Wolves, Sheep & Shepherds: How Churches Can Cultivate Healthy Leadership : Diane Langberg

Full-Text Transcript

As pastors and ministry leaders, how can we ensure that we do not slip into unhealthy patterns that cause harm to the people we serve?

Jason Daye
In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Diane Langberg. Diane is an internationally recognized psychologist with over 50 years of experience. She co-founded the Global Trauma Recovery Institute and served as the Chair of the Advisory Board of the American Association of Christian Counselors. She’s written a number of books, including her latest, entitled When The Church Harms God’s People. Together, Diane and I look at some of the warning signs of unhealthy ministry leadership. Diane also shares three distinct calls that every shepherd needs to embrace in order to honor God and serve their people well. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to yet another insightful episode of FrontStage Backstage. I’m your host, Jason Daye. Each and every week, I have the privilege and the honor of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader, and we dive into a conversation all in an effort to help you and ministry leaders just like you embrace healthy, sustainable rhythms so that you can really thrive both in life and leadership. We are proud to be a part of the Pastor Serve Network. Not only do we have a conversation every single week, but we also create an entire toolkit that complements the conversation. In that toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources, including a Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. In the growth guide, you’ll find insights that are pulled from the conversation, as well as questions for reflection. We encourage you to work through these questions yourself and with the team at your local church and really see how this conversation connects with your particular context. So, you can find that toolkit at PastorServe.org/network. We at Pastor Serve love walking alongside pastors and ministry leaders and if you’d like to learn more about how you can have a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches, you can find more information at PastorServe.org/freesession. So, I encourage you to check that out as well. Now, if you’re joining us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up and take a moment to drop your name and the name of your church in the comments below. We love getting to know our audience better, and we will be praying for you and for your church. If you’re joining us on your favorite podcast platform, please be sure to follow, and if you’re on YouTube, subscribe so you do not miss out on any of these great conversations. I’m excited about today’s conversation as I welcome Dr. Diane Langberg to the show. Diane, welcome.

Diane Langberg
Thank you. It’s good to be here again.

Jason Daye
Yes, good to have you with us again. Now, the last time you were with us, that episode actually, and I shared this with you before we jumped on, is one of our most watched and most listened to episodes that we’ve had on the show. So I’m super excited to have you back, Diane, and we’ll have a link in the toolkit to that other show. So, if you missed it, those of you are watching, if you missed it, you can check it out as well. But welcome back. Super excited to be diving into a conversation today. You’ve recently released a new book, When Church Harms God’s People. You’ve spent your life, Diane, really, your professional life, really focusing on… you’re a trauma scholar, you’re a counselor, and you’ve invested a lot of time in helping the church understand how ministry leaders and pastors can cause harm. You focus on spiritual abuse, but you do it all from within the church, Diane, which I love. You’re not an outsider who’s throwing rocks. You are someone who loves Christ, loves Christ’s Church, and loves ministry leaders, but understands that there are challenges and people do get harmed even in Christian communities. We know this. So you’ve given your life to helping expose that and helping the church get to a healthy place. One thing I’d like to talk about, Diane, just to start off this conversation, is the majority, the vast majority, of pastors and ministry leaders who go into ministry, they feel called into ministry, and they’re entering ministry to help people, to bring healing to people, and not to harm people. Yet we see that ministry leaders and pastors there are some that become unhealthy, cause harm, and become abusive. So, Diane, I would love it if you would for a moment, just kind of talk us through that. How do leaders slip into a place of unhealth and begin to perpetuate harm and abuse?

Diane Langberg
I think one of the first things I would make note of is that oftentimes, we go into something wanting to do well, wanting to help people and all those things, but we do not know ourselves very well. So I think that there are oftentimes leaders, not just in the church certainly, but in other places, where you have a position of authority, and all of those kinds of things that go with it. What you aren’t aware of is how there are twisted ways in you that you think about those things, that you use them, or that you cover up things in order to preserve them. I mean, pastors happen to be fallen creatures, just like the rest of us, they live in a fallen world, and some of them come from very fallen families. Many of them have not really looked at that. It’s not usually part of going to seminary, but you’re the instrument, so it matters. You do damage to yourself, and you do damage to other people if those things don’t happen. So I think a lot of it is just people go in, and I think there are a very small number of wolves who go in to eat sheep. But those are not the majority, they’re the minority, and the majority goes in to care for the sheep and doesn’t realize they’re stepping on them, kicking them, or really hurting them in other ways.

