When Leadership Makes Truth Too Expensive

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There are sins in leadership that announce themselves loudly. Others can hide behind a pulpit, a growing church, a gifted communicator, a successful ministry, a respected name, and years of apparently fruitful work.

Domineering leadership is one of them.

It may be called strong leadership. Decisiveness. High standards. Vision. Intensity. A demanding personality. Even passion for truth. But Scripture has another category for a shepherd who uses position, personality, authority, intimidation, anger, humiliation, or fear to control the people Christ has entrusted to him.

Peter tells elders to shepherd God’s flock willingly and eagerly, “not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:2–3, BSB).

That is not a suggestion for particularly difficult pastors. It is part of the job description.

And we had better take it seriously.

Domineering pastoral leadership does more than wound people. It can silence the very people God has placed around a leader to help him see reality. Once telling the truth becomes expensive, people begin editing what they say. When that happens long enough, the leader may continue preaching, leading meetings, casting vision, making decisions, and receiving reports while becoming progressively less able to see what his own leadership is actually doing to people.

The tragedy is not merely that the sheep are being hurt.

The shepherd may eventually become one of the last people in the church who knows how badly.

When the Warning Comes Twice

The recent proceedings involving pastor Burk Parsons make this especially sobering.

This article is not an attempt to retry his case. The Presbyterian Church in America’s judicial process has done its work, including an appeal that overturned one finding and reduced the sanction imposed. Those distinctions matter and should be reported accurately.

But another fact matters too.

Parsons had acknowledged in 2019 that he had led people in an unnecessarily harsh manner and received an admonition. Years later, additional complaints resulted in extensive proceedings involving more than forty-five hours and fifty-five witnesses. The denomination’s highest judicial body ultimately allowed core findings concerning harsh and domineering leadership to stand.

That chronology should cause every church leader to ask a difficult question:

What should we expect repentance from domineering leadership to look like seven years later?

Acknowledgment matters. Admonition matters. Confession matters. But if substantially similar fruit appears again years after an earlier acknowledgment, the Church cannot simply ask whether the leader once admitted that something was wrong.

It must eventually ask:

Where is the fruit in keeping with repentance?

One specification from the earlier proceeding makes the question especially relevant to leadership. Ruling elders were described as being discouraged from expressing their true opinions, while some people in Parsons’s leadership orbit were described as intimidated, bullied, or afraid.

Don’t race past those words because this happened somewhere else to someone you don’t know.

Discouraged from expressing their true opinions.

That is not merely a relational problem.

It is a reality problem.

If people learn that giving a leader unwelcome information carries a relational price, they adapt. They become careful. They choose their words. They wait for the right moment. They leave something out. They tell the leader 80 percent of what they know, then 60, and eventually some tell him nothing at all.

The Session still meets. Staff meetings continue. Reports still arrive. People still nod. The pastor still asks, “Does anybody have any concerns?” The room is quiet. He interprets the silence as agreement.

Everyone else understands it as survival.

People begin editing reality when telling the truth becomes too expensive.

Research Has a Name for This

Organizational researchers have been studying this mechanism for decades.

Organizational scholar Elizabeth Wolfe Morrison calls the withholding of potentially useful concerns, information, ideas, or opinions employee silence. Her major reviews of the research describe something leaders should find unsettling: people often possess information that could help an organization recognize and correct problems, yet choose not to communicate it upward. Leadership behavior, power differences, relationships, and whether those receiving the information appear open to hearing it can all influence that decision.¹

That means silence is not evidence that nothing is wrong.

Sometimes silence means people have concluded that speaking is unwise.

Leadership researchers Angela Xu, Raymond Loi, and Long Lam found that abusive supervision predicted employee silence through emotional exhaustion.² And the effect does not stop with the person directly mistreated. Researchers Chunhui Cao, Bin Ding, and Lu Yu reported in 2026 that employees who merely witnessed coworkers experiencing abusive supervision became fearful themselves. That fear led to self-protective communication, including defensive silence.³

Think about that inside a church.

