“It is sad that the book had to be written”.

This is how a friend responded when I mentioned that I was reading Marcus Honeysett’s Powerful Leaders? When Church Leadership Goes Wrong and How to Prevent It.

Why did he respond in that manner?  While Honeysett avoids naming names, the book is prompted by the spate of stories of leaders men from within the evangelical world who have behaved (very) badly. It took me back to Barbara Kellerman’s Bad Leadership and her desire to counter ‘the prevailing view (that) leadership is relentlessly positive’ (4). 

It isn’t. Far from it. For this badness to emerge, in such a steady flow of headlines, from within the section of the church that headlines itself as the one having the best grasp of truth—is shameful. It demonstrates just how true the truth is: ‘Watch your life and doctrine closely’. 

Honeysett has two purpose statements, one near the beginning and the other near the end: 

I hope to sketch a map of the slippery slope of power—the path that runs from good intentions, via lack of accountability and transparency, down into manipulation and self-serving, all the way to the most serious abuses … While I will discuss some of the worst abuses of power and position, I spend more time exploring the first abuses that set leaders on the slippery slope (3).

My prayer is that this book has helped you think about biblical spiritual leadership through the lens of Christ-like servanthood, rather than through a worldly lens of big characters wielding power with their impressive strength, or subtle manipulators wielding power through the warmth of their impressive smiles and personal winsomeness (154).

The book should walk into the ‘required reading’ list of Christian leadership courses. It is that good. However, if I may, let me respond more personally to the features that impacted me.

The Foundation

He starts by establishing a ‘plumb line’ (9), with New Testament themes like servanthood, shepherding and ‘spiritual parenting’ (13). This is where authentic Christian leadership can be found: ‘encouraging, modelling, parenting, comforting, strengthening hearts in the Lord and, in our weakness, helping people to live lives worthy of God’ (15).

This sparked a couple of further thoughts for me. I grew up with the mandate given to Adam and Eve being about ‘subduing/ruling’ creation, whereas in more recent times we’ve spoken about ‘creation care’ and stewarding. It is taonga (Māori), a resource to be prized and considered precious. In preventing leadership going bad, the ‘steward’ is another metaphor, where those being led are considered to be living taonga. Also, and Honeysett touches on this one, I wonder if the importance of ‘visionary leadership’ tends to be overstated today—and fed to younger leaders far too early. I struggle to find this quality featured in the New Testament. Help me, if you can! And when adrift from primary biblical patterns like servant/shepherd/spiritual-parent/steward, it so easily goes wrong. Learning to facilitate vision, not just cast it, seems to be the healthier skill to develop…

When Honeysett comes to putting this into practice, four characteristics of leadership stand out. He returns to them again and again, as a lens through which he looks at different abuses of power. Very helpful. They become like a refrain running through the book: (1) accountability; (2) plurality; (3) transparency; and (4) embodiment in the church community.  The first articulation of these four was supplemented with the insight from a friend in a footnote. ‘Accountability’ is how we relate to those in authority over us, ‘plurality’ is how we relate with our peers alongside us, and ‘transparency’ is the way we relate with those whom we lead.

The Spectrum

The heart of the book is a five-stage spectrum, ‘a more objective framework’ (2), by which leaders drift from a legitimate use of authority to an illegitimate use. He describes the stages (35-49) and then he demonstrates how ‘the slippery slope’ through the stages works (50-89). It took a bit to get my head around it all, but a supplementary resource on-line—with a free digital download—helped a lot. It is an Audit of Abuse of Power, and one can imagine leadership teams, if they have sufficient humility and courage (!), wanting to work their way through it…

Here are some of Honeysett’s concluding words from each of these two sections.

After his description of ‘the five stages’:

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Leaders take the first wrong steps while still believing themselves to be servants motivated exclusively by helping others grow as Christians. Sin can work on different parts of our personality and motivations—our pride, ego, selfishness, self-deception, self-reliance or dependencies—in remarkably subtle ways. The boundaries between the Five Stages are both blurry and porous because we are not objectively aware of the sinfulness of our hearts. They are easy to cross by drift and lack of care before leaders or anyone else notices but, once crossed, the new category easily becomes the governing paradigm for leadership behaviour and patterns (48).

On the way to prevent finding ourselves as leaders at the bottom of ‘the slippery slope’:

The critical factors in discerning abuse of power and position are thoroughgoing safeguarding standards, principles and policies, training, statutory checks and reporting mechanisms. It is crucial that these are robust enough that they can be applied to the most senior leaders. Being most at risk, they need the most protection by careful standards (88).

It is kinda like the need for ‘seatbelts’ (53). Unfortunately, ‘Christian leaders often have a bias towards relationships over regulations’ (52). So true—certainly from my experience of churches and Christian organisations. Early on I was taught the danger of building policies on the basis of good people working with best case scenarios. No! The effective seatbelt will assume not-always-good-people working with worst case scenarios. In a similar vein, a little phrase caught my eye: ‘a desire for reformability’ (140). It was like a mirror. It helped me see just how much this ‘desire’ motivates me—taking me back to the byline of those marriage enrichment retreats: making a good thing better. It is not good to be satisfied merely with the good in Christian leadership—and lose the ‘desire for reformability’. Again, this is too common, especially around issues like governance, the governance:management interface, human resources etc. 

