In their 2021 book, The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb: Searching for Jesus’ Path of Power in a Church That Has Abandoned It, authors Kyle Strobel and Jamin Goggin make what might best be described as a startling – if tragic – claim: “We have grown adept at creating beautiful buildings and powerful-looking ministries,” they write. “On the surface things look grand and magnificent, but the path to success and influence is often paved with dark powers.”

The stories of countless prominent Christian leaders whose names have hit the headlines in recent years for all the wrong reasons support their assertion. Few denominations, ministries, or institutions have been left untouched by scandal and tragedy.

What is going on? It is a question that every seminary trustee, faculty, or staff member might ask as they consider whether and how God might be calling them to be part of an upstream solution for the sake of tomorrow’s church.

“We are at a pivotal moment, a re-orientation of understanding the depth and problem of abuse of power,” says Randall Rauser, Ph.D., theologian, author, and director of faith-based organizations investigations with Veritas Solutions, an Edmonton, Alberta, human resource risk management firm. Rauser, who only last year left his role as a seminary professor, spends about half of his time investigating abuse allegations in the faith-based world.

He says it is fair to assume that the scandals we’ve seen play out in public are merely “the tip of the iceberg. For every one of those, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, that never make the media.”

Whether it’s grooming and sexual assault, or a psychologically unsafe workplace where employees experience violations of boundaries or even just feel like they are walking on eggshells, Rauser says such issues represent opposite ends of a spectrum of problems that can arise when a leader abuses the power inherent in their position. When the leader also has spiritual authority by virtue of their calling or credentials, Rauser says, “We’re at the highest level of risk for the potential abuse of that power” because the authority that is being wielded “ultimately goes back to God.”

In Pasadena, California, Fuller Theological Seminary’s David Wang, Ph.D., agrees. As Cliff and Joyce Penner Chair for the Formation of Emotionally Healthy Leaders, he has thought a great deal about the issue of abuse of power in the Church. He says pastors and spiritual leaders steward a responsibility to define reality, and one of the ways they do that is through the pulpit. “It’s where a lot of the power differentials are rooted,” Wang explains. “The Christian leader is the one who interprets reality through their interpretation of Scripture and shares this perspective of life and faith to the rest of the congregation. That privilege and responsibility carries with it power that can also be used for ill – for example, to perpetuate biases or blind spots, to further self-interest, to marginalize legitimate voices and perspectives.

“Any form of abuse of power can potentially be present among pastors and spiritual leaders,” Wang says. “On top of the typical abuses of power there is potential for spiritual abuse … using God or Christian faith to rationalize or justify that abuse. That can be doubly destructive.”

Such abuse has been around “forever” says Doug Powe, Ph.D., Director at Wesley Theological Seminary’s Lewis Center for Church Leadership in Washington, D.C. “But given the authority of the religious leader’s position, many people were silent.” In today’s cultural climate, people are more willing to come forward, he says, giving increasing numbers of others the courage to do the same. The world turns and times change; what was once endured is now abhorred.

At George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas, Angela Reed, Ph.D., recognizes the power inherent in her position as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. “Power enables us to impact and shape,” she says. Growing up Mennonite, she regards that tradition – with its emphasis on living by humility, ethics and character, and in which the community rather than a single spiritual leader makes decisions together – as “part of the riches of my tradition growing up that I will always have with me.”

 

What Christian power should look like

“Jesus Christ was all about giving people choices to make their own decisions for their own lives as they grew in loving, humble relationship with God and others,” Reed explains. “That is the work the church needs to continue.”

Of course, from the beginning the church has elevated individuals to positions of leadership and authority. Writing in the New Year 2000 edition of In Trust, the late Thomas J. Savage, S.J., noted that “Historically, religious organizations have been among the most hierarchical in structure and authoritarian in governance.”

Powe says that if we look to Jesus’ example, power was “sacrificial,” and yes, he understands the baggage with that term. But, Powe is quick to add, in the Church “our institutional structures don’t work that way. We are structured more like government and corporations, where power is hoarded. That’s the struggle in some ways. Can we really live out that power like Jesus?”

At Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology’s Institute for Spiritual Formation in La Mirada, California, where he teaches, author Kyle Strobel, Ph.D., is blunt. The Church in the West “has come to believe that worldly power is the only kind of power there is.”

“By prioritizing strength over God’s power in our weakness, we have given ourselves to a way of power and a way to do church that is antithetical to the gospel. Toxic human beings and narcissists thrive in that kind of context.”

The Church, Strobel says, “is reaping what we’ve sown, and it’s profoundly sick fruit. What we need to be asking is ‘What’s gone wrong, and how can we address what’s gone wrong?’”

Powe says that creating accountability for leaders is critical. But leaders must also be self-aware. He says that to a degree, “all leaders are narcissistic. It’s a part of who we are as humans. We have blind spots, all of us. The question is: Who do you surround yourself with who can hold you accountable? We can surround ourselves with ‘yes’ people who just affirm everything we’re doing. Some of that is on the leaders themselves. A part of it is that we need to help people understand that self-awareness piece, in spiritual formation.”