The pastor does not have to intimidate everyone.

Everyone merely has to watch what happens to the person who tells him the truth.

One elder gets humiliated in the meeting. One staff member disappears shortly after challenging leadership. One volunteer is characterized as difficult. One associate pastor raises a concern and gradually finds himself outside the circle.

Everybody else is learning.

This is how truth becomes expensive without anyone ever announcing the price.

The Shepherd Who Cannot Hear His Sheep

Every leader needs Witnesses for Reality—people sufficiently close to observe what he cannot see and sufficiently independent to tell him what he does not want to hear. But it is not enough for a leader to have Witnesses for Reality.

He must protect their willingness to testify.

If an elder knows disagreement will be interpreted as disloyalty, you may still have an elder on paper, but you may no longer have an independent witness. If a staff member knows bringing bad news will produce anger, she eventually learns to sanitize bad news. If an associate pastor knows challenging the senior pastor may affect his future, he may begin calling prudence what is actually fear.

And if a spouse goes home after a church meeting and says, “Please don’t say anything. You’ll only make it worse,” the organization has already learned something about its leader that the leader desperately needs to know.

Eventually an entire unofficial operating system forms around one man’s character: Don’t tell him yet. Let me bring it up. Don’t challenge him in front of everyone. You know how he gets. Just let this one go. That’s just Pastor.

No policy created that system.

The leader did.

The organization is no longer merely doing its work. It is managing its leader. And perhaps most dangerously, the leader may have absolutely no idea.

This Is Not a Personality Problem

Some personalities are naturally more forceful than others. In the DISC Model of Human Behavior—a framework describing predictable behavioral tendencies in areas such as pace, priorities, communication, and response to environment—a Dominant personality may move quickly, confront directly, value results, dislike delay, and press hard toward objectives.

Those characteristics can accomplish enormous good when governed by mature character. They can become dangerous when they are not.

But personality must never become an alibi for sin.

Personality may explain why domination comes naturally. It cannot excuse why domination remains.

Explanation is not exoneration.

A highly Dominant leader can become extraordinarily gentle. I have seen it. The Holy Spirit is not constrained by someone’s behavioral style.

The issue is character.

Christ does not call a naturally forceful man to stop being strong. He calls him to bring his strength so completely under the lordship of Christ that his strength becomes useful for protecting sheep rather than crushing them.

There is an enormous difference between strength used for the sheep and strength used on the sheep.

Christian leadership requires the first.

Peter expressly forbids the second.

This Is Not a Small Problem

Burk Parsons is not the reason we need to talk about this.

He is one reason we are talking about it now.

Even if we restrict ourselves to relatively recent cases in which substantial investigations, institutional findings, safeguarding reviews, or judicial proceedings exist, familiar names begin accumulating: Mark Driscoll. James MacDonald. Steve Timmis. Jonathan Fletcher. Mike Pilavachi. Burk Parsons.⁴

These men are not interchangeable, and neither are the allegations, findings, processes, or severity of the conduct associated with them. Fairness requires us to preserve those distinctions. The point is not to place six men in a rhetorical lineup and pronounce them equally guilty of identical offenses.

The point is that we have heard this melody before.

Across documented cases we repeatedly encounter some combination of concentrated authority, harshness, intimidation, control, wounded people, difficulty speaking honestly, leaders who become hard to confront, and organizations that recognize the seriousness only after considerable damage has accumulated.

Different churches, denominations, theological traditions, countries, governance structures, and decades.

The names change.

The sheep keep getting hurt.

And these are merely the cases that became visible.

Paul wrote to Timothy, “The sins of some men are obvious, going ahead of them to judgment, but the sins of others do not surface until later. In the same way, good deeds are obvious, and even the ones that are not cannot remain hidden” (1 Timothy 5:24–25, BSB).