The Wisdom

As regular readers know, this blog is a bit like my personal, searchable filing cabinet which I then make available to others, hoping to serve them with resources that help them unpack their way through life and leadership—with Jesus and with a heart for the peoples of the world. There is a lot of wisdom in these pages that I do not want to lose, so bear with me…

Most Christian leaders find that anxiety is a driver for their leadership practice at some point in their ministry (49).

The first, biggest and easiest step into abuse of leadership position commonly occurs when leaders use their informal power to try to increase their formal power, or otherwise to evade or avoid the legitimate constraints upon them … it shows they think it is more important for them to be empowered to lead than it is to be constrained by agreed principles and plural decision-making. At that point the door to manipulation is wide open (57).

The desire for power reveals an unbelief in Christ’s power and goodness; the need for control reveals some deeper lack of trust in God (66).

Self-serving leaders begin coercing people into supporting them by being winsome. They are charming when everyone is acquiescent, only revealing their true colours when challenged. Being pleasant is part of the pathology of control. If self-serving leaders are to build themselves up and undermine other people, it is vital for them to make themselves as agreeable and believable as possible (68).

DARVO. The aggressor Denies that anything is wrong; Attacks the challenger; Reverses Victim and Offender (76).

At the smaller level of a local church or organization, corruption of plural leadership becomes even more likely when the inner circle includes married couples. I am not suggesting that family members should never become leaders together … But when leadership structures are dominated by intimate family relationships, it can allow leaders to act with impunity, because decision-making can seldom be independent between them (86).

Behind the misuse of power are principalities and powers of darkness (94).

Manipulative leaders move from confidentiality to privacy and then to secrecy (138).

A crucial indicator of whether there is a soft-hearted and penitent attitude is someone’s first instinct. Is it to listen to victims, search the heart and seek objective external evaluation; to repent and make restitution? Or is it to self-defensively circle the wagons and come out all guns blazing? A crisis may have the silver lining of sifting the tender-hearted and repentant from the brutal (146).

When we cannot measure what is important, we are tempted to turn what we can measure into what is important … Self-serving leaders never define fruitfulness according to criteria they are unable to deliver (154).

After reflecting on ‘fruit’ referred to in New Testament passages (Phil 1; Heb 12; James 3; Luke 3 and Gal 5)—here is the final paragraph of the book:

This fruit removes the need to perform for approval and hence draws out the poison of the desire for power. It engenders a culture of vulnerability, weakness, openness and repentance, flowing from a deep appreciation of the grace of God to sinners. Rules and regulations cannot produce this. The antidote to a culture of self-promoting leaders is one where leaders—and everyone else—repent often and forgive often, delighting themselves in the Lord, praying and praising him for the glory of his wonderful grace. A culture, therefore, in which leaders can lead out of weakness, no longer needing to be impressive or having to prove themselves to receive praise and affirmation from people. Praise God, his grace is sufficient for us! (156)

The Bullets

No, it is not what you think! 

Honeysett’s book is full of lists, as bullet points. Normally such a feature disrupts the flow for me, but in this case they demonstrate just how much the author has soaked in this stuff. He leads an organization called Living Leadership and I suspect he has been reflecting on sad stories and gathering data for a long time. It certainly looks like it. There is so much practical help here.

The most helpful bullet points come in the final ‘What Next?’ section of the book (93-151): What Next for Victims and Survivors?; What Next for Whistle-blowers?; What Next for Leaders?; What Next for Churches?; and What Next for Cultures and Tribes?.

Here are some examples of topics that are targeted with bullets:

6 bullets: Factors that help victims understand if manipulation or abuse has happened (98-99)

12 bullets: Consequences of being a whistle-blower (106-107)

13 bullets: Questions leaders can ask to determine whether they have adequate safeguards (118)

12 bullets: Issues for organizations to explore that might reveal if a leader is abusive (132-134)

11 bullets: Policies that define good practice with governance (134-135)

16 bullets: Questions for cultures/tribes when exploring whether they enable abuse (146-148)

The Carey Scare

Twenty-five years ago, on my first day as principal of Carey Baptist College, I had a scare. Reading this book brought it to mind again. The previous principal (Brian Smith), whom I had known about all my life as we were both in families working in India, had retired. He left a thick manual on the desk for me, on how to be the principal. It was so kind of him. I felt out-of-my-depth, not the least because I had such minimal leadership experience to that point in my story.

On top of the manual Brian had placed a sticky note with a person’s name on it. Over the recent summer pastoral experience, it had become clear that this person was not suitable for pastoral leadership. Maybe in an ‘associate’ role, but not in what we used to refer to as a ‘sole’ pastoral role. It was my (first) task to tell him so, with others alongside me in the decision. I did the best I could, but not very well. He broke down in tears. Far deeper than those tears, he was crushed by the news. It was as if I had pronounced failure over his life. His heart had been set on being this sole pastor (an inadvisable phrase for all sorts of reasons!). 

I remember driving home and feeling, “Yikes, in just a few words, I have destroyed someone’s life”. My words had never had that kind of impact on anyone before. I was sobered—yes, even scared (and scarred)—by this power which I now seemed to have. I know that is an odd way of expressing it, but that is how I felt at the time. A few months later I stumbled across Max de Pree’s Leading Without Power and Joseph Badaracco’s Leading Quietly—which brought me some solace and guidance.

For all its wisdom, this book was also a bit of a scare for me. That’s OK. After all, the Bible is clear that there is a bad fear and a good fear—a scared variety as well as a sacred variety, if you like. I felt a bit of both…

nice chatting

Paul