Confronting Spiritual Abuse

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Collin Hansen
In the last 10 years, we’ve watched the rise and fall of several famous Evan Jellicle preachers. But Michael Kruger president of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte says the problem is bigger than even the investigative reports would suggest. He argues that many more cases of spiritual abuse will never be covered in the podcasts. And he also contends that a big part of the problem is you and me. Quote, we would rather have a leader who will beat up our enemies than one who will tenderly care for the sheep. Krueger writes in his new book bully pulpit, confronting the problem of spiritual abuse in the church published by Zondervan, he continues, it’s not that different from the person who decides to buy a pitbull as a family pet. It may be cool to have a tough dog, and it may protect you from burglars, but eventually it may Maul a member of your own family. Now, spiritual abuse is a relatively new and amorphous concept, at least as a term and Kriger defines it this way. spiritual abuse is when a spiritual leader such as a pastor, elder or head of a Christian organization, wields his position of spiritual authority in such a way that he manipulates dominators bullies and intimidates those under him as a means of maintaining his own power and control, even if he is convinced he is seeking biblical and kingdom related goals. Now, in other words, it’s the opposite of Jesus in His paradoxical ministry model. He didn’t lead by demanding his rights, but by giving them up. Well, Mike Krieger joins me on gospel bound to discuss how to train pastors who won’t abuse their flocks, why he focuses on Reformed churches, whether he’s changed his own leadership, and more. Mike, thanks for joining man gospel bound.

Mike Kruger
Thanks, Collin. It’s good to be with you. And it’s it’s it’s surreal to hear my own quotes read back to me.

Collin Hansen
Well, we’ll see some more of that here as well. Yeah. Now, Mike, this isn’t exactly in your traditional wheelhouse. As an academic writer. Why did you take up the subject of spiritual abuse?

Mike Kruger
Yeah, well, you’re absolutely right. And this is one of the most common questions that I get now, because obviously, most of my writing has been on things related to the early Christian movement origins of the Canon authority of the Bible. And that still is, of course, the area I continue to do research on. And I’m working on a project right now actually related to that. But I also am a seminary professor and a seminary president. And so we think a lot about leadership around here. And we do our best to keep track of what’s going on in churches, and not just Reformed churches, but have angelical churches, churches in, particularly in America, and even around the globe, to some extent, and I’ve just been seen, and I think I’m not alone, a certain trend over the last decade or so where there’s a certain type of leadership style that has risen to the fore, and it’s not been healthy as a whole. And so I’ve watched the implosion of some major leaders out there, but I’ve also seen it more and more, my own circles just pop up this sort of heavy handed authoritarian style. And so I decided to take a closer look at it. And as I’ve done, that, I’ve become more and more convinced that we need to rethink the kind of leaders we’re producing in the church today.

Collin Hansen
What’s the most surprising thing you found, as you were researching?

Mike Kruger
I don’t even know where to start there. I think I was surprised to how many people feel like when you describe spiritual abuse, that they say, Whoa, wait a second, that’s you just described my pastor. I cannot tell you how many conversations I’ve had. That way. When I did my blog series a year or more ago, I was absolutely inundated, almost tsunami with, with emails from people around the country saying, are you talking about my church? Alright, wait, are you are you are you describing? Are you aware of my scenario, they thought I was actually describing their pastor. And of course, I don’t know who these people are. I hadn’t met them. But it’s amazing how when you lay out the pattern, people just sort of perk up and resonate. In a way that’s almost eerie. And so I think one things that surprised me is just how much it’s resonating with people. In other words, you could bring up a topic in the Christian space where people just kind of shrug and go, Hmm, interesting. I don’t really think much about that. But that’s not what’s happened. Instead, as soon as I bring it out, everyone’s like, got something to say about it.

Collin Hansen
Well, that’s actually one of the questions. I was planning to ask you later here, Mike. But why do abusive pastors seem to do the same things? You mentioned? It’s like they study the same playbook. That’s exactly what you’re talking about right here. Are you describing my pastor, somebody must have given you like this as a case study exam. Could you be so accurate there? Is this a deliberate strategy that somehow, you know, circulates or is this some sort of psychological condition, that theological nature of the fall? How do you categorize it?

Mike Kruger
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I don’t know that I really tried to answer that in the book, although I think it’s worth asking that the similarities are so so there that you have to sort of come up with an explanation for it, I have a few thoughts on that. One is, I do think, and I do talk about this in the book, I think we have have have sought after certain leadership style, to lead our churches, and I call this sort of the church franchise player. So just like you want to make a sports team, or organization amazing, well, you just get an amazing player and you build a team around them. And we follow that model, sort of a CEO, you know, kind of LeBron James, big sports star model, we adopt it in a church. And so you’re going to attract a certain kind of personality type, that itself could explain some of the continuity among the problems because you’re attracting a certain category of leader. The other thing is that the kind of people who tend to be abusive, tend to have a certain personality style themselves. And there’s been a lot of talk about narcissism in the last few years for a lot of reasons. And I think, you know, when you look at narcissistic tendencies, you can map them out. And you can develop patterns, and you can see how it manifests itself in the church. So I think there’s probably some explanation and those two things. But I mean, if you have ideas, I’m totally open to it. I don’t quite know. And I think it’s one of those almost creepy mysteries of the whole thing, because it’s so similar.

