When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

by Chuck DeGroat

This is such a DANGER to the church and church culture when one is in leadership with this attitude

This is straight bullying. When a Pastor operates like this, many are forced to crumble due to the pastors managerial role.... it's terrible, it happens, it shouldn't, but it does.

The lack of accountability is the MAJOR issue in some church organizations.

Character over competency is how we ought to measure leaders but the worship of charisma blinds many from doing so.

Hurt people, hurt people

SYSTEMIC INFECTION Many years ago, a simple infection in a friend’s toe led to sepsis. The small infection invaded his bloodstream, triggering inflammatory responses throughout his whole body—a systemic infection. I was shocked to receive a call from his daughter alerting me to the life-threatening situation. How could a small infection impact the whole body? So it goes with churches. Removing a narcissistic staff member does not necessarily remove the narcissistic infection. More often than not, sepsis has set in. You can’t

Just as the narcissist requires external validation to confirm how special or great she is, so a narcissistic system requires external validation for how special and great it is. A large church or successful parachurch ministry revels in the affirmation it gets on social media or at conferences.

Grandiose narcissistic systems. In the first instance, a narcissistic system—whether a church, a denomination, a network of churches, a parachurch ministry, or another—delights in itself. Disconnected from the reality of the system’s dysfunction or narcissistic sepsis, the members collude in a collective act of glancing lovingly into the pool of water that reflects back the ideal image, just as a narcissistic pastor might.

Grandiose systems often resist change, however. They resist because grandiosity works. Integrity gives way to pragmatism; honesty gives way to illusion. The status quo is much easier than the work of becoming self-aware, evaluating, naming reality, letting go, grieving losses, and embracing new pathways.

When a system is not dominated by anxiety, everyone is free to speak truthfully, everyone is free to listen curiously. The ten-thousand-dollar question is always, “How do we achieve this?” An addict who has been through recovery will tell you that the first step is the hardest. People and organizations who admit to a problem will often find that a huge weight is lifted, but they’ll often resist this as long as possible.

Systems willing to be brutally honest are systems ready for newfound health.

The narcissist develops the uncanny ability to make others feel crazy, uncertain, confused, insecure, and bewildered. Sadly, this occurs in a variety of contexts, not least in the church.

TRAUMATIC EMOTIONAL ABUSE Perhaps the most frightening thing about narcissism’s bite is that it often comes without leaving a physical wound. The trauma inflicted can look like humiliation, hypercriticism, silence, exclusion, affairs, flirtation, jealousy, extreme mood swings, crude jokes, constant jealousy, bargaining for love, guilt, shame, control of finances, sexual manipulation, blame shifting, isolating one from friends and family, threats, boundary violations, and much more.2 This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it illustrates the complex reality of psychological/emotional abuse. While physical scars or bruises may not appear, psychotherapist Daniel Shaw writes that “what is always present is the invisible, interior pain inflicted on the other.”

Bessel van der Kolk argues that “emotional abuse . . . can be just as damaging as physical abuse and sexual molestation,”

My continual prayer for the past twenty years has been that pastors, ministry leaders, and churches would resource themselves about the silent killer of traumatic emotional abuse. It is tragic that this kind of abuse finds such fuel in the church.

Healing requires radical honesty with ourselves and the courage to follow through on the wilderness path. Perhaps the two most important components of healing trauma are awareness and intentionality. Because trauma thrives in the shadows, awareness and intentionality are often neglected for self-protection, disconnection, and self-sabotage. Memories may be repressed, bodily sensations ignored, and feelings and needs disregarded.

This leads some psychological experts to the conclusion that NPD is treatable but not curable, and some Christians to the conclusion that narcissism is simply wickedness.

If you are in relationship with a narcissist, whether a spouse or a staff member, a therapist or a pastor, you must be relentlessly committed to doing your own inner work, both to protect yourself and others from harm and to engage from a place of centered compassion rather than reactive rage. If we cannot do this, it’s better to step away. Engaging from a place of pain will only multiply the pain.

I’m disheartened when a theology of grace is misappropriated by those who’ve abused power, manipulated the truth, and exploited the powerless. Grace never whitewashes abuse. Grace exposes the abuser, not to shame him but for the sake of truth and healing for all.