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Christian Leaders and Orgs, We're Shooting Ourselves in the Foot
Brian Kreeger • May 26, 2022
The Church body continues to be damaged by organizational and individual leadership. It’s time for the Church body to be more proactive, pay more attention, become more engaged, and take action when necessary.
It’s pretty easy to blow by the term “Church body” and not consider that the body is made up of individuals. These individuals come from a wide array of backgrounds, life experiences, struggles and successes.
If you are a Christ follower, you are part of the body.
All Christians recognize that leaning on Christ in times of struggle brings supernatural comfort and guidance. On a human level, we have leaned on the body to get us through.
The body we lean on can be organizational in nature, be a church or organizational leader, or just another real person who is part of the body.
During a time of crisis, these leaders/people many times reach into our very soul, inspiring us in our Christian walk to a higher level of consciousness of purpose in our trial. They help us cut through the weeds and imagined scenarios to remind us who we are in Christ, that He loves us, and He has a purpose in our difficulty.Those members of the body who help us become part of our identity, as they prop us up with their own strength and wisdom.
Of course, the goal is to find our identity in Christ, but we are human and struggle to keep our identity where it should be.
So, what happens
when this beacon of righteousness, this fount of wisdom and strength, this inspiration to all that is good and godly, struggles, or even falls themself?
(This blog focuses on starting a conversation centered on preventing the fall of nonprofit leaders. I write it from a Christian perspective, but all leaders will benefit. Be sure to sign up to receive these articles via email every Tuesday at
briankreeger.com as well as taking a look at previous blog articles. In addition to receiving these articles two days before they hit social media, you will receive the article "5 Early Indicators of a Christian Nonprofit Leadership Fall" along with the Contents, Introduction and the Appendix (My story) of my book,
The Courageous Ask: A Proactive Approach to Prevent the Fall of Christian Nonprofit Leaders.)
The fall of a person who gained our admiration and respect, a person who became part of our identity, can be devastating. This can cause a person to question everything around that relationship: the organization the fallen one represents, the integrity and genuineness of the relationship, the faith that was encouraged and grown, the very relationship with Christ they represented.
While there is much to be written about these individual relationships that form the body of Christ, that is not what this article is going to address. But these do form a backdrop for what I am going to discuss.
What I am addressing is the damage that is done to the body when we are not all engaged, when organizational leadership takes their eye off the mission and goal, when the legal ramifications of exposure of failure and loss of reputation are placed above the spiritual health of the body and the individuals in that body. There is a human toll.
Let me be clear. I am a fallen Christian nonprofit leader. I have personally felt the pain that comes from falling, and I have watched those around me writhe in pain because of my personal and spiritual failures. I have experienced my faith falter as I walked through it, and have watched with tremendous guilt as the faith of those around me and the organization stumbled and was damaged through my missteps. I was that trusted leader who caused a tremendous amount of damage.
Unfortunately, I know what I am talking about through personal experience.
My blog articles rarely use current events for source material, but once again there has been a report released by another prominent Christian organization about missteps in their membership and leadership that cover many years.
In the words of the report by Guidepost Solutions for the Southern Baptist Convention(SBC) concerning survivors of abuse within its membership, “They made phone calls, mailed letters, sent emails, appeared at SBC and EC (Executive Committee) meetings, held rallies, and contacted the press…only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility from some within the EC.”
According to the report, the SBC is run by 86 Executive Committee Trustees who meet 3 times per year. The report says that, “many of the decisions at the EC level are made by the EC President and senior EC staff members.”
The report also said, “They closely guarded information about abuse allegations and lawsuits, which were not shared with EC Trustees, and were singularly focused on avoiding liability for the SBC to the exclusion of other considerations.” This was followed with the assertion that “the SBC could take no action due to its polity regarding church autonomy.”
I could go on and on pointing out different aspects of this 288 page report, but I want to focus on one area: the damage to the body of Christ, and especially to those individuals affected; those individuals mentioned above who are now questioning their whole Christian identity and faith.
And this is not just about the SBC. In my book, The Courageous Ask: A Proactive Approach to Prevent the Fall of Christian Nonprofit Leaders, I highlight the leadership falls of Ted Haggard, Bill Hybels, Chuck Templeton, and Bron Clifford.
These men, along with the SBC and many other Christian organizations like RZIM, have done great work in the name of Christ, but have experienced stumbles or falls. Take a look at the great work SBC is doing by checking out their website.
But here is what makes the SBC unique: According to their website, there are over 50,000 local member churches worldwide in their membership. That's a lot of influence. This is where the ground level abuses that were attempted to be covered up took place.