Collin Hansen
How much of this has to do, Mike with the rise of church planting, especially in the last 25 years, not that it’s a brand new thing, but we know that a lot of the assessment tools used for church planting have tended toward this specific kind of leadership style. And you can go back whether it’s more of Reformed style church planting, but you can look and see, I used to work at leadership journal for Christianity today, and it goes all the way back to that Harvard Business Review CEO style from Hybels and, and others. So it’s not just one kind of personality, per se and Bill Hybels and, and James McDonald are really not similar, except that they were almost next door to each other in Chicago. And both of them fell in very different ways, but around the same time, and both had started their churches. I, I’m just wondering how much of it has to do with the specific way we’re looking for those kinds of church planters? I can say this. In rural South Dakota, Methodist churches, you weren’t looking for CEO types, you’re looking for, like Chaplain Shepherd type. So it doesn’t appear to be universal for all times and places?

Mike Kruger
No, well, several things there first, you’re right, as far as the presenting personality between Hybels and McDonald, very different. Although when you dig into their stories, actually, you find out they’re a lot more similar than you realize. Hybels is mainly known for the sexual abuse that was happening, but actually built into the story of was a was a number of cases of spiritual abuse, too. And it was mostly done behind closed doors, so to speak, in terms of the way he treated his staff. McDonald was much more sort of out in the open with it. And so yeah, there’s a little bit of a difference on one level, on another level, there may be more similar than we realize. But you raise a really interesting point, though, calling and I think about church planting. I didn’t talk about this in the book, but I think there has been clearly a church planning movement and reform spaces. And then on top of that, we have looked for a certain style of person to do church planning. We want someone who’s entrepreneurial, who’s a go getter, who’s out there, who’s proactive, who’s energetic, who’s able to get things done. And look, many of those are good things. I’m not suggesting those are irrelevant things. But but but if you just build an entire church planning movement around that particular type of person, it’s not surprising that that type of person ends up perhaps having some tendencies and end up coming up later. And I think that’s an excellent point.

Collin Hansen
Now, let me take a step back of the overall issue, I’m sure another common question that you receive is the problem, anecdotal or statistical? And maybe another way to ask this is, are we facing more spiritual abuse today? Or do we just know about more spiritual abuse? ,

Mike Kruger
This is this is a really good question. I bring this up in the book. And my answer is a big a big I don’t know. And I say that in the book, plainly, there’s not been any sort of significant statistical studies on spiritual abuse. There have been some in England, out of Bournemouth University, but but the type of statistical study they did wasn’t really useful. So to look at the stats across the board, and so there’s a question, is there a rise in spiritual abuse? Or is there a rise awareness? And how much does social media play into it? So in other words, you could argue it’s been this way, forever. It was this way in 1950. It was this way in 1850. And we’re just we just learn more about it. Okay. Let’s imagine for a moment that’s true. And it could be I’m not saying it isn’t. We still need to address it. Whether it’s just an awareness issue, I mean, think about sexual abuse. I mean, you know, we don’t know whether sexual abuse is more common now than it was in, say, 1950. But but we know about it now more. And by golly, I don’t think anyone would say, therefore, we’re not going to, since it’s always been there, let’s ignore it. And so similarly, even if it has been there for four generations at the same rate, I think we still have an issue that we need to address. I do make the point in the book, of course, that that spiritual abuse as a concept has been there since the fall, right. And by that I mean, people lorded over other people in sinful ways by virtue of our fallen heart. So in one sense, there’s always been spiritual abuse. Now all that said, anecdotally, and I don’t have any statistics to back this up, I do think there’s a spike. I think there’s this, you know, I that’s just my gut. I didn’t put it in the book. But just talking to you, I do think there seems to be something in the water. And I think we should take a closer look at that.

Collin Hansen
Okay. So, related to that both you and I teach in teaching seminaries, we’re training pastors, are we doing anything in training ministers right now, that inclines them towards spiritual abuse?

Mike Kruger
That says this is interesting question of commission and omission. So you, you’re bringing it up the commission side, which I’ll mention in a moment, I think I’ll start if I can, with the omission side, I think up to this point, we’re not helping ourselves because we simply don’t address it. Okay, here I am at reformed Theological Seminary. I love RTS, I think we do a really good job at training ministers. But But I also know that every institution can grow and improve. And this is a hole in our game, we need to do a better job of dealing with it our curriculum, and so part of the province seminaries is that it just as unaddressed, that just isn’t even talked about, right. I mean, I went in before the last five years, I wasn’t even thinking about it. I’m the president of the seminary. So there’s no way our students are thinking about okay, so that’s the omission, sign up coalition side. This is interesting. And, you know, maybe you have thoughts, too. I mean, I think we probably don’t emphasize character enough in terms of calling. And I do talk about this in the book is, you know, we tend to emphasize giftedness. And we tend to emphasize ability, and maybe not emphasized character, I think there’s probably a delicate line around the way we talk about church authority. And I don’t have a full moment here where I can get into all that because I don’t even know if I’ve formulated all of my own head. But I do think we are we are somewhat defensive about the lack of respect for the church in our modern culture. And sometimes you try to fix that, that problem by really emphasizing church authority. And when you really emphasize church authority as a way to fix a culture, that’s anti authority authority, you end up running the danger, or at least, of pressing authority in such a ways that becomes unhealthy.

