My church is all about me!

In the past decade, a disturbing list of church leaders has disgraced themselves. Reading about Mark Driscoll, Jonathan Fletcher, Mike Pilavachi, and Steve Timmis, there are common themes in these tragic stories. 

Each individual was a gifted public speaker with a charismatic personality. They were "successful" in the ABCs of church growth (Attendance, Buildings, and Cash). Their initial success began when they were relatively young. Their church/organisation expanded rapidly and they hired a large staff team. Due to their "success" in "ministry" they received global recognition. Institutional structures were created or manipulated so there was limited real accountability.

We now know, that in private the individual was arrogant, condescending, manipulative, and involved in bullying and abuse (verbal, emotional, sexual, spiritual, or financial). This occurred over many years, sometimes decades, despite concerns raised with the individual and those they were nominally accountable to. Within the organisation, there was a culture of enabling or cover-ups. This was rationalised out of fear of the individual or fear of endangering the "success" of the "ministry". People who formally raised concerns within the organisation were fired, expelled, or ostracised. The problem was only finally addressed, and the leader was removed when secular media reported the scandal or there was a threat of lawsuits.

A common theme in these stories may also be that these fallen "leaders" suffer from narcissistic personality disorder and/or that the churches they led suffered from collective narcissism. This is a complex issue and is addressed in the book that we are discussing in the theology reading group this month.

Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse by Chuck DeGroat

A helpful short review of the book is in the journal Themelios. 

DeGroat is a seminary professor and therapist who has worked for decades with church planting organisations in evaluating candidates. Many anecdotes in the book illustrate his experience trying to clean up trails of destruction left behind by narcissistic leaders. 

The most disturbing thing about the book is captured in the following quotations.

 "[A] 2008 study showed a NPD prevalence of 7.7 percent in men and 4.8 percent in women.... instances of narcissism among pastors are much more common... The rates are even higher among church planters." (pages 7,19) 

“I saw that narcissistic traits were often presented as strengths. Narcissism can be interpreted as confidence, strong leadership, clear vision, a thick skin.” (page 19)

“Their persona may even be interpreted as spiritual giftedness, a personality well-suited to plant an effective church or lead a large ministry or church.”

“grandiosity, entitlement, and absence of empathy characteristic of narcissistic personality disorder was translated into the profile of a good leader.”

DeGroat puts the problems in a broader cultural context, including citing The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979) by Nicholas Lasch.

DeGroat conjectures that  "missional fervour and rise in church planting we’ve witnessed since the 1980s can be correlated with the growing prevalence of narcissism."

Too often the church conforms to the culture it swims in, rather than being counter-cultural, just like Jesus.

Reading about and/or experiencing the vagaries of narcissistic leaders, it is easy to be incensed, indignant, and self-righteous. How could they be such a hypocrite? How could this happen? How could their organisation allow it? Why do so many people flock to churches led by such people?

DeGroat is helpful and challenging because he argues that the problem is not just narcissistic individuals, but organisations that exhibit collective narcissism. Tragically, history shows removing the leader usually does not simply mean that the problems go away.

"Churches are particularly susceptible to ... "collective narcissism" in which the charismatic leader/follower relationship is understood as a given. ... The leader uses polarizing rhetoric that identifies an outside enemy, bringing together leader and followers on a grandiose mission...

“the system often compares itself to others and finds others wanting. The narcissistic system may feature the compelling personality or style of its leader, the strategic nature of its location or mission, the orthodoxy of its doctrine, the authenticity of its worship, the beauty of its liturgy, the integrity of its activism. Those within the system are led to believe that the church down the block isn’t as blessed, special, or faithful.”

pages 23-24

Chapter 6, Understanding narcissistic systems gives a more detailed discussion.

"Perhaps this is about us, an invitation to wake up to the many ways in which certainty trumps curiosity, uniformity trumps unity, hubris trumps humility, control trumps connection, loyalty trumps love."

(page 116)

DeGroat cautions about that labels such as "narcissist" should not be thrown around. Only a professional can make a diagnosis of NPD. Furthermore, 

‘when we diagnose, we are describing a pattern … never a person. All people are unique. Labels, however well intended, cannot do justice to human complexity.’ 

