Dysfunctional leadership is the reason churches become both depressing and desperate. These last two qualities actually feed on each other. The church is depressed because it is not doing what it should be doing, which leads members to become desperate in their attempts to stem the tide of decline that results from dysfunction in a church. Their desperation actually leads to more depression because their desperation ends up driving potential new disciples away from the congregation.

I hate the smell of death inside a church. I have smelled it many times. The smell isn’t the same as the death of a person, or an animal that has expired inside the wall of a home, but it is very similar. The smell is actually more spiritual than it is physical. It goes beyond the senses of the flesh, to the point that only those who are spiritual can get any sense of it. It is the smell of ecclesiastical death.

Dysfunctional Leadership

Given that I have pastored churches that had the smell, I thought I would write about what the final death throws are concerning the church. They can be broken into three areas: a church in it’s final pains of death is desperate, depressing, and dysfunctional.

In fact, the dysfunctional nature of the leadership in the church is primarily what leads to the other two conditions. I’m not talking about the pastor as the leader of a dying church. Often times, pastors take these types of churches hoping that God will use them to turn the church around, but the dysfunctional leadership has doomed the church long before the pastor ever shows up. Sadly, when these churches finally give up the ghost, many of those around blame the last pastor. But the problem began long before he arrived on the scene.

I’ve been a pastor in three churches that had these problems. The first one was a Baptist church, the other two were Presbyterian. So these sad conditions occur across denominational lines, but the main problem is very clear: elders and deacons who have no business being elders and deacons.

These elders and deacons think the church is a business to be run like they run their plumbing business or their engineering firm, applying certain business principles to get a certain return on their investment. They don’t understand the spiritual nature of the entity over which they have been graciously placed in leadership. They don’t realize the church is lead by servants, not dictators or despots.

Where this occurs, it does not mean that all of the elders and deacons are the problem. These churches can become doomed with just one dysfunctional elder. This is usually the case. In one instance, a certain elder was so carnal in nature that it drove the other elders from the church. The false elder thought the church should be run more like a city council, issuing decrees of control and making sure the church always had money, but never willing to give any himself. He really was a politician and ran things with the same dirty habits that many politicians use.

The previous pastor and other elders refused to deal with him, and this lead to the dysfunctional nature of the church. I’m sure other pastors could tell the same story in triplicate. It should not surprise us that this happens. Jesus told us that the church would always be filled with both wheat and tares, and it should not surprise us that there are both wheat and tares on elder and deacon boards. Having a tare on the elder board is not the death of the church, but allowing him to set the agenda, to take the lead, to quench the Spirit is where the rest of the elders fail.

Elders who see this happening need to be very purposeful in following our Scriptural mandate and remember the purpose of the church: preaching God’s word, making disciples, administering the sacraments, and disciplining the wayward sheep (especially when that sheep is an elder). Had the church I’m thinking of done these things, it would be a vibrant church today instead of a church sitting on death’s door, hanging on simply because it has a hefty mammon account with Wells Fargo. The dysfunctional nature of the leadership led to the church’s collapse. The first time I was a pastor there, as an assistant, it was vibrant and blessed. My second time, those who longed for the word had picked up and moved on looking for healthier churches because they tired of this man’s unwillingness to actually carry out the Great Commission. Now… that church barely exists.

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