Collin Hansen
So I do have a thought on this. And it’s related to why I started doing a series of books. 15 things seminary couldn’t teach me 12 faithful men. And then as well as a book called faithful endurance, I wasn’t seeing so much the spiritual abuse aspect, I was seeing young ministers who just kind of left ministry already by their 20s or 30s, even after their training, when things got really difficult for them. And they seem to have been very surprised that people did not like them. And it made me think interesting, maybe we need to change how we help prospective young ministers discern a call. So I think what we often do is that we observe gifted young teachers for the results. So we see somebody who’s teaching in high school, even college, something like that, and we say, Wow, you’re really good at this. And they seem to be affirmed not only by authority figures, but also by just the results that they see maybe people coming to faith. And I wonder if they can see where you’re going here. Yeah, I wonder if we should instead explain that you’re called to ministry if you if you know how to love your enemies, especially when they sit in the pews next to your family?

Mike Kruger
Yeah, no, I think you’re spot on. I don’t say it quite that way in the book. But I do talk about how we need to recapture this idea that that ministry is a call to suffer. And it’s a call to serve. And one of the things I point out, which I think, honestly needs to be pointed out more, we usually associate servanthood qualities with deacons, and not with elders. So if you have a servant, heart, we shove you over to the deacons side. And we tend to think that somehow incongruent with being an elder or a pastor. And I pointed out in the book, that in the leadership qualifications for ordination and the way Jesus talks about leadership, and in many other passages, that’s simply not the case. Jesus describes his own ministry as a ministry of being a servant or a slave. So there has to be a sense in which we, we shift around on that and help people realize, look, if you’re calling the ministry, here’s the way you should think of yourself. Right. And so I did a lecture in Manhattan last week on on spiritual abuse when I was there. And I had a very perceptive question from the audience when they said, how much of ministers it’s not just that you’re you’re analyzing their character, but when you analyze the future minister, you’re analyzing their own sort of spiritual stability, or I don’t want you to have more mental health because mental health makes this channel psychology psychological, but are they themselves coming out of sort of scarred backgrounds and difficult situations where ministry is their way of making up for these things? are we even talking about that? And I thought that was really interesting, because I think we don’t ever born to those those matters.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, I think the seminary students who I love and was one as you We’re it’s not exactly a normal cross section of the race.

Mike Kruger
I don’t feel it’s already been been sort of curated here in a way.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, you get you do tend to attract some extreme personalities, I think in seminaries. And so I think I think that’s something that would be very wise for us to practice in terms of, maybe not so much in our admissions, but at least in terms of the shepherding that we give to, to our students, in those environments. Here at Besian, there was a Southern Baptist observer once who said, he was he was going to be lecturing here, and I was driving, driving with him in the car, and he said, you know, you guys, his problem at Besian, is that you don’t train any famous preachers, where are your famous preachers? We don’t know him. That’s why nobody goes to your school. And I said, Well, I think that’s kind of the point. Like, we have a culture that does not socialize celebrity, in part because of the example that we had. And Timothy George, who was a kind of servant.

Mike Kruger
As leader, actually, right. Leadership sets the tone of that.

Collin Hansen
I mean, I think, you know, I love Southern Baptists, I’m a Baptist myself, but I can see some of the some of the differences there in different cultures of training and identifying, and kind of like, what’s incentivized and what’s rewarded in in those leaders. And I should say that this the person that was made in this comment to me has himself gone through really, really difficult things as a celebrity since that comment, and wonder if he would, he would have some different observations at this at this point in his career?

Mike Kruger
Well, I mean, one thing you raise there, which I think is important, is that the celebrity phenomenon isn’t just about the individual who sit who, who becomes a so called celebrity pastor, the phenomenon is actually about a church or a church culture that wants a celebrity as their pastor. Yeah. And so in one sense, it’s not that celebrity pastors are self appointed, but in one sense, they’re they’re made. We can say it this way. They’re not without their responsibility, but they’re, but they’re made by a culture that cheers them on as a celebrity. And so the problem is it just the pastors that fall into this, it’s the churches that fall into this, and our look, actually, they’re just looking for someone like that. And this is, of course, the point I’m making the book, are we looking for the right kind of leaders?

Collin Hansen
Let’s talk about Reformed churches, specifically, our Reformed churches more or somehow uniquely inclined to tolerate or even celebrate spiritual abuse?

Mike Kruger
This is really an interesting question. So I didn’t address that in the book. My book was generically about what we might call angelical. Churches, although certainly it was obvious, I think, in the context, that many of the churches that I am aware of that struggle with this probably would be considered at least broadly reformed in some sense. But that wasn’t, of course, the aim of the book to answer the question of whether Reformed theology is distinctively susceptible to this. So but I do have a couple thoughts. One thought is that Reformed theology itself, not reformed culture, Reformed theology itself, is the solution, not the problem. And what I mean by that is understood properly Reformed theology should bring humility should bring, in one sense, a person who’s looking to be a humble servant, rather than someone who’s prideful and arrogant, because if you understand Reformed theology, that that should naturally lead to that. So the problem isn’t Reformed theology. But I think we all have to be honest that there is a factor in some reformed cultures that’s problematic in this regard. And I wrote an article recently, just a couple of weeks ago, and I don’t know when this is going to air but was on being winsome. Ly reformed and I pointed out in that article that look, reformed folks don’t always have the best reputation for being the kindest, gentlest, humble people. Okay. And Frank wrote an article years ago called matrons, Warrior children. You know, I think he would say something similar to me, which is it properly understood Reformed theology is is not the problem, but that there is something in the water in some of these reformed cultures. Can I explain why that’s the case? I don’t have an answer. But I think we need to be honest and the reform wrote about it. RTS has been honest about it in the sense that we’ve emphasized being winsome. Ly reformed because we recognize that problem. We want people to be reformed, yes, but also kind, gentle, humble, servant hearted and not quarrelsome, in that in those kinds of folks are seemingly harder and harder to find.