When it comes to the ministries listed above who were driven by individual personalities, most of us were on the periphery, and grieved the effect on the Church as a whole, but probably moved on with our lives. Typically, unless you are personally affected by something like the poor decisions these men made, you were or are not deeply affected.
I believe the real damage to the body is done on the local, more personal level. The big-time, televised mega-church leaders get all the media attention and their falls are publicized more widely. But the volume of local fallen leaders affects many more people directly, and to a deeper level.
Membership organizations like the SBC have access to these local churches, which increases their level of responsibility to do everything in their power to set the example of transparency and to provide adequate guidance and resources for the prevention of issues as described in the Guidepost Solutions report.
Leadership falls are happening all around us, in big organizations and small local nonprofits. Yes, it has been proven that it can happen among our most trusted, even among your favorites.
Here are a few questions for your organization: Do you have a board that is really run by a few executive committee members without proper engagement of the others? Does your organization have policies in place that will guide a leader or leaders (including the board) in the prevention of a fall or scandal? Do you act in a proactive or reactive way concerning issues?
From the Guidepost Solutions/SBC report: “Many EC Trustees told us that they were unaware that survivors and others had been reporting abuse to the EC for years, or that lawsuits had been filed. A common concern was that EC officers and staff members knew more than the EC Trustees, who were not provided with enough time or materials to be thoroughly informed about EC issues.”
Also, “We identified several aspects where the policies were lacking – such as the absence of written guidance about reporting procedures, escalation, whistleblower protections, or investigation requirements – and made suggestions for improvements.”
So, what would have happened if the SBC trustees (those who were informed) would have acted properly at the beginning of the abuse allegations almost two decades ago? How much human and spiritual damage would have been avoided? What would the damage to the body have been back then compared to what it is now?
It’s deemed risky to reveal struggles on the human level, especially when measured by lost reputation and legal liability. But what a win in the spiritual realm (the only realm that should count), and in the realm of those who were yet to be abused, if issues are aggressively addressed in a biblical fashion.
After the RZIM scandal, their board put out an open letter to the public. In part, here are some comments found in this letter of regret:
“We now know based on the investigation that [our leader] engaged in a series of extensive measures to conceal his behavior from his family, colleagues, and friends. However, we also recognize that in situations of prolonged abuse, there often exist significant structural, policy, and cultural problems.
That a leader under our care sinned against others so grievously pains us. We were trusted by our staff, our donors, and the public to mentor, oversee, and ensure the accountability of [our leader], and in this we have failed. The findings of the investigation have caused us to take an extensive and humbling look at ways that we have fallen short, made mistakes, and failed to love well.
We regret that we allowed our misplaced trust in (our leader) to result in him having less oversight and accountability than would have been wise and loving."1
In too many cases when a leader or organization falls(including mine), people look back and say they saw it coming.
It's time to get out in front of it, time to be proactive, time to be engaged and perform a Courageous Ask.
Board member, are you properly engaged?
The Body, and those individuals in the body, are depending on it!
Be Courageous!
Be Proactive!
1 RZIM International Board of Directors, “Open Letter from the International Board of Directors of RZIM on the Investigation of Ravi Zacharias,” RZIM, accessed May 2022,
https://rzim.org/read/rzim-updates/board-statement.html
Be sure to sign up to receive these articles via email every Tuesday at
briankreeger.com. In addition to receiving these articles two days before they hit social media, you will receive the article "5 Early Indicators of a Christian Nonprofit Leadership Fall" along with the Contents, Introduction and the Appendix (My Story) of my book,
The Courageous Ask: A Proactive Approach to Prevent the Fall of Christian Nonprofit Leaders.
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You are the community, no matter what formal role you play in a particular organization, or if you play any role at all. My blog articles typically focus on the roles the leader and the board have in preventing the fall of Christian nonprofit leaders. But I contend that the community that exists around organizational leaders and boards has a role as well. In fact, a community’s role can many times be much bigger. My next few blog articles will focus on the role of the community in preventing the fall of Christian nonprofit leaders. (This blog focuses on starting a conversation centered on preventing the fall of nonprofit leaders. I write it from a Christian perspective, but all leaders will benefit. Be sure to sign up to receive these articles via email every Tuesday at briankreeger.com as well as taking a look at previous blog articles. In addition to receiving these articles two days before they hit social media, you will receive the article "5 Early Indicators of a Christian Nonprofit Leadership Fall" along with the Contents, Introduction and the Appendix (My story) of my book, The Courageous Ask: A Proactive Approach to Prevent the Fall of Christian Nonprofit Leaders. )