Paul’s point should not be stretched into a promise that every hidden sin will become a public scandal in this life. But it gives us an important category: visibility and reality are not the same thing. Some sins are obvious. Others surface later.

And some pastoral sins can remain largely invisible precisely because the people who know about them have learned that speaking is costly.

For every nationally known pastor whose story eventually produces an investigation, report, podcast, resignation, trial, or denominational proceeding, how many pastors will never become famous enough for anyone outside their congregation to know their names? How many wounded staff members simply resign? How many elders quietly rotate off? How many families transfer churches without telling anyone the real reason? How many people decide that enduring the pastor is simply part of being faithful to God?

How many sheep are bleeding where nobody is counting?

A 2026 Bethel University doctoral study by ministry-leadership researcher Jonathon Hansel examines precisely what can happen when congregants report domineering pastoral leadership and church elders minimize or dismiss their concerns. Hansel examines institutional betrayal—the additional injury that can occur when the institution trusted to protect people fails to respond protectively when concerns are raised.⁵

The progression is devastatingly simple:

Leader harms the sheep → sheep speaks → institution minimizes → sheep is wounded again.

Domineering leadership is not a small problem.

We may simply be counting the explosions while ignoring all the rooms already filling with gas.

God Takes This More Seriously Than We Do

This may be where the modern Church needs to recover some holy fear.

Ezekiel 34 is not comfortable reading for shepherds—and it should not be.

God looks upon shepherds who feed themselves while neglecting the flock. The weak have not been strengthened. The sick have not been healed. The injured have not been bound up. The strays have not been brought back. Instead, “you have ruled them with force and cruelty” (Ezekiel 34:4, BSB).

Notice what concerns God. He sees not merely what the shepherds did, but what happened to the sheep because of the way the shepherds led. There are weak sheep, sick sheep, injured sheep, scattered sheep, and lost sheep—and shepherds who were supposed to care for them have instead ruled them with force.

God’s response is not, Let’s get these shepherds some leadership coaching.

He says:

“Behold, I am against the shepherds.” (Ezekiel 34:10, BSB)

Read that again if you lead God’s people.

I am against the shepherds.

There may be few more terrifying sentences a Christian leader could hear.

God then says He will demand His flock from them, remove their ability to feed themselves from the flock, and rescue His sheep from their mouths.

Their mouths.

The shepherds—the men who were supposed to feed the sheep—had become something from which the sheep needed to be rescued.

That is how seriously God takes shepherds who rule His people with force and cruelty.

Pastor, elder, ministry leader: do not presume upon the patience of God because your ministry is still functioning.

A full sanctuary does not mean God approves of how you treat people. An effective sermon does not erase cruelty. Conversions do not sanctify intimidation. A successful capital campaign does not excuse bullying. A growing platform does not transform domination into leadership. And the apparent blessing of God upon something you have done is not God’s certification of everything you are.

There are no maverick molecules.

God sees the meeting nobody else attended. He heard the conversation nobody recorded. He knows why that staff member resigned. He knows what the elder was afraid to say. He saw the woman crying in her car in the church parking lot after everyone else had gone home. He knows what her husband heard that night. He knows what their children watched happen to their parents.

And He knows what you did with His sheep.

Teachers Will Be Judged More Strictly

James gives us another sentence that should make anyone who teaches God’s people tremble: “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1, BSB).

Leadership in Christ’s Church is not merely privilege with increased influence. It is stewardship with increased accountability. The microphone increases accountability. The title increases accountability. The authority increases accountability. The number of people affected increases accountability.

Therefore, a leader should never interpret God’s patience as God’s indifference.

God will not be mocked (Galatians 6:7).

If you have repeatedly intimidated, humiliated, manipulated, frightened, silenced, or dominated people entrusted to your care, the most important question is not whether your church knows.

And if people are coming to you saying that you have done some of these things—even if you cannot see it—or if senior leaders, elders, colleagues, or people who love you are trying to help you see a pattern you genuinely do not believe is there, do not make your inability to see it your defense.