Collin Hansen
I think the simplest way I’d put it Mike is knowledge puffs up right. So linear sand biblically, and reformed theology often comes with it certain intellectual pursuits, it’s often an opt in, in terms of academic and abstract thinking. It often appeals to people who are not exclusively so but often appeals to people who are higher on the socio economic spectrum. They’re, especially in certain reformed denominations. And I think all that kind of combines in a way of no emphasising a certain kind of sense of superiority, which then your currency of fame and achievement is your intellectual pursuits. And perhaps also then your polemics. The affair easily then issues itself in a way of lording those things over your flock?

Mike Kruger
I would say. And if that’s true, and I think I think you make good points there, then reform folks need to be proactive, and making sure when we train people in seminary context, that we’re aware that we might have attracted more of that kind of person than the average seminary, and then do extra work to try to compensate for that when we train people for future ministry. And I don’t know that we’re doing that.

Collin Hansen
That’s what I was gonna say, Let’s get I mean, it was my next question was going to be, give me something that you have changed, or would change in your seminary to train pastors, who would be distinguished for carrying well for their flock?

Mike Kruger
Yeah. Well, we’re actually looking at this right now, in terms of some curriculum changes. I do think they need to be taught about the problem, spiritual abuse, and actually wrote my book, hoping it could be used, certainly in some classes here, but maybe classes and other places to try to be at least a starting point. For some of that instruction. By no means do I think my book is enough or even sufficient to do all that needs to be done. I think we need to have a recalibrate the way we teach leadership in pastoral ministry, in how we constitute the use and proper use of authority. And I don’t think we’re talking about that I think what we’re talking about is more of a defense against culture, like, oh, we really do have authority, the church has authority, let’s not be anti authority. And look at that, that argument has its place. But then we stop there. We don’t ever actually look at the abuse of authority. So there’s two sides of it. There’s the abdication of authority. That’s what seminaries mostly talking about. But then there’s the misuse of authority which seminaries rarely talk about. And ironically, when Jesus who was on earth, he talked a lot more about the misuse of authority than his abdication. Interestingly, I’m sure that if you sat down to interview Jesus, he would be willing to admit that both are problems. But in his day, the problem was mainly abuse of authority, not application. And so I just think it’s interesting that we don’t talk about that. So those would be a few preliminary thoughts.

Collin Hansen
My podcast is always open for a guest appearance from Jesus. Just so people, people know.

Mike Kruger
It’d be great to interview Jesus. We all want that.

Collin Hansen
I’ve got a few questions for him. And my problem is he’s got some questions for me, too. Now, Mike, why I think I have an answer to this question. But why don’t elders want to do anything to stop spiritual abuse, even when they know it’s happening?

Mike Kruger
Oh, boy. Well, you know, I have a chapter in my book on why churches don’t stop spiritual abuse. So one of the things I point out is, well, there’s many things and there’s a number of misunderstandings there. And I want to be clear on this different different elders have different levels of culpability here, there are some that I think fall into the category of unaware, just uninformed, and in doing their best to think the best of everybody. Okay. And I think there’s a level of naivete there. But but at least as far as culpability goes, that would not be as high level of culpability. There’s other elders out there. And I think we’ve seen this and some of the high profile cases that are proactively defending people that they know, have committed serious sin against other people. And much of that is done for several reasons.

Mike Kruger
One of it’s done because they think that’s protecting the church, and protecting the name of Jesus protecting the cause of Christ, which I think it’s doing the opposite of that. And there’s personal involvement. They know the person who’s the leader, they probably have a friendship with that person, and want to help that person’s ministry not go down in flames. And so is it bad to have friends you want to do good for No, but what’s best for that person to protect their ministry of abuse or to help them repent and recover from whatever they’re, they’re caught up in? And so it’s a miscalculation of what friendship entail. So So in terms of why they don’t stop it, I think there’s different levels of culpability. Now, of course, in my book, I talk about how I think it’s a mistake, misunderstanding of grace, that there’s a misunderstanding of total depravity. I think there’s a misunderstanding of, of what reconciliation means. So I think there is a lot of other stuff in that. And we could go down any of those tributaries. I don’t know how deep you want to go into this question, but I think it’s a complex matter.

Collin Hansen
Well, I’ll just add a couple that come up. I think pretty often that I don’t think many that would occur to many people, you know, asked a question specifically referring to even when they know it’s happening. Of course, your book talks a lot about how they don’t know that it’s happening because a spiritual abuser does not abuse everybody. Exactly. And doesn’t abuse everybody all the time. So we know many examples where an elder might say, that’s not what he does with me.

Mike Kruger
But that’s the most common thing we hear. Yeah, I know exactly how to do that with me.

