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Leadership in Today’s church: 

What is Wrong and Why it Matters (Part 2)

by Christopher Wells (3/2025)

In part one of this two-part essay I described two very different church organization leadership structures.  One—by far the most common in churches today—where a head pastor is the chief ruler in a local church congregation, and a second leadership structure—the one described in the Bible—where multiple co-equal elders help to lead the local organized church.  In this essay, I will begin comparing these two disparate leadership structures and dive into the details of these matters and why we, the members of the Christian church, must begin pushing for change.

Before I continue, I want to take a moment to re-iterate that I believe that many of the pastors of local church organizations are genuinely attempting to spread the good news about Jesus Christ and are seeking to build God’s kingdom on Earth.  There are many, many immensely valuable ministries in these local gatherings of believers.  However, this does not negate the fact that something is rotten in the current state of affairs in these same church organizations that is limiting their effectiveness and—in far too many cases—setting up a situation for abusive leadership to creep in and severely and unnecessarily damage many of the most vulnerable in the Body of Christ.

If I were to describe all of the ways that the single-head-pastor model of church leadership leads to abuse of power and harms the members of the Body of Christ, it would take a book-length work.  As these essays are meant to start the conversation and not exhaustively cover the subject, I will, instead, select a few examples of the abuse and harm that can be enabled by this leadership model and contrast these examples with how a similar situation would be handled more effectively from a Biblical leadership model perspective.  In this way, I hope to demonstrate that the common single-head-pastor leadership model creates a dangerous lack of accountability and transparency.  The consolidation of power in the hands of the head pastor inevitably leads to either passive or active abuse and helps keep the average believer weaker and under-performing in their calling as a follower of Christ.  Alternatively, the Biblical church leadership model provides, by design, a more accountable, transparent model of leadership, and along with the shared power it promotes, helps to more effectively guard the Body of Christ from abuse and develop a more well-rounded and effective community of believers.

Example #1

For this first example, I will draw from my own personal experience.  I had attended the church in question for over two years when this series of incidents began.  Following the traditional model, this denominational church organization was headed by a single head pastor, with an executive pastor, ministry leaders, and supporting staff that reported directly to him.  There was an elder board, but they did not function fully in the Biblically-defined role of elder, which would have involved copious amounts of preaching and teaching, but served in an advisory capacity to the head pastor and served, from my observation, mainly in assisting with temporal matters of finance and plant operations.  We mainly saw and heard from the elders in their official capacity during the annual finance meeting and during infrequent appearances on such temporal matters as previously mentioned occasionally during Sunday announcements.

Prior to the incidents I am about to relate, I would state that this pastor, more than any other pastor I had ever sat under, never preached a sermon that I found fault with.  It was uncanny, as even in pastors I liked far better personally, I usually found some points of disagreement during a year’s worth of sermons.  Previous to the events in question, I found that this pastor’s preaching was Biblically sound, full of practical spiritual instruction, and often inspiring.  It is what made what happened next all the more troubling.

One Sunday morning, during the main worship service, the head pastor announced that he would give a brief introduction and then afterwards yield the balance of the sermon time to a guest speaker.  The guest speaker was then introduced, who proceeded to elaborate upon the necessity of the Body of Christ to embrace Critical Race Theory.  For those unaware, Critical Race Theory essentially states that systemic racism against black people exists in American society to its core and that if your skin is white, you are guilty of causing it and must do your part to reverse the effects of this racism by various acts of giving of your time and money.  Furthermore, you should yield your right to free speech by way of never voicing disagreement with Critical Race Theory or any person of color, and essentially perform life-long penance for crimes which you are not personally guilty of, which were committed by other white people hundreds of years ago to whom you may or may not be related.  It also states that if you are white, you regularly commit acts of anti-black racism, whether or not you realize it or intend to, so you are perpetually guilty and, by virtue of your skin color, unredeemable.  The best you can do is swallow every lie the CRT teachers trot out and essentially devote your life to doing as they tell you without critically analyzing their claims—because you can’t possibly correctly understand them if you happen to be white.  The proponents of Critical Race Theory (or CRT) would define their beliefs far differently, but for the sake of brevity, I have endeavored to cut through the deceitfully crafted lies and deliver the unvarnished truth.  If you disagree with my assessment, I encourage you to do some independent study of writings both for and against CRT.  I believe that a fair-minded Christian will come to the same conclusion I have just provided.