A person is not their diagnosis. Compassion is needed. Narcissists are deeply wounded individuals who live in a deep sense of fear and inadequacy. Compassion includes removing them from leadership positions so they do not hurt others and so they can have the opportunity to face their woundedness and seek healing. DeGroat is not optimistic about this happening but gives a few examples to provide tempered and realistic hope.

I found the book helpful in understanding things I have observed and experiences that I have had over the years. It helped me make sense of patterns I have seen such as entitlement, a sense of superiority, condescension, playing the victim when criticised, making generic vague apologies, hidden addictions and rage, lack of empathy, having an explanation for everything,...

Never tell a narcissist that you think they are a narcissist. If they really are you may be left thinking you are crazy. They will gaslight you. (I actually did not know what gaslighting was until just a few years ago).

“Moreover, when the narcissistic leader is under attack, his response is defensiveness and a victim complex.” (page 22)

“Entitled pastors snap when pricked, however. Even the smallest pinprick of challenge or concern from another leads to defensiveness and self-protective strategies.”

“While anxious churches driven by narcissistic pastors may grow numerically, healthy churches flourish. Do not mistake numerical growth for flourishing.”

“sad abandonment of the humble way of Jesus shows up today in pastors of large and small churches,”

The subtitle of the book is "Healing your Community from emotional and spiritual abuse", but this is only addressed directly in chapter 8, and much of that is anecdotes. That chapter has a subsection, "Healing ourselves" that is only two pages. Nevertheless there is some helpful advice and exhortation.

"Healing requires radical honesty and the courage to follow through on the wilderness path. Perhaps the two most important components of healing trauma are awareness and intentionality... Memories may be repressed, bodily sensations ignored, and feelings and needs disregarded...

"Every healing journey is unique. There is no clear roadmap... We long to control and strategies a journey that can only unfold in its own time." (pages 141-2)

."..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 centred compassion rather than reactive rage."  (page 163)

The book is not pleasant to read. But, it is a book that needed to be written and needs to be read and taken heed of.

The church is not about me. It is not about my tribe. It is not about the leader. It is about Jesus, the model of a humble servant leader. 

 

In Praise of Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea is a beautiful and fascinating country. It has incredible biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity.

The island of New Guinea has more than 18,000 described plant species, an estimated 150,000 insect species, 740 species of birds, 276 species of mammals, 641 species of amphibians and reptiles, 600 species of coral and 3,000 species of reef fish. PNG is a magnet for research biologists. A glimpse of this beautiful diversity is captured in the book, New Guinea: Nature and Culture of Earth's Grandest Island by Bruce M. Beehler and Tim Laman.

I love this video about the mating ritual of one of the iconic birds of paradise.

New Guinea has around 840 living languages, making it the most linguistically diverse country in the world. This is more than ten per cent of the world's living languages. 

Papua New Guinea (PNG, the political entity that covers the eastern half of the island) and Australia have a long and intertwined history. Australia inherited it as a colony from Britain and ruled it until 1975 when it gained independence.

Port Moresby, the capital, is only a three-hour flight from Brisbane, where I live. But, it is a different world.

I have visited PNG five times to visit my son, who works there. Next month I will be there for his wedding! 

Recent experiences and reading have increased my appreciation of PNG and of the challenges that it faces. Unfortunately, there is a lot of negative media coverage in Australia. Most focuses on problems such as crime, tribal violence, corruption, and political instability. These are real problems but should be put in the context of positive achievements, the role of outside actors, and history.

Only one hundred years ago, most people in PNG lived in villages and had not even encountered white people, let alone have any awareness of Western culture, democracy, or economies. Since becoming independent of colonial rule, PNG has maintained a parliamentary democracy, free elections, a free and independent press, an independent judiciary, and the army has not interfered in politics. PNG has not suffered from a civil war, a military coup, or political repression. This is incredibly impressive, considering how after the end of Western colonial rule, so few countries in the world have avoided such failures.

Australian actors have played a significant role in some of the challenges that PNG faces. For example, the Australian branch of the bank UBS, charged the PNG government hundreds of millions of dollars to arrange a loan for a dubious investment that led to the PNG government losing hundreds of millions of dollars.