Collin Hansen
He doesn’t do that with me and then you’re like, Well, of course, he doesn’t do this to everybody. You might not be the profile of the person that he would be picking on that he would be marking for this. But I think there’s you do mention some of this in the book as well. One is that abuse tends to be on a spectrum. It’s hard to know exactly when it starts as abuse, and kind of tips into the tips into that problem. As opposed to, I think you’ve mentioned this, others have mentioned this as well. If you steal money, you steal money, if you cheat on your wife, correct, exactly. So there’s a subjectivity it’s not just abuse. And yes, forms. I mean, there are forms of abuse that are very clear, bright lines. That’s one of the challenges spiritual abuse is it’s not like when does just maybe heavy handed correctly, you know, or, or difficult personality lead off in a spiritual abuse. So I think there’s a subjectivity about that …

Mike Kruger
Or think about it this way, when you have a an elder looking for an exit, and the problem of spiritual abuse, he wants there to be another explanation, right? Because who wants the guy to be abusive? They’re going to take any port in the storm here. So they’re going to take the porta? Well, sometimes people get their feathers ruffled by strong leaders, you know, sometimes maybe he was a little bit too direct. Sometimes people don’t like the truth, and they’re overly sensitive. He’ll tell himself many things to keep him from having to deal with the problem of abusive leader.

Collin Hansen
And explain the insight you brought in from Gladwell.

Mike Kruger
You know, yeah, this is fascinating. So Malcolm Gladwell wrote a very, very famous author, not a Christian, just to be clear, but I think full of common grace insights.

Collin Hansen
Well, he has an Anabaptist by background, he’s a Mennonite. So be the practicing Mennonite. From what from what he told me.

Mike Kruger
Okay, well, let me put it this way. He doesn’t say in the book that he’s fair enough. But he talks in his book, talking to strangers about how we, as human beings are actually really bad at spotting bad people. And we’re not only we bad at it, but we actually think we’re good at it. And so it’s a combination of both things. It’s one that we aren’t very good at stop at spotting bad people. But we’re also convinced that we’re really good at spotting bad people. And so that combination creates a number of really bad scenarios. And he goes through a lot of the very famous cases, Larry Nasser right with the gymnasts, which is sad that Jerry Sandusky case. And he said that these places, these instances had piles and piles of evidence of the guilt of these people. And people still turned a blind eye to it.

Mike Kruger
And the heart behind it was what he calls truth default theory, which is the idea that you always assume the person in front of us telling the truth. And it’s just it’s it’s an innate starting point for all of us. And he says, you know, generally speaking in culture, that’s not a bad thing. You don’t want to go around thinking everyone’s a criminal. But unless you have a true teller, someone from outside that social network that can see things fresh, you’re going to end up with a, you know, sort of a club, policing themselves, and it never ends up actually working. And so I thought he was very insightful.

Collin Hansen
And what happens Mike to those of us who do not default to truth.

Mike Kruger
Yeah, so he talks about a rare person called basically a truth teller that’s outside that both social and even sort of institutional matrix of a particular organization that’s able to stand outside of the organization and maybe see things more clearly. And those he says you need those people around because they can spot stuff see stuff and target stuff now here’s the problem is that they’re also the very people who are often marginalized and and rejected when they used to be ugly. And so this is part of the problem is that truth teller you need them. But the truth teller is the very person that’s pushed aside when scandal happens we saw it in the Ravi Zacharias thing, people worst truth telling there were whistleblowers and they were silenced, pushed down and kicked out. And in I think it’s, it’s, it’s the right solution that the cloud goes onto. But the problem is, we have an infrastructure that prosecutes the truth teller rather than prosecutes the abuser. And that ends up being a really on that, that is really tragic. Just think about that. Just really tragic.

Collin Hansen
The person who sees and tells the truth is usually the one who pays the price.

Mike Kruger
It is so true. One of the things that I learned in my research is how little I understood this. I used to think, you know, it’s hard to know what you thought 10 years ago about anything, okay, you just look at but if I were to try to assess what I thought about whistleblowers 10 years ago, here’s what I probably would have said, I probably would have said I don’t understand the problem. If you’re if you have if you see something evil and bad stand up and speak the truth. Why are you so nervous? Why are you so scared about telling the truth? What’s wrong with you whistleblower people, and I probably would have had this rather simplistic, naive, even condescending approach to whistleblowers.

Mike Kruger
But after all my research, I now really do understand why whistleblowers don’t Come forward. I mean, I understand why they don’t speak up. You know, people give this impression that everyone’s like waiting in the wings to make accusations. That’s not what my research showed. My research showed that there’s people all over the place who have decided to stay silent. Because they know they’re gonna get creamed when they speak up. And I think that is the interesting and very sad phenomena. It’s one thing to have that in a corporate world. It’s very unfortunate. We have that in the church. And I think that’s the thing that needs attention.

Collin Hansen
Even if you’re right, chances are, you’ll lose everything.

Mike Kruger
This is exactly right. I actually had several people that abuse cases call me and asked me for advice on their abuse cases. And they were they were the whistleblowers. And I actually gave several of the advice or the observation you just made, which is I don’t want to sound like Mr. pessimistic, but you need to be prepared. If you’re going to come forward, you’re going to probably lose your job, you’re probably going to have your reputation tarnished, and you’re probably going to be on the outs. And that’s a very hard thing to cite.