Fall on your face before God and ask Him to open your eyes, because at that moment one possibility you must seriously consider is that you are blind.

There is an old proverb:

“If one man calls you an ass, consider it. If five men call you an ass, go buy a saddle.”

Its precise origin is uncertain, but its wisdom is useful here. Scripture gives us considerably more reason than a proverb to take repeated witnesses seriously. When independent people keep describing substantially the same thing, the wise leader does not keep explaining why every witness is wrong. He begins asking whether God, in His mercy, has surrounded him with enough corroboration to show him something about himself he has been unwilling—or unable—to see.

If five people are telling you there is a saddle in your future, Christian humility does not demand that you agree with them immediately.

It demands that you become very, very interested in why they all see the same animal.

There is something even more frightening than being blind.

It is being repeatedly offered sight and refusing it.

God knows.

And if your first instinct at that sentence is still to prepare your defense, you may already be demonstrating part of the problem.

“But I Apologized”

Good. Perhaps that is where repentance begins.

But acknowledgment is not transformation.

An apology does not automatically restore character. Admonition does not automatically produce repentance. Tears do not prove transformation. Stepping away temporarily does not prove transformation. Completing a restoration program does not prove transformation.

Jesus taught us to look at fruit. John the Baptist said, “Produce fruit, then, in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:8, BSB).

So where domineering leadership has been established, the question eventually must become:

Where is the fruit in keeping with repentance?

If your sin was domination, we should eventually see something more than less domination. We should see its opposite: humility, gentleness, teachability, patience, an increasing willingness to be corrected, a decreasing need to control outcomes, an ability to hear criticism without punishing the critic, a desire to understand the experience of people you wounded, and a willingness to hear their account without correcting their account.

We should see a readiness to say, “I did that. It was wrong. I sinned against you. Will you forgive me?” No if, no but, no explanation of what they did first, no reminder of how stressful that season was, no appeal to all the good your ministry accomplished, and no entourage explaining what you really meant.

Repentance does not negotiate with the evidence. It bows.

The Leader Remembers an Incident. The Sheep May Carry a Wound.

One reason domineering leaders may underestimate their sin is that they experienced the event from the powerful side of the relationship.

For the pastor, it may have been a fifteen-minute conversation.

For the staff member, it may have changed the next fifteen years.

The pastor remembers raising his voice; the other person remembers being frightened. The pastor remembers correcting someone; the other person remembers humiliation. The pastor remembers “a difficult meeting”; the elder remembers realizing that disagreeing with the pastor could cost him the relationship.

The pastor moved on to his next appointment.

The sheep went home carrying what happened.

Imagine a family driving home from church without the usual conversation. Dad’s hands are tight around the steering wheel. Mom has been crying but does not want the children to notice. One of the children finally asks, “Why is Pastor mad at you?”

The pastor who caused the wound may already be eating lunch.

Years later, that child may still remember the ride home.

Some people leave a church but carry the pastor with them for years. They hear his voice when another leader corrects them. They tense when a pastor asks to meet. They distrust authority they once respected. Some begin wondering whether the problem really was them. Some withdraw, stop serving, or stop attending church altogether. And some children watch what happens to their parents and quietly learn something about Christianity that Christ never taught them.

There are walking wounded all around us. Some are still sitting in our sanctuaries. Some are sitting in someone else’s. Some are no longer sitting in one at all.

These are not collateral damage from successful ministry. They are people for whom Christ died.

When Shepherds Eat Their Wounded

There is something particularly perverse about what can happen next. The person wounded by leadership finally speaks about the wound—and the organization treats the speaking as the problem.

Why are you being divisive? Why can’t you forgive? Why are you attacking the pastor? Think about everything God has accomplished through his ministry. You need to examine your own heart.

Sometimes the most spiritually mature thing the wounded person has done in months is tell the truth.

The shepherd wounded a sheep. The sheep bleats.

And leadership punishes the bleating.

These leaders eat their wounded.