The closest thing to a civil war has been the conflict on Bougainville Island, which seeks to become independent of PNG, something the national government is not keen to allow. Unfortunately, Australian actors helped create this problem, as it all began with the establishment of the hugePanguna mineby the Australian company Conzinc Rio Tinto . The conflict ultimately led to the Sandline affair, where the PNG tried to hire mercenaries to "resolve" the conflict.

Like many Majority World countries, PNG is plagued by corruption. This occurs at multiple scales from the small to the large. An example of the small is a government bureaucrat taking a small bribe to speed up the processing of some paperwork. An example of the large is a politician diverting millions of dollars from a government bank account into their own personal bank account in Switzerland or Panama.

Large scale corruption would not be possible without Western enablers. On Britain, The Economist, stated, based on the book Butler to the World: How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals.

"No other country offers a comparable array of enablers; from banks and lawyers to public-relations firms and other “reputation managers”."

The rapid change of PNG is beautifully captured in the autobiography of Albert Kiki Maori, Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime. It also describes how he experienced discrimination and racism by Australians, but was empowered to have a political vision for independence from his brief time studying in Fiji.

The Embarrassed Colonialist (2016) is a helpful and short book by Sean Dorney It does not gloss over PNG's problems but emphasises how there is much to celebrate and nationals should be proud of what they have achieved since independence. 

A helpful discussion of Australia's fraught relationships with its Pacific neighbours is discussed in a podcast by Gordon Peake, Statecraftiness. 

Lectures on Science and Christianity: Part 4

Part 4: Apologetics, mission, and the social sciences

1. Overview

2. Emergence and reductionism

3. Human sciences

4. Mental health

5. South Asian contexts 

6. Conclusion

The beauty and paradoxes of the power of God

How powerful is God? What is the nature of God's power? How is the power of God similar and different to the power of humans?

This month in the theology reading group we are discussing The Power of God and the gods of Power by Daniel L. Migliore. A helpful summary of the book is here.

The book is marked by clarity, insight, and humility. Migliore engages with the Bible and theologians (mostly Protestant) from various eras and perspectives. It is distinctly Trinitarian, is wary of abstractions, and teases out practical implications to churches and individuals. 

Here are a few of the things that stood out to me.

Human agency reflects that everyone, regardless of their situation, has some power and this is an important part of their humanity. It is diminished when we are now allowed to express it, feel we can't or don't. (pages 2-7).

God's power is radically different from the human will to power, e.g., to dominate others. God reveals his strength (power) "most awesomely in the humility of a servant Lord." (p. 15).

As for any concept, it is important to consider what images and metaphors we associate with it.

The Greek gods were each associated with an irresistible power: sex, wine, war, and destruction, ... They promote the myth that we are helpless while in the grip of their power. This myth undermines our agency and the associated human dignity. (cf. 1 Cor. 10:13). (p. 9) 

In American culture, the images of power include sheer almightiness (God is like Superman), captive power (God is a divine butler at our beck and call), and ineptness or indifference. (p. 20)

If we misconceive divine power we will misconceive and misuse human power. (p. 32)

The activity of the Trinity defines who God is and the nature of the power that God exercises: creative, suffering, and transformative love. (p. 57)

Scholastic theology has a fraught legacy as its metaphysical approach to understanding God is relatively independence from the Biblical witness. It framed God's power in abstract terms and as absolute (omnipotent), immutable, and impassible. (pp. 62-65).

There is an interesting transition in the history of Christian art, where before Constantine Jesus was portrayed as a shepherd and later as a king. (p. 67)

In considering what role power should play in the church there has been and continues to be a false dichotomy. The first choice is accepting the reality of power in any human institution, exercising it strongly, sometimes to the point of accepting abuses of power as just and unfortunate reality. The second choice is to eschew any sorts of structures that will involve members exercising power over others. These two choices were embodied in the Reformed and Anabaptist traditions, respectively.

The power of the triune God is seen in actions as Creator, Redeemer, and Transformer.

The life of the church is to be a living witness to the nature of the power of God. This is reflected in participants are not passive observers, servant leadership, and not being self-focussed. The church should not to be coercive, including in evangelism. (p.68)

Unfortunately, widespread reports over the past decade of abuse: sexual, spiritual, and financial, reflect how much the church has failed. This is relevant to the book we will discuss next month, When Narcissism Comes to Church.

