When Narcissism Comes to Church Quotes

“Though they cherished a belief that they were the only really honest church when it came to the seriousness of human sin, a supposed high-theology of individual sin masked the systemic sins of judgment, racism, misogyny, tribalism, passive-aggressive intimidation, arbitrary threats of discipline, and emotional and relational avoidance.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“Contradictions. Fauxnerable people are not consistent in their character. • Disclosures that focus on the past. “I struggled with porn” or “I was such a mess.” This isn’t vulnerability. Vulnerability is about showing up courageously in the present moment with how you are currently affecting someone or experiencing your inner life. • Staged fauxnerability. A fauxnerable pastor or leader may conjure up tears at will on stage but show little empathy or care face to face. • Victim mentality. The fauxnerable pastor may blame his staff, a bad system, or a needy spouse. • Lack of curiosity. Vulnerable people are curious. Fauxnerable people are defensive and reactive. • Oversharing. An emotional dump is not necessarily an act of vulnerability but may in fact be a way of using you to engender sympathy or to take their side. • Self-referencing. His fauxnerability is in service of his ego, not an expression of mutuality or connection.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“I’ve most often seen bullies in nondenominational contexts, and many are the founders, planters, and entrepreneurs who guard their churches and organizations like the extensions of the narcissistic ego they are.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“Not only can you expect your narcissistic friends, lovers, and family members to want you to be perfect, but you can anticipate that they’ll externalize their own feelings of weakness by laying them onto you. If your partner is concerned that he or she looks tired, stressed, or messy, these concerns will translate into criticisms of how unkempt and fatigued you look.”21”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“the mantra of a narcissistic spiritual leader is, “I am bigger, I am better, and I have no interest in understanding my impact on you except in so far”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“I saw that narcissistic traits were often presented as strengths. Narcissism can be interpreted as confidence, strong leadership, clear vision, a thick skin.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“sad abandonment of the humble way of Jesus shows up today in pastors of large and small churches,”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“They are convincing. They are charming. They are certain. And tragically they are deemed credible.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“Those who are diagnosably narcissistic may be talented, charming, even inspiring, but they lack the capacity for self-awareness and self-evaluation, shunning humility for defensive self-protection. Christian psychologist Diane Langberg says of the narcissist, “He has many gifts but the gift of humility.”1”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is something far more serious, characterized by grandiosity, entitlement, a need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“When a system is not dominated by anxiety, everyone is free to speak truthfully, everyone is free to listen curiously.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“My pastor has a stellar reputation. Everyone follows him on social media and thinks he’s so well-balanced on issues. But if I’m honest with you, he’s unpredictable, passive-aggressive, and incapable of having a real relationship. His public persona isn’t who he is in our office.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“They will often defer to the narcissist’s spiritual persona rather than her true character.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“Fauxnerability is a twisted form of vulnerability. It has the appearance of transparency but serves only to conceal one’s deepest struggles. A husband may talk generally about his sinfulness, but a significant addiction to pornography may be ignored.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“Ignoring you, the leader will draw in your peers, ingratiating them through approval and attention, all the while planting seeds of distrust about you. Too”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“Indirect intimidation often occurs through isolation.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“Each of us, first, must take whatever “Egypt” we’re living in seriously. As we’ve seen, living in the grip of a narcissist can be immobilizing. We shut down. We find alternative strategies to cope. We blame ourselves. We resign ourselves to the painful situation. Like the frog in the slow-boiling pot of water, we’re in imminent danger, but even as the water heats up we rationalize away the dire reality of our circumstances. We’re created with an extraordinary capacity to disassociate—a gift in certain painful circumstances, but a sentence of soul death for the long run. Like the Israelites, we must awaken to the reality of our circumstances, crying out under the burden with a longing for something better, even if we lack the imagination for it. It was the groans and cries of God’s people that awakened God’s rescuing response in the Exodus story”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“opportunity for each person to share the good, the bad, and the ugly—how each person there had experienced this church, its leaders, its ministries, and more.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“Fourth, a system inclined to health demonstrates a relentless curiosity, particularly in its solicitation of other perspectives.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“Indeed, the leader willing to lean into self-discovery is the leader who will inspire others to that work.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“Third, the leadership’s health must be assessed. I’m often amazed when I’m invited to help a church or staff or system to find that the senior leader wasn’t expecting to contribute anything other than his expert opinion of the problem. I remember asking one leader, “Are you willing to participate in the assessment as well?” His look of fear, rage, and puzzlement said it all. To his mind, I was not there to assess him but to solicit his omniscient perspective. Yet I’ve never seen systemic health emerge apart from the leader (or leaders) going on their own transformational journey”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“This church entered into a courageous process of becoming self-aware, evaluating, naming reality, letting go, grieving losses, and embracing new pathways.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“Systems willing to be brutally honest are systems ready for newfound health. In this church, the bold and courageous people who came to the mic were recognized as loving truth-tellers, motivated by the church’s health and not by their self-serving agendas. The congregation’s trust in them led to a collective agreement to enter into a transparent process toward health guided by an outside consultant.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“we’re sick and we can’t settle for band-aids anymore. Sometimes health begins with the prophetic act of truth-telling.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“People were allowed to ask questions, leadership was transparent, and trust was present.”8 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.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“Ed Stetzer echoes this in a series he wrote for Christianity Today on surviving unhealthy Christianity. He paints a picture of a healthy family system: “I was struck by their health and sense of family. Even as they disagreed, the focus was family and graciousness in their disagreement.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“well for their sheep. They empower them, equip them, comfort them, feed them. They lead their churches in vital mission, caring for the vulnerable, engaging in the work of justice and mercy. While anxious churches driven by narcissistic pastors may grow numerically, healthy churches flourish. Do not mistake numerical growth for flourishing.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“Healthy churches simply do not hire narcissistic pastors. They can spot one a mile away. Healthy churches care well for their pastors, providing them with opportunities for regular rest and sabbatical, for continued growth opportunities, for retreats, for therapeutic care. And healthy pastors, in turn, care”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“you ever do get to the point of empathy or even forgiveness, that will take a long time, a lot of therapeutic care, and plenty of honest lament and grief of your own in the process.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

“Others may acknowledge it but stew with rage and avoid the work of healing.”
― Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse