Tips for less dysfunctional churches

I recently watched the film Spotlight on a date. It's a film about the Catholic Church's cover-up of child sexual abuse. This might seem like a downer, but the other option was Schindler’s List.

About halfway through I said we needed to stop. I have had some experiences relating to abuse in churches (and other communities) and it all got a bit much. In some ways, though, it felt kind of cathartic.

It crystallised my desire to give some thoughts to Christians on church structure, though perhaps non-Christians might find it interesting too. Largely I hope to avoid some failure modes I have seen evidence of.

Before I do, I want to try and make clear what I am, and am not, talking about. When I am talking about dysfunctional churches, I am not talking about theology, I think that if I described behaviours, most readers, Christian and non-Christian, would agree they were bad. Some examples of these churches would be:

• The Catholic Church in the run-up to the child sexual abuse scandal
• The Mars Hill church by the end, which I would characterise as bullying and a culture where Mark Driscoll largely had immunity from criticism
• Churches with bullying, sexual harassment, child abuse

When I talk to Christians about whether they could be wrong, they often have a notion that they’re praying, they’re faithful, so they’ll just do their best and God will sort it out. I am not arguing that.

Instead, I want to present suggestions that exist within the scope of the Bible (I can provide chapter and verse if you want) that I think reduce broadly agreed harms. Many people at dysfunctional churches are faithful Christians. But I think they are fundamentally missing out on tools that even the Bible provides for them, to their suffering and to mine, as one of their friends.

So what are some patterns I see?

• Leadership put on a pedestal so as to never be capable of failing standards
• Upstanding members of the church leaving
• People who are allowed unique behaviours that wouldn't be allowed for others
• Information being siloed

So here are some ways that churches can push back against these patterns, which hopefully would have ended a lot of heartache, including that I have seen and that I worry I might see more of in the future.

Standards for Leadership

The Bible has standards for leadership (1 Timothy 3:1-13, Titus 1:5-9, 1 Peter 5:1-3), does your church?

Are there standards for leadership? Are there things that a leader cannot do even though they are powerful and bring people through the door? And if they behave badly, would this be shared amongst other leaders or would this be kept secret?

I want to be in communities where there are some behaviours which are a bright line. Partly because this seems good in itself, but partly because it means that some things can’t be hidden. It is my view that no one is useful enough to a community that they should get away with murder. The same is true of sexual harassment and moderate levels of bullying.

I am not exaggerating here. How did the Catholic Church come to the conclusion that moving paedophile priests from location to location was okay? How did Mark Driscoll get away with sidelining and bullying people for so long? It’s easy to think “this person is too valuable to let go” and if there is no policy, then everyone has to make up his or her own mind.

Personally I’m pretty pro gossip, but churches sometimes aren’t, which means that you just might not hear about it. It should be clear that at some point, people must share what they know.

People leaving

Are people leaving the church in general, maybe particularly people who you wouldn't expect to be leaving? And why?

It's often easy to come up with individual reasons, but if it's happening a lot, have you taken an hour to think if there is a pattern? Have you consulted with external church leaders or wise Christians who would tell you to your face of issues? Would you listen to them if they suggested things? Have you made changes?

What would external people of integrity think?

I think it's worth considering what people outside of your group would think, perhaps people from local churches, or other denominations of Christians, perhaps even other faiths or atheists. Let us imagine we are Catholics. Could we justify child molestation being covered up for decades or centuries? I doubt I could.

In some way, I think my friends have been useful to me in the opposite direction. Is it normal that the guy who funded me made his money from crypto, a notoriously scammy field? Do I have trouble finding someone to date, or am I just afraid of commitment? Are trans women literally women? These kinds of things are easy enough to say in front of ideological allies but it gets trickier in front of someone who I respect who believes different things. I am glad I have friends who disagree on important issues.

How do you respond to bad outcomes?

One way to try and tie the above together is to think about how you respond if people leave or if something is reported or if someone has a bad sense of the situation. Are you defensive? Or do you think they might have something of value to share?

More dysfunctional churches seem not to want to look at these questions, even sometimes afterwards. Things are somebody else's problem or due to somebody else's bad behaviour, there's never responsibility on them to figure out or to improve the situation.

If there were a big issue in your church and people were harmed, who would feel bad about it afterwards? And is that person responsible now, or kept away from being able to change anything?

And now some general thoughts:

None of that woke nonsense

Wokeness has at times gone too far, but accountability and HR departments did exist for a reason. I went to uni in the heady years of the early 2010s as an evangelical Christian. And at times I found myself in surprising agreement with feminism. I too thought the constant dehumanisation of female students was gross. I couldn’t believe the constant low-level sexual assault that my female hall-mates put up with, or sometimes even laughed about.

I think at times churches can forget how dysfunctional human societies in general are and put aside that we have built technologies to deal with this. And that, while one might think that feminism has gone too far, some of the changes seem pretty good. There is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

So, it seems worth looking at what other institutions use to avoid disastrous outcomes and taking some of those:

• Hotlines
• Ensuring that no single person is irreplaceable
• Mandatory reporting of some issues
• External safeguarding officers

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s

How does Jesus deal with compromise against godlessness? Does he call for people to take arms? Does he rouse a counter-rebellion? Did the ends justify all means? Or does he often push for strange mid ways that one wouldn't expect? Allowing himself to be betrayed by Judas. Telling his followers not to fight. Paying his taxes by catching fish.

The least healthy churches (and indeed non-religious social movements) seem to push singularly towards one goal. Anyone who stands against them is their enemy. Anybody who questions is under suspicion.

But maximisation is perilous. As we try and get more and more of one thing, eventually we may lose everything else. And if you think your god is real, maybe you think 'He' is big enough to deal with your church taking a couple of years longer to get to the goal without purging those who disagree. Or without that spectacular but flawed leader.

Corporate sin

A common problem I have had with Christians is a need to see all sin as some individual's problem. Not as a group problem but ultimately at the door of one individual. But this, in turn, meant that some issues never got dealt with because it could never be quite pinned down whose fault it was. And that some issues that ought to have been seen as a more broad problem were just labelled to be one specific person's issue.

As people left the church, it was never really engaged with why this was happening.

I don't know how you wrestle with this one theologically, but it seems to me that some systems cause people to live better lives, and some systems don't. I mean, presumably you think that it's good for atheists to have long-term marriages. Why? And so surely there are better and worse church systems also.

Wrapping up

Conservative Evangelicals can get tied up in their own beliefs, and what looks to them like more and more trust in God can look to me like doubling down on behaviour that hasn't worked and that is hurting people. This isn't unique to Christians. I see many people have this kind of behaviour, and it can be differently difficult to talk to each group.

Because my desire in this piece isn't that you stop being a Christian. It's that you don't end up being wrapped up in something that hurts you. If you saw yourself from a distance, I don't want you to think, "How on earth did they end up here?" It is maddening to see events that are likely to go wrong, like some sort of slow-motion car crash, and then have to watch the car crash take place. And it's just sad.

My desire for you and your church would be to have fewer sexual scandals, fewer bullying scandals. That there is not some huge breakdown that causes half your members to leave, and that scars you for the next 15-20 years. I think there are some more or less likely ways of getting to that, and as a friend, I hope I can encourage you to make it less likely.

1. In the sense that I would predict my evangelical friends would consider them faithful.
2. I am happy to capitalise Yahweh, but I am not gonna do it for pronouns without inverted commas. Unclear what the respectful approach is.
3. Claude suggests the systemic approach of Acts 6:1-6, where a new office is created for the support of some specific Jewish widows.