On theodicy, "suffering is the greatest mystery of human life." (p. 83)

"God freely suffers for the salvation of others - that is the deepest message of Scripture regarding human suffering." (p. 85).

 "Suffering is not primarily a theoretical problem but an agonising reality of life." (p. 87).

"Homogeneity in the Christian community is therefore a contradiction of the gospel of God's omnipotent love, which frees us to accept as brothers and sisters those considered strangers and enemies. A community that calls itself Christian and is complacent about its economic, racial, and cultural insularity is a community without the power of the Spirit..

Some church leaders advocate an outreach program for congregations that would focus on people most similar to their present members. But evangelism that deliberately aims at homogeneity for the sake of church growth is a display of spiritual weakness rather than real spiritual strength. ... (p. 106)"

The final chapter considers the practical implications of the Christian theology of the power of God for the dialogue between Christians and Muslims. This is one of the most helpful and constructive discussions I have encountered about the ground and nature of such dialogue. Mutual respect means acknowledging both common ground and real differences. Both Muslims and Christians affirm the unity of God and are against idolatry and immorality. Their central difference concerns fundamentally different perspectives on the power of God. Christians affirm the "weakness" of God profoundly manifest in both the incarnation and the crucifixion of Jesus.

Lectures on Science and Christianity: part 3

 I have uploaded to YouTube Part 3 of my lectures. They cover Creation: theological and scientific perspectives

0. Overview

1. Doctrine of Creation

2. Genesis 1 & 2 

3. Big Bang cosmology 

4. Anthropic principle 

5. Biology

The power of saying sorry

Richard Flanagan is an esteemed Australian writer. My son recently gave our family a copy of Flanagan's recent book, Question 7. It is a personal memoir that masterfully weaves together a wide array of topics, from nuclear physics to the Tasmanian wilderness. The most striking part of the book was the following beautiful passage (page 140).

"Three Japanese women to see my father many years later. They came with gifts. They asked him to tell his story and they listened they said they were sorry.

There was a sense of strange ceremony, the awkwardness of ensuring something exquisitely fragile was not dropped before being given and received. There was a reserve on the part of both my father and the women, perhaps explicable as a nervousness about giving offence when none was intended.

They were part of a group of Japanese women committed to exposing Japanese war crimes. Two were middle-aged. One was elderly. They were brave and dignified. The eldest was their leader. She had survived the the Tokyo fire bombing. My father expressed his sorrow.

His children and his grandchildren were all there. We watched this with its strange weight of human dignity and goodness. I could not ever have believed that saying sorry might mean so much. None was the government. None bore responsibility. No one spoke for anyone other than themselves. Nothing said had had any national consequence. Yet in that strange communion lay liberation. What other answer can any of us make to the terrible question of history?"

Behold! Life!

Is life a miracle to behold or a problem to be solved and something to be explained?

I have enjoyed reading Wendell Berry's book, Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition. It is a passionate critique and response to E.O. Wilson's book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.

[A brief and helpful summary is in Kirkus Reviews].

Berry is a poet, farmer, and former professor. He takes umbrage at Wilson's scientism and reductionism, which Berry considers to present an impoverished view of life, nature, and the university.

Berry has lived and worked on a farm for decades while writing. I cannot imagine doing this, as I am impractical. The passages below [page 45] gave me insight into what he is trying to achieve.

"In all of the thirty-seven years I have worked here, I have been trying to learn a language particular enough to speak of this place as it is and of my being as I am. My success, as I well know, has been poor enough, and yet I am glad of the effort, for it has helped me to make, and to remember always, the distinction between reduction and the thing reduced..."

“But, when I try to make my language more particular, I see that the life of this place is always emerging beyond expectation or prediction or typicality, that it is unique, given to the world minute by minute, only once, never to be repeated. And this is when I see that this life is a miracle, absolutely worth having, absolutely worth saving. We are alive within mystery, by miracle.”

Berry taught at a university for many years but eventually became disillusioned for reasons discussed in his essay, The Loss of the University.