Seven Signs of abusive leaders
abusive leaders
Commentary by David Cox on the Post at
abusive leaders
Commentary by David Cox on the Post at
In this post, I want to analyze some things about how the false prophet works, and how you can use this knowledge to identify a false prophet. The idea here is that there are ways to identify a false prophet, and rather than listing correct and incorrect doctrines (because he will read this list and say he is teaching the correct, and invent new false doctrines), we examine how a false prophet thinks and works his work.
For an overview of this, see
False Prophets and Teachers Overview
Continue reading FP: Catching the False Prophet with his hand in the Cookie Jar
Commentary about Enroth, R. – Recovering from Churches that Abuse
Comments on Recovering from Churches that abuse is a commentary post about some of my ideas about Enroth’s book Comments on Recovering from Churches that abuse. This post is only comments from Chapter 1.
Continue reading Comments on Recovering from Churches that abuse Chap #1
I think that the point here is that abusive, wicked, or false leaders want others to adore them. This comes from walking with Satan, which wanted even Christ to adore him. The key element that a good leader always remembers is that he is a sinful man like all other men, and he is not so great or better than other people. A good leader looks at leadership as service, and as Christ came to service, so a good leader enters a church to serve God by serving the people. This concept totally controls him.
A bad leader sees himself as being great, and his church has the great advantage of being in his presence and serving him, his desires, and his goals. He uses the church and its members as stepping stones to his own greatness. The difference in attitude is tremendous, and is like night and day.
I think the key element here is that an abusive leader makes rules and a “system” for his followers to be “in” or “out” of his graces, and he works that system extensively. Our obedience is not to men, but to God. As a man of God dedicates himself to God and obeys God, God blesses that man, and others should follow him. As a minister strays from that commitment to God and his standards and work, others should leave him to himself.
The system is a very definite mark that something is wrong. A good leader of a church is pastor-like, and that means that he relates to all the members of his church. He has a personal relationship with each and everyone, no matter if they participate in his “system” of favorites or not.
Here I think we see the great difference between a true church with good leaders and a cult. A cult wants to drag people into the group and then cut them off from interaction with others, especially family and other Christians in other churches that can/could give them feedback as far as what is happening in their church.
When a group considers itself the only true church, they are wrong. They are a cult. “Yes, there are others that are kind of like us, but really we are the only ones that are 100% right.” The cult thinking is to cut off rational thinking and reasonableness. They are pushing their members towards being extremists, while a good church is pushing their members towards being a balanced, reasonable Christian.
Actually, to be truthful, probably the best expositor and thinker in any church is the pastor. Some exceptions might exist, but basically, that is the way things work. If there is somebody who is a better student of Scripture, they have to be very humble to work with the pastor (and the pastor has to be humble also to take advantage of his knowledge and wisdom).
Usually, our egos overtake us, and leaders rarely can handle rebuke from subordinates, and to be corrected on Scripture is deadly. If a major issue comes up and somebody else corrects the pastor, either the pastor leaves or that person is runoff. This is because of egos.
If you examine Acts 15, the early church functioned with many godly endowed men of God (the twelve apostles, the 120 disciples, Paul and Barnabas, etc.). But they were able to challenge each other and correct incorrect understanding and practice, dealing with doctrine in the process. Few church leaders today can pass through such an experience, and rarely any would actually desire that kind of multiple inputs of voices in major issues. That just shows us how far we have gotten from biblical New Testament churches.
I think I touched on this above, but the idea that each church is an island, and the only island out there of true, biblical doctrine and practice is very common among churches, and much more so among abusive churches. The dependence of one church on others is rarely worked out correctly.
Note that the idea is that the views and ideas of other Christians (leaders and laymen) is important and balancing to our view and ideas doesn’t happen often. Either things go the way of a convention or denomination, and in that case, a few decide the doctrine and practice and the rest receive it, or nobody listens to anybody else. Either way it is wrong and not New Testament Christianity.
Here we see the conclusion of this island thinking. To leave the group is the same as to abandon Christ and declare one’s self a Satan worshipper. That is even if you go to another church of the same doctrine and practice as your church.
That is the problem, churches don’t work in the context of world Christianity, but just their own corner of it, and they blow that up to be the last bastion of the faith on earth, that kind of thinking.
This commentary is taken from the article, Mind Control: Six tell-tale signs of abusive church leaders at http://www.wickedshepherds.com/MindControl.html