Collin Hansen
Even if you turn out that everything you said was correct, you still can get labeled a troublemaker, you know, even in the famous traveler traveler trouble in Israel, right?

Mike Kruger
Even in the best case scenario, if the verdict comes out on your side, you’re still gonna get really, really hurt by this. And oftentimes, the best case scenario doesn’t happen with these these whistleblowers, usually the truth never comes out. And people just assume they’re lying.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, especially the definition whistleblower. I mean, you’re the first I mean, that’s the challenge. Somebody has to be first. And then after that, there may be others who corroborate, or it may be too late for those who are first. Now, somebody listening might be wondering, maybe my pastor is a spiritual abuser. Maybe somebody listening is wondering if he’s a spiritual abuser himself, I would say for any of us. You know, I would describe myself Mike as being kind of on the stronger end of leadership, not necessarily just kind of how I, how I present how I lead and things like that. I mean, if if somebody with my personality does not come under some level of conviction in your book, then there’s some level of self deception going on there. But how do you know I want to use an Edwards incense here? Is there a sure sign of spiritual abuse?

Mike Kruger
Yeah, well, that’s really tricky. Isn’t it? A sure sign that’s like, that’s like almost like asking what’s a sure sign that someone’s prideful? Well, that’s really tricky to assess, isn’t it?

Collin Hansen
Well, I think that’s, it’s why I love Edwards religious affections though, because there are certain things that somebody may do that may not be a sure sign of them being revived or a Christian, but there are certain things that you don’t do unless you’re a Christian.

Mike Kruger
Yeah. I think yes, it is, is tricky to lay all those out. But one of the things I bring up in the book, and I think probably one of the best indicators, I’m never gonna say infallibly. But certainly one of the best indicators of someone who has a problem of abusive behavior is someone with a significant train wreck of debris, relational debris behind them over many years. So in other words, if someone has a debris field or broken relationships, and by that I mean, many over the years unresolved, where someone wasn’t just offended by a comment, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about, like, lives wrecked. Over a period of time. So there’s a wake in this person’s ministry, that is typically a sign something’s really, really wrong, because now you have a person who has to say, every one of those peoples the problem, but May, after all those years, and that’s certainly possible, but it’s certainly very unlikely. And I think that’s probably the telltale sign.

Collin Hansen
And how do those folks keep getting new jobs? Mike?

Mike Kruger
Man, I Well, part of the reason that keep getting new jobs, because a lot people don’t know about the relational debris field. They don’t ask.

Collin Hansen
And they don’t want to know, they don’t ask and they don’t want to know.

Mike Kruger
Yeah, the people searching for that new passion, don’t want to know, but they don’t even know even if they ask that the victims may not have come forward publicly. In other words, they may just have left the church.

Collin Hansen
Or they are the or they will actually just lie. They will just say everything was fine. The elders, the the members, they may or the institution, they may lie, to protect themselves from having to go through anything more. They may say, no, no, no, everything was great.

Mike Kruger
They’ll just that that happened more in my research than I thought I was almost made queasy, if I could say it that way by the number of of instances where it was clear that the abusive leader just blatantly lied about his past or about victims. And then obviously, churches deflect and deceive, too. And I think, you know, what we’re getting at here is the heartbreak of this. I mean, we all know this happens in the world. That happens in sports organizations happens in corporate culture, but we’re talking about the Church of Jesus Christ, and no one here is not going to think it’s not centered on the Church of Jesus Christ. Of course there are, but when you have this sort of activity, obviously the point is we have to address it. We just can’t let it be there and pretend it doesn’t matter. And I think the tragedy of this and the real Emotional spiritual damage is because it’s a church, it’s because these people represent God at some level that it does so much damage.

Collin Hansen
Let me let me give the flip side, Mike to your, your the negative statement about the debris field. And that is that the positive a strong leader attracts and keeps other strong leaders. Okay? So people who might present as strong leaders were actually abusers, people will go to them because they don’t know any better. But then there’s the debris field, okay. Now if somebody is not a strong leader, people who are gifted, strong leaders just don’t want to go there, right? They’re just not attracted that they see the problem, they don’t go there. But a strong leader will not only attract those people, but keep those people and even better often then send those correct positively they maintain those relationships. So maybe it’s less of the ESTA debris field, I think is a is a good sign. But then the flip side is that’s what it looks like when it goes well.

Mike Kruger
Yeah. So you could, you know, you can ask the question, what sign of an unhealthy leader and then you’re asking the question, what’s the sign of a healthy leader? Yeah, and they are the inverse of each other. Right? A healthy leader has long track record of healthy relationships, where he has people who who’ve been blessed by Him, and some not, not perfect relationships, but healthy relationships that that you can you can track to. And so yeah, I think those are two inverses of one another.

Collin Hansen
And I think it’s important to note as well that a strong and gifted leader will not have the debris field. But we’ll have possibly a history of confrontation, because that’s actually something that a good leader does is that confront problems, deal with problems. So sometimes there will be there will be a history of conflict, but not necessarily for bad reasons. But precisely because they refused to overlook.

