Let Us Prey

The Plague of Narcissist Pastors and What We Can Do About It

Ball, Puls

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781498298445
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Jesus warned of wolves carefully disguised as shepherds who would come into the local church as pastors. It is the perfect disguise from which to devour the flock one lamb at a time. The authors were the first to study this phenomenon in North America and discover how serious the problem is. What they uncovered is shocking. The enemy has infiltrated the North American church. In this study of a large Canadian denomination, just under one in three pastors met the diagnostic criteria of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). This is one of the most destructive and least treatable of all mental disorders, but is often well hidden behind layers of "sacred" deception. Some are charismatic while others are quiet and even awkward, but they share the same needs for power, control, praise, and public recognition. They are also rigid, unbending, never wrong, demanding, and full of hidden rage, leaving the people working for them in demoralized fear. They see you as inferior and God as a rival, while the worst see themselves as God. If they see you as a threat, they will do everything possible to destroy you spiritually and emotionally. Is your pastor one of them?

1

Into Darkness

I buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night. I couldn’t see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.

—Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

The following is a combination of true stories. Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the people involved and the churches where these events took place.

David was a successful and highly regarded college professor. As a young man he had sensed a call to ministry but he could not see himself in the role of a pastor and he was not at all interested in missions. Instead, he poured himself into his research and teaching graduate studies in leadership and business administration at a highly regarded university, and was well respected in academic circles. Married with two grown children, he also volunteered with several community groups and had served in various capacities in them. It was a comfortable life and he looked forward to retiring in a year or two and then sailing with his wife down the east coast from Connecticut, where they lived, to Florida in the fall, and then back to Connecticut for the summers. Financially secure, he was carefully planning his exit from the university when the senior pastor of his church asked to meet with him over lunch. David was a bit surprised when he walked into the restaurant and saw that the executive pastor was there as well.

They said they had been praying for months for someone to take over leadership of the seminary that had grown as an adjunct to the church. They said that they knew of his plans to retire—and then told him that his was the only name that kept coming up in answer to their prayers. Obviously, they said, God was calling him into ministry as a teacher and seminary leader.

David was flattered, confused, and excited. Could this be what God was calling him to? He had always admired Pastor Bob for his many successes in ministry. Pastor Bob was tall, thin, and distinguished looking, always impeccably dressed, with a head of carefully brushed graying hair and a certain sense of distant serenity about him. He could be a very persuasive man when he wanted to be, and David was now the object of that persuasion.

David had spent almost his entire adult professional life researching, writing about, and teaching leadership skills to graduate students in the business administration program—and now was being offered the chance of a lifetime to place all of that knowledge and experience into use for the church where he had been a member for many years. To be the builder of something that would have a lasting impact for generations to come on Christian leaders was an enticing offer. After prayer and discussing the entire set of possibilities with his wife, he accepted.

Even though he was still six months away from leaving the academic world, David was introduced by Pastor Bob in front of 200 members and leaders as the new chancellor of the seminary. It was official. It was only much later that David pieced everything together in rebuilding his life that he understood how he had been manipulated from the outset. Intentionally or not, the pastors were playing on David’s own narcissistic need to be needed, his commitment to this particular church that had brought him in out of the spiritual cold, and his experience, successes, recognition—and insecurities.

David and his wife had already downsized by selling their large custom-built executive home in anticipation of sailing back and forth between smaller, more modest homes in Florida and Connecticut after he left academic work and she retired from a family law practice. Now the plans to sail for several months each year were placed on hold and what had been intended as temporary housing took on more of an aura of permanency. As the date of his departure from the university drew nearer, David and his wife activated financial arrangements that they had carefully made over the course of their careers; it would guarantee a living income that would only need to be supplemented by the church. Finally, he cleaned out his old office and turned in his keys. He was going to be chancellor of the rapidly growing seminary. It was an exciting time, full of promise and energy.

The first note that something might not be entirely right happened on David’s first day. Pastor Bob, the senior pastor, seemed surprised to see him, which David dismissed as a momentary memory lapse. He was given an office at the church and began work. His first assignment was to create a nonprofit foundation to provide a steady financial base for the seminary, and to analyze and document all of the programs as they began the application process for accreditation. David could not think of ways in which he could feel more blessed. He was putting his all of his knowledge and experience into building the kingdom of God by training the pastors and church leaders of tomorrow.