Needless to say, I was dumbfounded by this pastor’s wholesale embrace of Critical Race Theory and endorsing it as our ‘Christian duty’ to march to the CRT drumbeat.  After praying and considering how to respond, I spent some time writing out my thoughts and then reached out to the pastor to discuss the matter.  First, I sent him an email.  The email was ignored.  Next, I sent him a lengthy text, which was also ignored.  Finally, I hand-delivered a letter to his office.  He wasn’t there, but the executive pastor took the letter and assured me it would be delivered to him.  There was never a response.

Now, consider what is happening here.  A congregant with serious concerns about the theological soundness of something preached from the pulpit reaches out to the head pastor of the church, not once, not twice, but on three separate occasions, expressing a desire to discuss the matter, and no response is received.  The pastor is an elder in the church and, as such, is responsible for guiding and teaching those under his care, yet not a single word is spoken or written in response to my inquiry.  No link to an article that explains why Christians should embrace CRT, no email defending his position with scripture, no meeting to talk things out—nothing.

Some weeks go by and I learn from the church announcements that a racial reconciliation study group is being formed.  I join it.  It is nothing short of an indoctrination session using mainly anecdotal internet videos pushing CRT.  Weeks of it.  There is no critical analysis of CRT, no question-and-answer session.  It is pure propaganda—a CRT love-fest by the teacher and most of the participants.  I keep waiting for an opportunity to voice my concerns, but there is none.  A second multi-week class is announced to further ‘educate’ us about the topic.  I attend this one also.  I continue to look for an opportunity to critically discuss as a group the ideas presented to us, but my waiting is in vain.  During the final class I decide to push the issue.  The associate pastor, as well as the men’s ministry leader, are moderating the final session.  One participant makes a point to say that the police are targeting black men to shoot them, and this is proof of the continued systemic racism in our society.  I bring up a study by Harvard Professor Roland G. Fryer, Jr. (2018)—the youngest black man ever to attain a professorship at that institution at the time—in which he states that, after an exhaustive recent study of police use of force nationwide, that he discovered police are actually less likely to shoot a black man than a white man.  One of the leaders of the class is apoplectic, angrily questioning why I would bring up such information that contradicts their carefully crafted narrative.  We are meeting remotely via video conference as this is during the Covid-19 pandemic.  As I begin to calmly respond to the leader’s interrogation, the associate pastor begins muting my microphone.  Needless to say, I have fallen afoul of the powers that be by merely questioning a highly controversial and patently un-Biblical teaching.

Observations on example #1:

In looking back on this experience years later, I can see now that the big problem was that this church did not have a plurality of seasoned elders at the helm, and therefore, when the one elder they really had in place was deceived, there was no one to help him course correct.  The associate pastor was the lead pastor’s subordinate and had nowhere near the senior pastor’s level of maturity.  The associate’s main function was to run the children’s church program and keep church operations organized.  They were a follower, not a seasoned elder, and when the senior pastor led them down the wrong path, they willingly followed without any perceived qualms.

It is the responsibility of church leadership to establish a plurality of Biblically qualified elders in each local congregation (see the previous essay in this series where I discuss the Biblical foundation for the role and qualifications of elders in detail).  These elders should be appointed and recognized before the entire congregation so that everyone knows who they are.  They should be fully functioning elders as defined by the Bible, whose duties are to spiritually instruct, guide, and protect the body of believers from false teaching and spiritual abuse.

Had such a plurality of elders existed in this local church, I have no doubt that when this leader attempted to move in the direction of embracing the CRT doctrine, the other elders would have vigorously opposed such a move and engaged in a discussion with this brother that would have led him away from his error.  Unfortunately, my story is only one of thousands that can be readily discovered where churches led by a single, spiritually isolated, largely unaccountable leader without established, recognized peers in the local church has led the congregation they are serving in the wrong direction.  Sometimes this is done with a pure heart, sometimes with an intent that has become corrupted over time and turned to pursue blatant sin.  How many of these tragedies could have been avoided if only the Biblical pattern of church leadership had been followed?  Only God knows for certain.  What I can say for certain is that far more of these situations would have avoided becoming tabloid fare and stumbling blocks to believers and unbelievers alike if the Biblical pattern of church leadership had been followed.

In subsequent essays, I will discuss additional examples where the single head pastor leadership model led to unhealthy situations that both enabled and prolonged abusive situations that needlessly harmed many people.

Bibliography:

Fryer, Roland G., Jr. (2018). An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police use of Force, Retrieved November 16, 2020 from   http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399