Jason Daye
Yeah, one of the things that you write about in When The Church Harms God’s People, your newest book, is this idea of self-deception that ministry leaders and pastors can experience. Can you talk to us a little bit about the idea of self-deception and how we can maybe be more aware of those places where, as a ministry leader, we might be deceiving ourselves?

Diane Langberg
Well, again, I think we have to start with the fact that there isn’t a human being who doesn’t do that. We are deceived people, and we deceive ourselves, not just other people. We often deceive ourselves in ways that protect us from looking at things that aren’t good about us because we don’t want them to be true. So, I think that that is not understood, that people are just self-deceptive. The Scripture tells us we deceive ourselves. So, being a pastor does not make that go away. You know, I’ve worked with a lot of pastors, it’s a hard work. There’s pressure, and there’s people wanting you to be perfect, which you never are, and there’s all kinds of things that make it very difficult, and that’s when those things we have not dealt with rise up in us. We think we’re doing the right thing or whatever, but what we’re actually trying to do is protect ourselves from the hurt, the pain, from lies, from exhaustion, and from all kinds of things. I don’t think that, by and large, pastors, before going into the work or while in the work, are very much invited to look at themselves and have safe places to do that where somebody understands what pastoring is like and how difficult it is, and understands human nature really well. That’s not very often that that happens.

Jason Daye
Yeah, talk to us a little more about those safe spaces and how those might be made available, perhaps, to pastors in greater ways.

Diane Langberg
Well, there have been some exceptions, and they are rare, sadly, but I think most pastors who are struggling or who are already doing harm to people, don’t know what to do about it, and have a conscience about it go to people like me in the sense of, I’m not a pastor, and I’m not in all these denominations, you know? So they want to talk to somebody freely and safely, which they should be able to do, but the more you are in leadership, the less that pool is of people. So I think that’s something that the church at large and seminaries really need to think about. I mean, yes, pastors need to know good theology. That’s absolutely necessary. But they also need to know who they are, where they’re weak, how they can get help, and what help they need before they even start pastoring. Some of them that I’ve worked with have come from horrible homes of sexual abuse, rage, and all kinds of things. They love God, and they want to serve Him, but all of that has shaped them, and they don’t know because there’s nobody helping them see it.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. Those safe spaces, and as you said, somewhere where they can feel free to unburden themselves and process through it without the fear of the repercussions that being honest and processing through those things might have on their career or they might get blacklisted by their denomination, or that sort of thing, right? As we look at the life of a pastor, one of the things that you really encourage and believe, obviously, is that pastors can be Christ-centered shepherds. You have written as well in this book about some different ways that pastors can think about their call, right? And what does that call look like for them in a way that helps them be healthy so they do not slip into some of these other ways of perpetuating abuse and harm? Can you talk to us about some of those characteristics or some of those calls, as you say in your book?

Diane Langberg
Four calls for pastors. One of them is the call to limitation, and when you are in charge of something, when you’re the head honcho, when you’re the big helper, or whatever you are in that role, the call to limitation doesn’t come. Nobody wants you to stop. They aren’t asking about you. They aren’t asking about how you’re doing. They’re not asking about how you’re carrying the burdens that you carry. They’re not asking about your marriage or your child who’s being difficult or anything. You don’t want to go any place with those things that have to do with the church because things will happen that aren’t good for the church or you. So those things get ignored, diminished, or pushed aside, and it’s really very sad. I think also, it’s very easy as a pastor to lose sight of the fact that the work that you’re doing has to do with an internal kingdom, not external. It’s not like the big churches are going to go to heaven and the little churches aren’t going to get to come. The numbers aren’t going to be counted. It’s the heart and the life. I think particularly in this era of which I’ve seen happen and grown up a lot is the big, big, big churches. When you have that kind of pressure, what you do is make choices to protect the system, and the system does the same thing. So if you as a pastor are suffering, you don’t tell anybody because you’re in such a huge position, and there are so many people at stake in all of those things. But of course, eventually, if you don’t tell anybody, other things happen as the fruit of that. So it’s damaging to you, could be damaging to your family, and it ends up, as we’ve seen, in terrible damage to the congregations. So shepherds – pastors – are also just sheep, and we don’t prepare for that in the system. We don’t allow for that. We don’t make it safe to be just a sheep. I really think that the system itself, which means people, need to look at that if not more than that. They’re still sheep and they have an internal kingdom that God would have them keep holy and for Him alone and have that govern what they do externally. Not how many people are in the pews, not how much money is brought in, or all those things that we seem to measure and want now. I think also one of the things I talk about in that section is the call to crucifixion. I never met anybody who wanted to die like that. I don’t think Jesus wanted to die like that, frankly. The idea of working in a way where we allow crucifixion in our life, we allow things that make us feel smaller, or make us feel afraid, or show something that we don’t want anybody to see, and all of those things. But those things can’t be healed outside of a cross. We can’t just tell them to go out of our heads or whatever we try to do. So I think that we are afraid to bow in that way. The last piece is humility. How do you maintain humility with a church full of 1000s of people and millions of dollars? I mean, really. That’s success. Only it’s not. Not spiritually. It may be, but it necessarily isn’t. So the humility of being just a lamb, that’s all we are. I don’t care what you do. That’s who you are, who is to love and obey Christ, period. If you don’t do anything else in life, that’s enough. We have all of these external things, we build them, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t do that, but I am saying that that doesn’t make it the church and doesn’t make it Christ-like. The church is people of God who worship Him and follow Him. So you can have 20 people or you can have 20,000, and the success is not in the numbers, it’s not in the money, and it’s not in the fame. The success is in Christ-likeness, and that alone. That includes when nobody’s looking.

