05:48.920 | patient, endurance, gentleness in all things. He has a joyful willingness to
00:05:57.040 | lead by example without domineering. 1 Peter 5, "Shepherd the flock of God that
00:06:03.480 | is among you, exercising oversight, but not under compulsion, but willingly as
00:06:10.320 | God would have you, not for shameful gain." Does this pastor love money and is he
00:06:16.960 | abusing people as he lines his pockets? But eagerly, is he eager? Does he love his
00:06:22.360 | work in a humble, God-exalting way? Not—here's probably the closest thing
00:06:28.240 | to bullying, verse 3, 1 Peter 5—not domineering over those in your charge, but
00:06:35.800 | being examples to the flock. Does the pastor get down and live alongside his
00:06:42.560 | people, giving examples to them, or is he always pompously pronouncing with a
00:06:47.200 | domineering sense of, "I'm the big shot in this church and you guys ought to toe
00:06:51.480 | the line"? That's bullying and that's the opposite of what God calls his
00:06:56.240 | shepherds to be. He has an eagerness to heal and rescue and seek the straying.
00:07:02.640 | This is one of the most indicting texts in Ezekiel 34, 4, where it says to the
00:07:08.380 | shepherds, "You have the weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not
00:07:13.400 | healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back,
00:07:17.880 | the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them."
00:07:23.680 | So there's a perfect description of what bullying would—loveless bullying,
00:07:29.760 | uncaring bullying—would look like. The pastor has a desire to produce joy in
00:07:36.400 | the church by rejoicing with the church. 2nd Corinthians 124, "Not that we lorded
00:07:41.920 | over your faith, we're workers with you for your joy." There's the beautiful
00:07:47.640 | picture. He comes alongside his people. His whole goal is a happy church, happy
00:07:52.620 | in God, and he models that happiness and he gets alongside his people in
00:07:58.600 | happiness. He takes no pleasure in loading people down and watching them
00:08:04.880 | struggle. He wants to give necessary loads. There is a burden to be borne, but
00:08:10.920 | my yoke is easy and my burden is light, because the pastor's giving a
00:08:16.240 | burden-lifting gospel with every load he puts on the people for obedience. He
00:08:20.880 | gives burden-lifting help with the promises of God. The opposite of that is
00:08:26.080 | Matthew 23, 4. "They tie"—he's talking about the Pharisees and the lawyers here—
00:08:31.000 | "they tie heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they
00:08:37.960 | themselves are not willing to move them with a finger." That's a perfect
00:08:43.400 | description of one who uses his preaching or his teaching to bully his
00:08:48.200 | people by laying burdens on them, but there's no gospel-lifting. There's no
00:08:52.760 | joy-giving promises to help them live out with success the burdens he's putting
00:08:58.720 | on them. And he is, finally, self-controlled, not violent, supreme love
00:09:05.120 | for Christ from 1 Timothy 3, "Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, a
00:09:11.280 | husband of one wife sober, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,
00:09:17.520 | not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money." So in
00:09:26.880 | a word, my answer is to how do I know if my pastor is a spiritual bully? Go to the
00:09:33.000 | Bible, especially the New Testament, use all of it to form a well-rounded picture
00:09:38.280 | of what biblical leadership and biblical shepherding is, and then measure your
00:09:43.000 | pastor by that. Every pastor has strengths and weaknesses. Be careful that
00:09:49.400 | you don't accuse him of bullying when there may be an aspect of his ministry
00:09:54.120 | where he's sincerely growing and improving, and always be aware of your
00:09:59.920 | own fallibility of possibly forcing a view of leadership that fits your
00:10:06.160 | preferences rather than fitting the Bible. But I'll end with this. If you
00:10:11.200 | see a pattern of serious shortcomings along the lines that we've just developed,
00:10:16.240 | seek him out first. Share your concerns. His reaction to you will tell you a lot.
00:10:23.040 | Thank you, Pastor John. And to turn the tables, we recorded an episode on the
00:10:27.400 | Congregations' Responsibility to Godly Leaders. That was episode number 201,
00:10:31.800 | titled "How Do I Obey and Submit to My Leaders?" Find this episode and almost 500
00:10:36.440 | others in the podcast archive, maybe most easily found in the free Ask Pastor John
00:10:39.920 | app for Apple and Android devices. And if you don't have the app, you can also find
00:10:44.360 | previous episodes at DesiringGod.org. For now at least, you go to the home
00:10:48.520 | page, click on "More" at the top of the page, click on "Interviews," click on "By Series,"
00:10:53.360 | and click on "Ask Pastor John." So go to the home page at DesiringGod.org, click on
00:10:58.640 | "More," click on "Interviews," click on "By Series," and click on "Ask Pastor John." If
00:11:03.720 | you get lost, you will find something edifying at least. We're working to make
00:11:07.800 | the episodes easier to find on the website, and tomorrow we close out the
00:11:11.360 | week with a doozy. Looking at religious violence in the Middle East, ISIS, and
00:11:16.000 | comparing it to the Old Testament, one listener asks, "Did God commission
00:11:20.680 | terrorism in the Bible?" I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the
00:11:25.000 | Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:11:28.040 | [BLANK_AUDIO]