Some organizations are more wired than others for spectacular success or spectacular failure. Nondenominational megachurches are one example. They often can be free-wheeling, Wild West-style operations, unencumbered by national bureaucracies. That frees them to respond to grow quickly … or to grow malignantly.
The central focus of the article is on the malignant nature of toxic leading and following. Along the way he makes statements that the church ought to carefully consider. Without dispensing with the responsibility to restore the one who has sinned, the church must also consider realities such as sociopathy. In other words, the church must not be naive about the reality that some pastors, no matter how sincere their repentance, must never serve as pastors again.
With toxic leaders, there are no happy endings, no matter how hard you pray. You just have to move on. That may seem especially sad to those Mars Hill congregants who want Driscoll to undergo a disciplinary process so that that a newly mature, repentant and humbled version of himself might someday take the pulpit.
But a number of psychologists have told me that the truly toxic leaders, the ones who manage to cause trouble on the scale of a Driscoll, are tragically irredeemable as managers. Oftentimes, the disciplining process only teaches them new ways to exploit the system while pretending to obey it. (Bear in mind that Driscoll himself has been claiming for years that he’s been making progress on his shortcomings.)
Could it be that this writer for Forbes has a better grasp of the consequences of pastoral malpractice? Certainly he raises some important questions about the difference between a pastor whose sins and frailties are common to most Christians and the one who is simply not qualified for the role to begin with.
Read the entire article HERE.
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