Jason Daye
Right, that’s good. That’s good. So the call to limitation, the call to crucifixion, the call to humility, and in all of those, it seems like the enemy is trying to, with pastors and ministry leaders, push them to, instead of limitation, push them to excess. Push them to, hey, do as much as you can. You’re doing this for the Kingdom and all these types of things. So how can we as pastors and ministry leaders balance our lives in such a way that we’re paying attention to those calls, paying attention to what it means for us to be humble, and what it means for us to limit ourselves and pull back on some things?

Diane Langberg
Well, part of what you need is some people in your life who will tell you the truth and who don’t need you to be in the pulpit and be perfectly fine no matter what happens. We have a counseling practice here, and many of us see pastors, and they come basically saying, I’m not doing well, and if I don’t do this, I’m going to hurt people. Fortunately, some of them come before that, and a lot of them come because they did hurt people and it’s a mess. But that has to be part of life because I don’t care how big the church is, how smart you are, how much money you bring in, or how much praise you get, you’re just a dumb sheep. That’s all you are. Those things happen partly because other sheep are hungry for a leader, and you’re not it. Jesus is it. You’re the shepherd that leads them to the one who is it, to Jesus. We’ve gotten that mixed up. We praise size, money, fame, and all of those things. If we praise those things and say that’s the best in terms of ministry, Jesus was a failure. I mean, not only that, he got himself killed for goodness sake. I mean, he didn’t make a huge church or anything like that. He had a few followers. Changed the whole world. But he didn’t match what we seek these days.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. You mentioned systems and how the systems kind of impact this and as you write in When The Church Harms God’s People, you write about this idea of how our communities of faith can be intentional in becoming places of healing, and places where people aren’t wounded. That plays into not just the leader, but kind of the systems that are perpetuating that. So talk to us a little bit, Diane, about some things that we can pay attention to that can help our local churches become places where people are healed rather than harmed.

Diane Langberg
Well, part of that, of course, what you’ve certainly said, depends on individuals, not the system, and not even the group. I mean, Jesus had a Judas. He wasn’t a good shepherd. So I think that we have come in some way to worship the system rather than the Christ and we protect it. We will lie, we gather money, we gather fame, and all those things. But the fact is, we’re just a dumb sheep who has found Christ, and as He changes us, loves us, and teaches us, we want to bring other dumb sheep, and we have to be like him for that to happen. That’s our main goal. Not them coming, not how many of them came, not how many of them stayed, and not how famous we are, or anything like that. Our main goal is to be like Jesus Christ. Frankly, if you look at his life, his death, and the numbers he left behind to change the world, he was a failure. He didn’t leave a huge church. Our Christ-likeness is how we are to do the system, and it has to be the first thing, not the second thing, or the words that we use for what we’re doing to make the bigger system, or whatever. God’s not going to ask us, when we face him, how big our church was. He’s going to ask us if we loved Him and if we obeyed him, that’s it.

Jason Daye
Yeah, Diane, for a pastor or ministry leader who might be wrestling with this themselves and feeling like, you know what, I’ve been kind of caught up in some things. Maybe I have wounded some others. Maybe I’ve stepped on some sheep, as you say. What would you recommend for them as some first steps in kind of processing through this and finding a safe space or finding some help and getting to a place of health?

