Controlling Behaviors in Church Leadership – Part 2
by Christopher Wells 4/2025
The church should be a place of healing, a safe place for hurting, vulnerable people to come and experience God’s comfort, love, acceptance and receive spiritual guidance and healing. When a person enters the doors of a church, this is exactly the message that is conveyed to them in most cases, and in large part, this is what most people who attend a Christian church probably experience. But what happens when this isn’t the case? What happens when someone in that church in a position of leadership is really a wolf in sheep’s clothing—someone who is a predator pretending to be someone they aren’t in order to gain access to vulnerable people and abuse them?
Most of the people reading this article likely expect that the church they attend does not fall into this category. You likely expect that no one in authority in your church is actively and intentionally abusing those under their care and direction. But what if you were wrong? If you were wrong, and there was someone in your church who was using their position or access to abuse others, wouldn’t you want it to be exposed and stopped? Wouldn’t you want an effective process to already be in place whereby the victims of this abuse could report that abuse anonymously, have their claims investigated thoroughly by competent people, and—if the allegations prove to be true—have the guilty party brought to justice and exposed so that others are protected from future abuse?
Do you think there are proper accountability structures in place in your church to ensure such a process is in place to protect the victim in such a scenario?
What if—God forbid—the person who was perpetrating the abuse was the head pastor? Would the processes your church has in place be adequate, then?
How, you may ask, does this topic fit in with controlling behaviors in church leadership? In all the cases I will specifically refer to in this essay, it is the church leaders who either perpetrated the abuse or discovered that someone in their organization had done so and then misused their position of authority (i.e., their control over others) to cover it up. These leaders were able to cover it up as well as they did and for as long as they did because of the un-Biblical level of control they exerted over the members of their congregation and the lack of adequate measures to bring accountability and transparency. As we shall see in this essay, this level of control is built into the culture of many churches and is harming believers in these institutions every day, but its negative effects are especially apparent in cases of egregious abuse.
I can tell you right now, without one shadow of a doubt, that as of the writing of this article, most churches do not have an effective plan in place to adequately protect a victim of abuse when the head pastor becomes the perpetrator. Yet, it takes only a few minutes on the internet to find a plethora of legitimate cases of egregious spiritual and/or sexual abuse perpetrated by former or current head pastors in churches in this nation and around the world (see the bibliography at the end of this essay for some specific examples). In many cases, this abuse goes on for years undetected largely because there is not an adequate process in place to protect the victim when they try to get help, but instead, there is an active campaign on the part of the church leadership to hide the truth.
Don’t think it can happen in your church? No one usually does. But part of the mission of the church leadership is to protect the people attending church against such potential abuse—especially since it is so rampant. It is the responsibility of church leadership to protect those who attend their congregations. They have an obligation to put policies and procedures in place to ensure potential victims have the ability to anonymously report such abuse, are protected from reprisals, and have those allegations properly and thoroughly investigated by a qualified third party who is not beholden to the leadership in that local body. Additionally, the results of such an investigation—should there prove to be actual abuse—should be properly communicated to the congregation in a manner that will serve to warn and protect others against possible future abuse, with the perpetrator being adequately disciplined, which may include reporting the incident to secular law enforcement. Anything less is a dereliction of duty by church leadership.
It is a tragedy when the church becomes not only the source of someone’s harm but a place where the leaders in charge conspire against that injured person in an effort to prevent them from getting the protection, healing, and justice they deserve. Such, unfortunately, is the case in far too many scenarios when church leaders, employees, and/or volunteers abuse those they are pledged to serve. In no case is this more damaging than when the abuse is sexual in nature.
Regardless of denominational affiliation, when situations of egregious abuse arise, far too often, they follow a similar pattern. First, there is the accusation of wrongdoing against someone associated with the church. Many times, this is one of the pastors, if not the head pastor himself. Next comes the attempt of the leadership to minimize what happened or explain away the allegations entirely. Sometimes, this involves some apparent attempt to bring accountability that is really designed to shame the victim into silence, such as having a minor sit in a meeting with the person they accused of molesting them along with other authority figures in the church and repeat the details of what they allege has happened. Usually, the victim is so intimidated they recant their story or even claim they were the instigator of the encounter(s).
If this initial experience doesn’t deter the accuser from continuing to pursue their claims, there are multiple tactics that are used to hastily bring the episode to a close. Sometimes, there is a tacit admission by the offender with a private apology to their victim, with parents (in the case of a minor victim) being assured by the church leadership that pastor so-and-so is undergoing counseling or that the ‘leadership is handling the situation’ with hopes that the matter is dropped. Often, the offending person is only temporarily removed from their leadership role and then ‘restored’ a short while later, with no public admission of guilt and without adequately addressing what they did. Often, the offender will continue to perpetrate similar crimes over a number of years, sometimes hopping from church to church to outrun their past, other times remaining in the same church and even moving up in the leadership hierarchy.
A second prevalent route of attack, if the initial attempts to quickly silence the accuser fail, is to counter-attack. Often, this involves making the accuser out to be a liar or a serial sexual sinner who lures others into sin.
This essay is not an expose of any particular instance, and it is beyond the scope of this article to delve into any one case in-depth. I have provided numerous links at the end of this essay for those who want to fact-check my claims. The point here is to highlight a pattern of abuse and misuse of authority within the church and issue a call for change. We can prevent many of these situations from happening by implementing the Biblical church leadership model, and we can put processes and procedures in place to greatly enhance the probability that victims are protected when these situations do arise. These perpetrators can and should be exposed and brought to justice early on so that they don’t continue to commit the same heinous acts over and over throughout lengthy public ministries.
Annotated list of links to some examples of abuse in the church (includes both alleged and confirmed):
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/abuse-of-faith/
Six-part series on abuse in the church. Part 1 title: 20 years, 700 victims: Southern Baptist sexual abuse spreads as leaders resist reforms. Note that this article is behind the Houston Chronicle paywall and a subscription may be required to view it.
Opening paragraph: Mike Bickle, founder of the International House of Prayer-Kansas City (IHOPKC) groomed and sexually abused 17 women, some of whom were minors, according to an independent investigation released tonight. In some cases, the abuse constituted rape, the investigation found.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/anglican-church-of-north-america-sexual-abuse-scandal.html
Cover-up of sexual abuse by church authorities. The accuser (a nine-year-old) was called upon to disclose what happened to them in front of the accused. Eventually, a prominent lay leader was sentenced to 15 years in prison after finding him guilty of two counts of predatory sexual assault of a victim under 13 years old and three counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a victim under 13.
The website of author C.L. Wells 