The first indications of discord were not long in coming. It was a large church and the entire pastoral staff of eight was meeting for their weekly breakfast together when Pastor Bob verbally berated another, somewhat elderly pastor in front of everyone. There was nothing loving, gentle, encouraging or pastoral about it—the attack was vicious, unsparing and humiliating. Being new, David expected one of the more senior pastors to intervene, but they were all avoiding eye contact. Once the attack was over, everyone resumed their conversations as if nothing had happened. David left the meeting wondering if this type of behavior was common, as no one seemed overly upset by it, not the pastor who was attacked or even a pastor who was also a licensed therapist. Still, it did not make sense that someone who weekly preached love, kindness, and gentle correction could be so unsparing to his own staff. The non-reaction of the others was equally confusing. It was only much later that he learned that this passive acceptance was a sign of a brutalized and thoroughly intimidated staff. This was their “normal,” and it was something David had encountered fewer than a dozen times in all of his years of leadership research and corporate consulting. David had of course experienced many narcissists at every level of the corporations he consulted with, but they tended to be so obvious that they were easy to spot and counter. They tended to have grand visions that drew in other people and gave them energy to move into new territory. In fact, their narcissism was one of the primary reasons they had risen so far in the corporate world. But there was a downside that is inseparable from them: their constant need of more praise can lead them to make less than ethical decisions, they cannot take any form of criticism, easily fly into an almost uncontrolled rage, tend to be vicious and merciless when someone makes a mistake but never admit or take responsibility for their own mistakes.1 The pattern he was now experiencing was more unsettling as the senior pastor seemed to be a gentle, even painfully shy, man. The pattern would be repeated many times in the years David served as seminary chancellor.

Being new to the internal work world of churches, and giving the benefit of the doubt, David filed these things away in the back of his mind. He knew that this sort of behavior would be tolerated in the corporate world if the narcissist was a high producer or was at the very highest levels of the corporate structures, which is where the narcissists reign supreme. His confusion came from not experiencing a covert, or shy, narcissist before and so he could not categorize the behaviors he saw. Since church staff culture was new to him he rationalized that this behavior was not the norm. Like most people, he subscribed to the notion that churches were somehow immune from the narcissism, power struggles, and vengeance found in the corridors of power. He also knew that most men and women with strong narcissistic tendencies functioned quite well in the structured world of large corporations. David now says that, for all of his experience, he was surprisingly naïve. Thirty years of experience as a researcher, consultant, and teacher had made him wise and comfortable with secular work, but the world of church culture was entirely new.

About a year after David was hired, a young associate pastor named Hector was brought on as youth pastor. Hector was fresh out of seminary with a master of divinity degree. He and his wife were full of energy and ideas, and were fully committed to living their faith. They started the work together, even though Melinda was at home most of the time with their two small children.

In spite of their age and experience differences, David and Hector quickly became trusted friends.

About six months into his tenure, Hector and Melinda took the high school students on a weekend camping trip deep into forests of rural Connecticut. He had informed Pastor Bob of the trip beforehand, and no objections were made. A few days after they returned, Hector came into David’s office, flopped down on the couch and began to shake. The story quickly spilled out. A parent had complained to Pastor Bob that Hector was promoting drug use. His daughter had gone to Hector and Melinda and asked if she was going to hell because she had tried marijuana. They had used this as a teaching opportunity about the dangers of drug use, but said that God could forgive this minor sin. They prayed together, asked God’s forgiveness, hugged, and thought little else of it. Her father was livid, but instead of calling Hector he called Pastor Bob, and demanded that Hector be fired immediately. Pastor Bob had stormed into the middle of a meeting Hector was having with a parent and without prelude began yelling at Hector while the parent quickly scrambled out the door. “Don’t you ever put me in a place where I have to defend you! You are supposed to defend me, not the other way around!” he screamed. He went on to shout that he had never approved the camping trip and that Hector was never again to do such a thing without his written approval. The kids belonged in church on Sunday mornings, not off in some mosquito-infested swamp! He then stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

David spent hours calming Hector. Since he had never seen Pastor Bob’s temper in flood stage, David through Hector was exaggerating.

In many ways, Pastor Bob was extremely gifted and even visionary. There was no question that he had been spectacularly successful over the years and had hundreds of loyal followers, but the longer David was there the more it became obvious that something was not right. In fact, something was wrong, very wrong. Granted, Pastor Bob had taken the church from an old, wooden structure to a sprawling, multi-structure campus; he was to be granted deference for that reason alone. He had also been ordained and in full-time ministry for almost thirty years when only a small fraction of those who start as pastors will retire as pastors. But the side of Pastor Bob that David was seeing was well hidden from public view, and the signs of something deeper and darker were there if one looked closely. Taken individually they might have indicated eccentricity or something else benign; taken together, however, distant and faint alarms began going off in the back of David’s mind. No one could make a decision, no matter how mundane, without Pastor Bob’s approval beforehand. Bob controlled all spending, which probably is not that unusual in a large church, but what was unusual is that there were neither a budget or budget controls even though the annual income and expenditures were almost two million dollars. More alarming, there was neither financial accountability nor transparency in the church or the seminary. Having created and worked with numerous nonprofit organizations in the past, David knew how important both were to the health and welfare of the church should anyone challenge how money was being used.