Diane Langberg
Well, I would first tell them to drop the maybe. We hurt each other in marriage. We hurt each other in parenting. Human beings who are sinners hurt other people. So to even wonder if you did or whatever, you still haven’t figured it out yet. But I think I would encourage pastors in those positions to be willing to find a place or someone who has worked or walked alongside pastors, not to help them build things up, not to help them make money, not to help them to have fame, none of those things, but to help them follow Christ, whether someone’s looking or not. Whether that’s a counselor, another pastor, somebody that they had teaching from in their schooling, or something like that. But it needs to be someone who you know well enough and trust, who will walk with you and whose mission for themselves and then for you is Christ-likeness, period. End. That’s pretty rare, I’m afraid.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s great. Diane, as we kind of wind down this conversation, is there anything else that you would like to share with pastors, reflecting back on When The Church Harms God’s People, that you’d like to share with pastors as a way to encourage them, to encourage their churches, their communities, how they can lead into a place of healing and wholeness?

Diane Langberg
Well, the first thing I would say is not very encouraging, I suppose, and I think it’s obvious. But I have spent over 50 years as a psychologist, and I have had my heart broken by things in churches, leadership, and all of that, more times than I can count. I sat with people who had their lives broken, not just their hearts, from some of those things. Part of what I want them to see is the level of power that they have. When you have a church, it doesn’t even have to be a really big one, though. That for sure would be this way. You have so much pressure. Do this, do that, or the money isn’t coming in. There are not enough people in the pews. Whatever. The pressure is on you and that’s part of where humans start to slide. We want to meet the quotas of whatever we’re expected to be as a pastor, but I would encourage them to know that the most important thing they need to see is their identity as a lamb. It never goes away. It doesn’t matter how big your church is, it doesn’t matter how many degrees you have, and it doesn’t matter how famous you are. That’s all you are and if you do not follow your Shepherd, the wolves will come. These days they don’t look like Wolf wolves, but they’re wolves, and they will come and they will hurt you, your family, your church, and it’ll hurt the name of Christ. So to remember who you really are, which is, I hate to tell you, not very much. Doesn’t matter how big the room is that’s filled with people. That doesn’t measure who you are. Your love and obedience to Jesus Christ measures who you are and will measure you before God himself. That’s the measure and it’s not ever going to change. It isn’t the size, it isn’t the fame, and it isn’t the money. It isn’t any of the things that we value. But the other piece about that is that in that place, you will find a deeper awareness of his love for you and his care for you. Sit back and read some of the Gospels and his conversations just with those who followed him, his disciples, and how he was always caring for them and teaching them. He wants to do that with you. In doing that with him, we know to talk about him many, many centuries later, and that’s what you want to be able to do, is to talk about him in ways that are full of truth and love, having met him that way yourself, first.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. I love that, Diane. I appreciate your heart for pastors and ministry leaders, your heart for the church, and all the work that you’ve done over the years. I’m so grateful for the opportunity we’ve had to sit down and talk again and to hear from your heart. I want to encourage everyone who’s watching, you can find more information about Diane, and her ministry, and then also links to her newest book, When The Church Harms God’s People, in the toolkit for this episode. You can find that PastorServe.org/network. Diane, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you with us, sister. Once again, thank you for all the work that you do for the church and your heart for pastors and ministry leaders.

Diane Langberg
Thank you for having me.

Jason Daye
Thank you. God bless you.

Diane Langberg
You too.

Jason Daye
Now, before you go, I want to remind you of an incredible free resource that our team puts together every single week to help you and your team dig more deeply and maximize the conversation that we just had. This is the weekly toolkit that we provide. And we understand that it’s one thing to listen or watch an episode, but it’s something entirely different to actually take what you’ve heard, what you’ve watched, what you’ve seen, and apply it to your life and to your ministry. You see, FrontStage BackStage is more than just a podcast or YouTube show about ministry leadership, we are a complete resource to help train you and your entire ministry team as you seek to grow and develop in life in ministry. Every single week, we provide a weekly toolkit which has all types of tools in it to help you do just that. Now you can find this at PastorServe.org/network. That’s PastorServe.org/network. And there you will find all of our shows, all of our episodes and all of our weekly toolkits. Now inside the toolkit are several tools including video links and audio links for you to share with your team. There are resource links to different resources and tools that were mentioned in the conversation, and several other tools, but the greatest thing is the ministry leaders growth guide. Our team pulls key insights and concepts from every conversation with our amazing guests. And then we also create engaging questions for you and your team to consider and process, providing space for you to reflect on how that episode’s topic relates to your unique context, at your local church, in your ministry and in your life. Now you can use these questions in your regular staff meetings to guide your conversation as you invest in the growth of your ministry leaders. You can find the weekly toolkit at PastorServe.org/network We encourage you to check out that free resource. Until next time, I’m Jason Daye encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. God bless.