That must stop.

Because the wounded person may not merely be someone who needs care. He may be a Witness for Reality. His pain may be information. Her fear may be information. Their departure may be information. Staff turnover may be information. Repeated descriptions of harshness may be information.

One complaint may be mistaken. Two may be unrelated. Several may require investigation. Christian wisdom does not automatically convict a leader because several people dislike him, and allegations must be examined fairly. But neither does wisdom permit us to explain away every account individually until we have successfully made the pattern disappear.

When similar accounts accumulate independently across people, relationships, departments, or years, wisdom asks whether reality is trying to tell us something.

That is Corroboration of Reality.

And when corroboration keeps arriving while a leader keeps insisting there is nothing to see, the problem may no longer be lack of evidence.

The problem may be the leader’s unwillingness to become knowable.

Against God

David’s confession after grievous sin contains words that can initially sound strange: “Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight” (Psalm 51:4, BSB).

David had plainly sinned against human beings. Uriah was dead. Bathsheba had been terribly wronged. A family and a nation would live with consequences. David was not denying the human victims.

He was finally seeing the ultimate magnitude of his sin.

I did this before God.

That is where repentance from domineering Christian leadership eventually must arrive—not I handled some people poorly, my leadership style was too intense, some people experienced me as harsh, or I made mistakes.

But:

I sinned against people Christ entrusted to me, and in doing so I sinned against God.

If that is you, there is hope. Christ still saves sinners. The blood of Christ is sufficient for domineering pastors too.

But grace does not require us to rename sin so repentance hurts less.

Grace allows us to name it completely because Christ is sufficient even for that.

Repentance May Change What You Want

There is another question we rarely ask. Why is restoration to leadership so often the destination? Why does the conversation so quickly become, “When can he preach again?” Why must the man return to the pulpit, regain the title, or assume that restoration to Christ means restoration to office?

It does not.

Forgiveness is one question. Fellowship is another. Trust is another. Qualification for shepherding responsibility is another.

We should stop collapsing them.

The flock does not exist to provide a fallen shepherd with an opportunity to demonstrate that he has changed. The shepherding office exists for the good of the flock.

Perhaps one of the strongest evidences that a domineering leader has finally begun to comprehend what he did is that getting his leadership position back becomes one of the least important things on his mind.

Imagine hearing this instead:

I did this. I did it to people Christ loves. I cannot undo it. I have asked their forgiveness. I want to make right whatever can still be made right. I will spend whatever years God gives me becoming the kind of man who would never treat His people that way again. Whether I ever lead again is no longer my concern.

Now we are seeing something different—not image rehabilitation, career restoration, or damage control.

Brokenness.

There is no shortage of room in the Kingdom for broken men. There must be no room in shepherding leadership for men who refuse to be broken.

Restoration Does Not Require Re-Entrustment

Christians must be people of forgiveness because we believe the Gospel. We must never create a category of sinner beyond the reach of Christ. A truly repentant domineering leader is our brother, not our permanent enemy. We should want his holiness, his marriage, his family, his fellowship with Christ, and his usefulness to the Kingdom to flourish.

But usefulness to the Kingdom does not require return to pastoral office.

A man can be forgiven without being re-entrusted with a flock. He can be loved without being returned to authority. He can be restored to fellowship without being restored to leadership.

And where a shepherd has demonstrated a repeated pattern of domination—particularly after previous correction—the burden should not fall upon wounded sheep to prove why he must stay out. Those charged with protecting the flock must ask a different question:

Why should we ever again place Christ’s sheep under this man’s authority?

That is not cruelty.

That is stewardship.

Forgiveness does not require us to pretend the past did not happen. Grace does not require us to gamble with somebody else’s sheep. And love for a repentant former leader does not require giving him another flock upon which to demonstrate his repentance.

The Church can extend extravagant grace to the man while exercising extraordinary care for the sheep.

We are commanded to do both.