 

We have given ourselves to a way of power and a way to do church that is antithetical to the gospel. Toxic human beings and narcissists thrive in that kind of context.”

 

The work of the seminary

While seminary curricula were once far more focused on developing classical disciplines with highly technical information – biblical languages and interpretation, systematic theology and Church history and such – today’s curricula have become more focused on practical disciplines and skills like counseling, administering sacraments, visitation, and even church budgets.

“That’s great,” says Veritas Solutions’ Rauser, “because ultimately, we’re seeking to develop people who are practitioners, not academics. For the most part, that’s been a healthy development.”

But he adds, “I think we’re now at the threshold where we’re beginning to recognize that the next step of that extension of developing the practitioner is to help them understand the risks that power presents, the problem of abuse – particularly spiritual abuse in its many manifestations within churches and religious organizations – what healthy community looks like, and then to begin to develop the skills and the aptitudes to identify the risk points and to cultivate a healthy community. But I think we’re just at the start of that paradigm shift. We’re at the threshold of where that has to happen in seminaries.”

There is widespread agreement that spiritual formation is the work of the seminary, and that this is as it should be. But are seminaries doing enough?

They are not, says Rauser, citing anecdotal experience from teaching in seminaries for 20 years, interacting at conferences and speaking at various schools. “How many seminaries have a course that is part of the required curriculum focusing on these issues – spiritually healthy and harmful communities and personalities, and how to address allegations when they come forward?” he asks. “I would venture to say it’s rare to have a course where this is the central focus. And yet, these are hugely important issues, and they shouldn’t be dealt with scattershot.”

Students need to be taught about spiritual abuse, abuse of power, psychological safety, and even the profile of abusers, he says.

David Wang suggests schools could do more to first identify and then use their gatekeeping responsibilities to identify people with problematic personalities. But the greatest thing seminaries can do, he says, is to talk about power and its abuse, to teach about it and integrate it, and not just in one class.

“To cover power differentials and how to navigate them, the issue of authority, how to speak to it, how to exercise authority, how to wield it and work under it,” he says. “Those are important life and spiritual lessons that are at the center of spiritual leadership, at the center of our preparation to become spiritual leaders. It’s at the center of everything we learn in seminary: how Scripture is interpreted, preaching, pastoral care, church polity. We don’t need to look very far to see the relevance of the issue of power to almost every class we teach.

“It would be such a service to our students and to the Church for them to be thoroughly prepared and to have opportunities to think about this in a deep and robust way, and to come into ministry a lot more mindful and aware of these dynamics.”

 

How Scripture is interpreted, preaching, pastoral care, church polity – We don’t need to look very far to see the relevance of the issue of power to almost every class we teach.

 

The evolution of theological education, the evolution of the seminary

Truett’s Angela Reed says it is appropriate to hold seminaries responsible for training that will prepare Christian leaders to take up the reins of power in pulpits and parishes, ministries and seminaries, who will strive to exercise their power after the example of Christ. “It begins with the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) and the work being done right there in the standards,” she says. “It starts there, and it moves through seminaries and churches. We talk in the ATS standards increasingly about human formation and this is moral formation, formation of character, of the spiritual life, psychological formation. It is the formation of the whole person in preparation for ministry leadership.”

In the ATS standards, there is also “a whole section on leadership and governance. There’s instruction on shared governance. Every school must itself have a process of shared governance between administration and faculty. So not only do we talk, but we have to live it.”

Together with Wang and others, Reed co-authored a published study in 2023, “Spiritual Formation in Theological Education: A Multi-case Exploration on Seminaries and Student Development.” It noted that ATS’ research (conducted in 2018) revealed that “over 40 percent of seminaries do not have a formal or working institutional definition of personal and spiritual formation.” The study’s authors described the finding as highlighting, “an area of crucial need given the centrality of spiritual formation to the mission of theological education.

“The emergence of institutionally based, biblically and theologically robust training models for seminarian character and spiritual development would represent a substantial step in the evolution of theological education,” the study’s authors concluded.

A discussion of power needs to be central to all seminary education, Strobel insists. But more than that, “it should be integrated into a vision of spiritual formation and ministry that is based on abiding in Christ and not mastering technique.” Students need to know, he says, that seminary education isn’t about simply gaining knowledge to become right about things, but also is formation into the likeness of Jesus that leads students to become the kinds of persons who can minister in both weakness and strength.

What can boards be doing? It begins with vision casting, says Strobel. “Are we casting a vision for students to become a certain kind of people? People that when they’re pierced, bleed the fruit of the Spirit. That’s very different than the idea of people who enact the fruit of the Spirit moralistically.”

Understanding that schools and boards can also be directly impacted by allegations of abuse of power and preparing for such crises also is critical, says Wang.

“It’s important for us to prioritize this matter, to put in place robust policies on how to navigate allegations of power abuse, to handle them with integrity, and to invest time and energy into addressing this, before the crisis happens. In our day and age, it’s really not a matter of if, it’s more a matter of when.”

 

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For resources on abuse of power, click here.