Mike Kruger
That’s right. Yeah, there’s no such thing as is a as a ministry, involving leadership, that’s, that’s conflict free. If there were I would love to sign up for it. Because you’re just dealing with an organization with people that need to be led, sometimes they need to be corrected, sometimes things need to be challenged. And then sometimes there’s missteps, missteps of people towards us, and missteps from us towards them. And I cover some of this in the book where I say, Look, we’re not talking about some pristine situation, where we’re, you know, anytime there’s a there’s a relational conflict that we just keep the label abuse on it, no, we’re talking about something that clearly can be demonstrated over time.

Collin Hansen
And look for leaders who apologize. And not just caught.

Mike Kruger
Yes, this is a humble, repentant leader. It’s amazing how many of the cases I study could have been averted if someone had just repented, because actually, the people who’ve been hurt would be so amazing. But most people are just remarkably gracious, just want an apology, you know, and it’s when you circle the wagons that, that you end up actually making it worse. And that is, of course, unfortunately, one of the common tactics,

Collin Hansen
I do have a few more questions I want to get through. So I’m gonna keep going. I hear from seminary leaders that young men no longer want to be lead pastors, at least at the same level, after what they’ve seen from the fall of famous preachers. Now, it’s might not be the case at RTS the same way that I’ve heard it from elsewhere. Are you concerned that we might not be able to find young men who want to lead churches? In light of some of that broader concern?

Mike Kruger
No, I’m not. You know, when I when I have young guys come to me and say, Hey, I’m more hesitant now to take on that mantle of leadership too young. I think that’s a good sign.

Collin Hansen
Well, too young is the key. Yeah, I say to young, that’s where the church planting often comes, right?

Mike Kruger
They might recognize it, of course, they can make the decision for lots of reasons. But if if they recognize, wait a second, I probably need time to grow, I need time to mature anytime that learn how to handle things. And and then went on. And then when I feel like I’m in a better place, maybe I can take that on. So they’re not rushing into the senior leadership role, I think can be very healthy. I often say to people, that the kind of person you want leading organization is almost the kind of person that’s a little bit reluctant to do it. And when I say that, I have to qualify what I mean. Obviously, you don’t want reluctant leaders who aren’t, you know, feeling called by God to do the job. That’s not what I mean. But what I am saying is, is that for the person who’s power hungry, they’re grabbing a hold of opportunities when they come along, almost like I just got to climb up the ladder. Those are the kinds of people think you’re really nervous. So a little more hesitancy, maybe healthy. Now, on the flip side, you could spend an unhealthy I mean, if people felt like I could never be a leader, because I’m always attacked. I don’t want that either. But I don’t think that’s the issue here is spiritual abuse. I don’t think the main problem is, is that I think the main problem is a lack of accountability.

Collin Hansen
Parallel here would be marriage, right? Like you don’t want somebody who says, oh, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m completely ready for it without even thinking about it. At the same time. You don’t want somebody who says no, I’m definitely not ready. I think well, you’re never going to be ready. Exactly. That’s a good analogy. Yeah. So whether marriage or kids, same thing, you want somebody who had some sense of what they’re getting into some sense of the gravity of it.

Mike Kruger
Yeah. Some some level of, of posture of humility, like, I’m going into this feeling inadequate. And, and that you want that feeling at some level.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, I think that that makes perfect sense. That’s a that’s a positive sign. That’s a positive sign, but then also still trusting to walk before the Lord in obedience to His coal. That’s right. Now, this one, Mike, I, I just gotta beg. I’m begging churches to do this, begging them. Okay, let’s be clear. You write this? If elder boards are to have an accurate portrayal of their own pastors performance and character, then they need to have a careful annual review process by which feedback is communicated and relayed to the overall leadership body without the potential of reprisal upon those bringing the feedback. Oh, yeah. Mike, in my experience, this almost never happens. almost never happens in Christian organizations. Okay. It seems so basic. It never, almost never happens. Tell us more of what this should look like. And I gotta add two things in here that you highlight in the book. It needs to include women. Oh, must be women in this review? says Okay, number one. And number two, it can’t just be your friends.

Mike Kruger
Yes. Oh, my gosh, yeah, the system? Look, I mean, the system is really broken at a number of places, just by God’s sheer grace that most just because I think to be clear, and I want your listeners to know this, I think the vast majority of pastors are wonderful people who are godly, who love their field.

Collin Hansen
There’s nothing to fear in this review process.

Mike Kruger
Well, what I want to say is, is that I think the vast majority of church pastors are godly. So even though you have broken review processes across the landscape, most churches can weather that because they’re their pastor is actually godly.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, there’s not there’s no problem, right? There’s no problem.

Mike Kruger
But the problem is, you put the review process in place to deal with the problems before they blow up. Yes, yeah. So this is I think you’re exactly right. I was stunned to learn how few churches do this. It seems so self evident. But it really is so critical. And so yeah, you’ve got to have a 360 review. The people under you, the people around you, not just your buddies, not just your fellow elders, include women include people who are subordinate to you, there has to be a level of anonymity. And then here’s the real kicker, the whole elder board needs to get the reviews. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in situations where the board never sees the reviews. It’s cordoned off in a little subcommittee typically called a Personnel Committee, where it’s like three people that see him and they keep everything under wraps. And it goes on for years and years and years. And then when it finally blows up, guess what the rest of the elder board says they say, Oh, this can’t be true, because we’ve never heard about this before. And you’re like, Well, you’ve never heard about it, because it’s been covered up. And so there’s a bit of a no win situation there. Right. And so it’s really needs to be improved.

