How Do Churches End Up with Domineering Bullies for Pastors?

“We are, sadly, familiar with pastors having to leave the ministry because of sexual impropriety. These incidents seem to occur with such frequency as to be barely newsworthy to a watching world.

But another, equally sad trend has developed in recent years: Pastors having to leave for bullying.

While we should be concerned by this trend, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. The apostle Peter expected this possibility back in the first century. Writing to pastors, he warned that they shouldn’t be “domineering over those in [their] charge” (1 Pet. 5:3). But while domineering pastors aren’t a new problem, they do seem to be more and more evident in the Western church today. In some cases bullying goes on for many years, either unrecognized or unchallenged. Which raises some important questions: What leadership virtue are we mistaking bullying for? Which trait is such a priority that we aren’t even aware when it is deployed in an ungodly, and biblically prohibited, way? In short, why do we end up with bullies as prominent pastors?”