Thursday, October 24, 2024

Confronting Church Bullies, part 3

 

The carnage of bullies in the church is significant. Yesterday, I was in an intense discussion at a coffee shop in Canada with three other individuals regarding my blog, "When Church Boards don't Confront Bullies," a woman at the table nearby was listening. As she left, she came and introduced herself and told the story of how her large church in Calgary had been destroyed by a church bully and gave us a book recommendation on narcissists in the church. She was right on three counts. One bully behavior is classic narcissism. Two, it has the power to
destroy churches. And three, church leaders are notoriously bad at dealing with the problem. And when they ignore the issue, the damage is significant.

Bullies are chameleons. They try to look spiritual and concerned. But their behaviors are destructive, toxic, and hurtful. Don't be fooled!

Boards don't deal with church bullies because they are intimidated by them. That intimidation is a form of control by bullies, which provides them license to continue their bad behavior. As we will see in this series, and as we have experienced, the bully can be a pastor, a board member, or another individual in the congregation. Intimidation is their method of operation, and the response of many church leaders is passive acceptance of their behavior because they are cowed by that intimidation. Don't be!

Read the entire article, Confronting Bad Behaviors of church bullies, by T. J. Addington here.

And click to read part one and part two here.


Image used courtesy of Pixabay


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