Perhaps Nobody Complains Because You Trained Them Not To

Now bring this home—not to Burk Parsons, Mark Driscoll, James MacDonald, Steve Timmis, Jonathan Fletcher, Mike Pilavachi, or the famous pastor whose story eventually became a headline.

To you.

What does it cost someone to disagree with you? What happens in your face when someone tells you something you do not want to hear? What happens afterward to people who challenge you? Do they remain close? Do they continue receiving opportunities?

Can an associate tell you, “I think you were wrong,” without spending the next three days wondering whether he damaged his future? Can your elders disagree publicly? Can your spouse tell you that the church experiences you differently than you experience yourself? Can a twenty-four-year-old staff member correct you? Can the person with the least organizational power in the room tell the person with the most power in the room what everyone else in the room already knows?

And when someone finally finds the courage to tell you that you hurt him, what do you investigate first—his heart, or yours?

You may say, “Nobody has ever told me I’m domineering.”

That may be comforting.

Or it may be terrifying.

Perhaps nobody complains because you have trained them not to.

And if people have told you—if several people have told you—and your explanation continues to be that every one of them misunderstood you, was too sensitive, resisted your leadership, had an agenda, was spiritually immature, or simply could not handle strong leadership, it may be time to stop explaining the witnesses.

Go look for the saddle.

Make Truth Cheap

The answer is not weak leadership, indecisiveness, allowing every complaint to govern the church, assuming every accusation is true, or abandoning legitimate authority.

The answer is Christlike authority—strong enough to lead, humble enough to listen, secure enough to be corrected, and gentle enough that truth does not need armor before entering the room.

Make truth cheap.

Reward the person who brings bad news. Thank the elder who disagrees. Ask one more question before defending yourself. When somebody says you frightened him, resist explaining why he should not have been frightened. When several people independently describe the same behavior, investigate the pattern before investigating their motives.

Ask the people closest to you questions whose answers might hurt: What is it like to be on the other side of me? When am I hardest to tell the truth to? Have you ever withheld something from me because you were afraid of how I would respond? What happens in this organization when someone disagrees with me? What do people know about me that I apparently do not know about myself?

Then listen long enough to receive the answers.

Build Witnesses for Reality around you—and protect their willingness to testify. One of the greatest gifts God may give a leader is a person who loves him enough to tell him what he desperately does not want to hear.

The Chief Shepherd Is Coming

Peter’s warning against domineering leadership does not end with a leadership technique.

It ends with a Person.

“And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away” (1 Peter 5:4, BSB).

Every under-shepherd will meet the Chief Shepherd.

The church was never yours. The ministry was never yours. The platform was never yours.

And the sheep were certainly never yours.

They are His.

That changes the question. The question is no longer merely, Was I an effective leader?

It becomes:

What did I do with the people Christ entrusted to me?

If you have loved them, protected them, strengthened the weak, received correction, confessed your sin, used your strength for them rather than against them, and increasingly become an example to the flock, keep shepherding faithfully.

But if you recognize yourself somewhere in these pages, do not spend your energy becoming angry with the pages.

Run to Christ.

Then, as wisdom and circumstances allow, begin facing the people you wounded. Listen before explaining. Confess specifically. Ask forgiveness without demanding it. Make restitution where restitution is possible. Submit yourself to people who are not afraid of you. Give them permission to disagree with you. Give them time to determine whether your repentance has produced fruit.

And do not demand your leadership back.

There is mercy at the cross for domineering shepherds. There is forgiveness for truly repentant sinners. There is transformation by the Spirit of God.

There is hope.

But do not mistake God’s mercy for God’s indifference toward His sheep.

He has already told us what He thinks about shepherds who rule His people with force and cruelty. He has already told teachers that we will be judged more strictly. He has already told elders not to lord authority over those entrusted to them. And He has already reminded us that some sins are obvious while others surface later.

Most importantly, He has told us that the Chief Shepherd is coming.

So if you are leading God’s people and making truth expensive, hear the warning while there is still time to hear it.