Collin Hansen
And guess who ended up on the Personnel Committee?

Mike Kruger
The people who are closest to the pastor? Oh, yeah, exactly.

Collin Hansen
He’s one of the jurors, the leader. I mean, it’s not exclusive then a specific situation here. It’s just It’s, I mean, I think what I want people to know is that when you’re in leadership, and even in healthy leadership situations, you still see a ton of the difficulties out there. And so I think it’s actually people have experienced in the church who should be the most likely to get behind what you’re saying. Because they’ve seen the problems that they may have been in even to be clear, I think a lot of readers have been part of the problem, too. At some level, they may look at this and say, oh, man, we’ve never done a review process in our church or in my ministry, or whatever. Or we did one and yeah, you’re right. We’ve never shared that. It’s not because they’re, they’re they’re nefarious, necessarily just but it’s in place for the situation that does come executor exactly what you just said, right.

Mike Kruger
You know, the other thing I bring up too, is it’s not only important to do a review of the senior pastor, or the leader, whatever the situation might be, but it’s also really important that he does a review of his staff. Yes, exactly. Thank cuz you need a record of that relationship over time because when he’s challenged, what inevitably happens is a retaliation against the staff making accusations but if you have five to 10 years of good reviews, and then suddenly all these accusations are coming out of the woodwork, you realize, wait a second, this is retaliatory. That is really important. I can’t tell you how many cases I saw where that was not being done.

Collin Hansen
Exactly. The review of subordinate staff is to protect the subordinate staff.

Mike Kruger
Exactly. Exactly. What is that? I don’t even know that. They think online reviews. I mean, who likes reviews But I want to tell them, Look, you want to do this buddy, you want to get in there. And you know, even if there’s a little bit of uncomfortability to it, believe me over the long run, this is going to protect you. As a staff member, that’s an important thing to do.

Collin Hansen
Last question, how’s your leadership might change over the years?

Mike Kruger
That’s a that’s a really good question. And a good question to end on. I think writing this book has, I hope, and I pray that this is helping me to be a better leader. I think about things now in new ways that I didn’t think about before. I think one of the things that I’m learning as a leader and I kind of already knew this, and certainly would have, would have checked the box properly on a quiz about this as if, as leaders, our words, just have more impact than we realize. They have more power than we realize. And we tend to think they man, you know, people aren’t really listening to me, or they don’t really matter. No, I mean, the way you interact with people, the way you talk to people, the way you speak the things you say, really hold way, are we going to make mistakes, of course, but we need to be quick to repent and apologize. And we do. But I think what I’ve learned is I’ve just learned to try to be more aware of that. And I think the Lord is using the research I did for this book to make me hopefully, a better Shepherd and a better leader, and hopefully more embodying Christ. And I pray that’s the case. And I pray and my main goal for the book is that if people can use this book that they’ll be hopefully themselves encouraged to be more like Jesus as a shepherd down the road. So yeah, I count myself in the mix with everybody else I want to grow and learn, just like I hope other people can do.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, not every kind of leadership in the world involves a lot of words, or a lot of speaking or a lot of communicating, communicating. But in the church, it does, almost always,

Mike Kruger
it’s so relationally heavy. Yeah,

Collin Hansen
it’s relationally heavy, it’s teaching heavy, it’s words heavy. It’s just it’s throwaway conversations. It’s leading a small group, it’s preaching, it’s counseling. I gotta agree, Mike. That is, that is the that is area that stands out for me as well, especially in last five to 10 years of having to switch to understand that what might not have seen it like a big deal to me at all. Yeah, was a really, really big relative to someone else. Sometimes even something that I didn’t even remember, I remember one of my closest friends in the church, a woman I’d seen flourish under, in our church and in our small group, and everything like that just had a comment, you know, with for years hurt by something that I’d said. And I didn’t even remember saying it, I could not recall it at all. And it didn’t even sound like me. But in those situations, I just think you’re, I mean, I’m just like, I’m sorry, I don’t, I don’t have any explanation.

Mike Kruger
it’s amazing how well people respond to a humble, gentle reaction when confronted, and you know, and I wrote an epilogue to the book, which is, which is where I talk directly to the reader. And I go through some of these things where I say, Hey, here’s some thoughts for you. Some things that might be in your head, that you can hopefully nip in the bud here, before they kind of blow out of proportion. So I was trying to, at the end, get to the heart of the reader too. And again, I count myself as a reader as much as I am the author.

Collin Hansen
Well, the book, I haven’t mentioned it since the beginning, it’s bully pulpit confronting the problem of spiritual abuse in the church. The author is Michael Kruger is published by Zondervan. I knew I was gonna be passionate about this topic, I knew it was gonna be good, but also intense discussion. So thanks, Mike, for your wisdom. In the book, I just also say for your friendship, and even the writing in preparation of this of this book, as we’ve talked through some of these things, and, and for the blessing that this book is going to be for the church it ironic not ironically, I think it’s the way it works in the kingdom by confronting the by staring at me by confronting the problem, we’re going to seek God’s grace to help us to be able to move forward.

Mike Kruger
Well, thank you, my friend, I really appreciate your encouragement and prior conversations before this one and in this one too, and it’s, it’s a blessing to be able to talk with you about it and you you have great insights yourself, and I’m excited to see how God might use this book.

Collin Hansen
Thanks, Mike.