Pastor Bob seemed to have a very high view of himself despite his declarations of childhood deprivation and various learning disabilities. At first it was amusing but that changed over time. No matter what the topic, Pastor Bob spoke with great authority, including church architecture, history, theology, psychology, and psychiatry to . . . pretty much anything and everything that mattered. He dominated conversation in every meeting, whether it was a staff meeting or a men’s Bible study, whether he was leading it or not. He continually referred to various celebrities as his “wonderful, close friends.” It was clear that he was emulating several television preachers in how he constructed and conducted worship, in his vocabulary, and even in his selection of pastoral robes. Under the guise of following the ancient apostles, Pastor Bob personally selected every member of the board of directors, which he controlled. David would later learn that one board member who asked to see the budget and who talked about putting financial controls in place received a phone call the next day informing him that he was no longer a member of the church board. Pastor Bob justified it all by saying that the church was not a democracy; it was a theocracy and he was the head as God’s anointed representative.

Even though Pastor Bob frequently preached about joy and laughter, he seemed to have little of either. In fact, Bob never seemed to laugh; he would smile and perhaps chuckle but no one ever heard him truly laugh. He rarely tried to tell a joke, and it usually fell flat when he did. It seemed that Pastor Bob simply did not understand what people found humorous. What he did well, however, was sarcasm aimed at undercutting whomever he chose as a target. Hector now says that he could “weaponize a compliment in such a way that everyone else in the room thought he was praising me, but only he and I knew that he was slighting me. The look in his eyes when we made eye contact was unnerving.”

Much more troubling was the fact that he would say something with total conviction and then say the opposite a few days or weeks later but with just as much sincerity—and would vehemently deny that he had ever said that which he was now contradicting. At one point, Pastor Bob angrily denied that he had announced that David was to be chancellor of the seminary—until he was reminded that he said it with fanfare in front of more than 200 people, that it had been recorded, and that he had presented David a name plate for David’s office door with the word “Chancellor” on it. David was becoming more concerned and confused, as what he was seeing behind the scenes was often contrary to what Pastor Bob preached from the pulpit. He had never run into this behavior before in a pastor, and it was baffling. David’s need to believe in Pastor Bob overrode his own observations and increasing concern.

Pastor Bobs’ preaching was fascinating—at first. David will never deny his debt of gratitude to Bob, for it was he who broke through David’s layers of resistance and drew him back into the church after having left it many years before. Bob’s preaching seemed simple and winsome, but over time David began to notice how repetitive it was, and how shallow. Pastor Bob justified it by saying that this was a “seeker’s” church where they needed to present a positive message that did not get caught up in the finer points of theology. That was fine, but the sermons seemed to have more pop psychology than theology much of the time.

To David, for the seminary to grow meant engaging with the community and with other churches. They did neither, but focused all of their outreach energies into the poorest remote villages of Burundi in central Africa. They would do short mission trips to remote villages and perhaps dig a well but always preached at the villagers that they needed Jesus, ignoring the fact that most were already Christians. It seemed to be their only outreach ministry. When asked why the church did nothing for the hungry or poor in the local community, Pastor Bob demanded he be shown one hungry child from the area, and flatly stated that the poor in the community were far better off than the poor in any other country—and were not actually all that poor as they had TVs and cell phones. Even though the church had little to no contact with other area churches, Bob often bragged about how young pastors would come to him for guidance and how other churches were patterning themselves after “his” church. David wondered how this could be since they had been steadily losing attendees on Sunday morning for the last few years and Pastor Bob r...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword by Steven J. Sandage
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Into Darkness
• Chapter 2: What is Narcissistic Personality Disorder?
• Chapter 3: The Work and Habits of the Narcissist Pastor
• Chapter 4: Stories
• Chapter 5: The Narcissist as Leader
• Chapter 6: There Be Dragons Here—The Study
• Chapter 7: The Spiritual Life of the Narcissist Pastor
• Chapter 8: The Narcissistic Church
• Chapter 9: Healing the People
• Chapter 10: Healing the Church
• Chapter 11: Prevention
• Chapter 12: Now What?
• Bibliography