Humble yourself before God has to do it for you.

And if He has graciously placed someone near you courageous enough to tell you the truth—

do not make that person pay for the privilege of saving you from yourself.

Five Coaching Questions

1. What does telling me an unwelcome truth currently cost the people I lead? Think beyond what you intend. What happens relationally, emotionally, organizationally, or vocationally to someone who disagrees with you?
2. Who are my genuine Witnesses for Reality—and what evidence do I have that they are still willing to testify? When was the last time someone close to you told you something difficult that you did not already believe?
3. What repeated criticism about my leadership have I explained rather than investigated? If similar observations have come independently from several people, what might Corroboration of Reality require you to examine?
4. If I have wounded people through harsh or domineering leadership, what observable fruit would repentance require specifically from me? Not merely less of the old behavior. What would humility, gentleness, teachability, restitution, and concern for those you harmed actually look like?
5. If the Chief Shepherd asked me today, “What did you do with My sheep?” what evidence from the lives of the people I lead would I want Him to examine?

Endnotes

1. Organizational scholar Elizabeth Wolfe Morrison, “Employee Voice and Silence,” Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 1 (2014): 173–197; and Morrison, “Employee Voice and Silence: Taking Stock a Decade Later,” Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 10 (2023): 79–107. Morrison’s later review synthesizes hundreds of studies examining when and why employees speak or remain silent and the individual and organizational consequences of those choices.
2. Leadership researchers Angela J. Xu, Raymond Loi, and Long W. Lam, “The Bad Boss Takes It All: How Abusive Supervision and Leader–Member Exchange Interact to Influence Employee Silence,” The Leadership Quarterly 26, no. 5 (2015): 763–774.
3. Organizational researchers Chunhui Cao, Bin Ding, and Lu Yu, “Hushed Silence or a Null Voice? The Spillover Effect of Abusive Supervision on the Defensive Behaviors of Third-Party Employees,” Personnel Review 55, no. 2 (2026): 599–618. The study gathered daily diary data from 109 employees over three consecutive weeks, yielding 950 day-level observations. Observing abusive supervision heightened bystanders’ fear, which in turn predicted defensive silence or defensive voice.
4. These modern ministry examples are included as documented illustrations, not as claims that every allegation, finding, behavior, or sanction was equivalent. Mars Hill Church’s own investigation concluded that Mark Driscoll had at times led staff and elders in a domineering manner while also finding some accusations unfair or untrue. Harvest Bible Chapel stated that James MacDonald had demonstrated a sinful pattern that included anger and domineering behavior, and a subsequent legal/governance review identified concentrated authority, marginalization of other leaders, and aggressive tactics as contributors to a major governance failure. The Crowded House commissioned an independent learning review concerning its leadership following allegations involving Steve Timmis. Thirtyone:eight’s independent review concerning Jonathan Fletcher concluded that unacceptable behaviors constituted an abuse of spiritual authority and power and reported accounts involving bullying, coercion, and control. The Church of England reported that safeguarding concerns involving Mike Pilavachi’s leadership and ministry, including abuse of power and spiritual abuse, were substantiated. Presbyterian Church in America judicial proceedings concerning Burk Parsons produced findings involving harsh and domineering leadership; subsequent appellate proceedings altered other portions of the case. The inclusion of these names is intended to demonstrate the recurring nature of the leadership problem, not to erase important distinctions among the cases.
5. Ministry-leadership researcher Jonathon R. Hansel, “Understanding and Avoiding Institutional Betrayal of Congregants When Accusations of Domineering Pastoral Leadership Are Made” (D.Min. doctoral thesis, Bethel University, 2026). Hansel used an anonymous online survey of congregants who self-identified as having experienced harm after reporting domineering pastoral leadership, together with semi-structured interviews with church elders. His findings describe spiritual disorientation, diminished trust in pastoral leadership, and difficulty reengaging with Christian communities when concerns were minimized or dismissed.

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