Hope for the Angry Spiritual Leader

I originally titled this post, “So easily inconsistent.” And I am soooo easily inconsistent.

My last blog post on the problem with angry spiritual authority figures struck a nerve. Maybe not the most hits ever on this blog, but pretty close. What was most interesting to me was the commenter who had both struggled with his own anger and had angry authority figures direct their anger at him. He understood it from both perspectives and pointed out to me that while I was claiming a lack of gospel grace as the problem with the angry man, I wasn’t aiming that same gospel grace back toward the angry man as his hope for real change.

He was right, and I was convicted. It’s a major tenet of this blog – grace is meaningless without truth, but truth will KILL you without grace. I spoke the truth – pastors and elders with anger problems don’t meet the qualifications of I Timothy 3, and their accountability structures need to remove them from office. Their capability for spiritual abuse is phenomenal and will destroy the work of Christ. But if you have an anger problem and read that indictment apart from the parallel application of gospel grace to yourself, it will destroy you.

So is there hope for the angry spiritual leader? This guy has left many in the wake of his angry destruction. If you’ve run into him or, even worse, been the object of his wrath, you likely just want him out of office. You just want his abuse to STOP. And graceless pressure may do just that. But I think Christ calls us to want more than that, more than JUST the end of his abuse. Christ calls us to believe in transformation. As Paul teaches in Ephesians 4, the gospel doesn’t equip us just to put off the sin but also to put on the opposite righteous action. You don’t just stop lying. You start telling the truth. You don’t just stop stealing. You start to give what is yours to the needy. The angry man who goes through gospel transformation doesn’t just stop abusing. He transforms through humble repentance (not worldly sorrow that only feels discomfort for getting caught in his sin) and becomes a new man who now does the complete opposite of verbal and/or physical violence, perhaps actually advocating for victims of abuse.

If your goal is just stopping bad behavior, we are on different pages. I have a greater hope than that, and it is radical transformation into a new creature. If that is your hope too, then what do you do with the spiritual authority figure that violates the qualifications in I Timothy 3? It’s fairly simple. You take it to your authority structure (in my case, a plurality of elders). Scripture has constraints on this. It needs to be an established, documented issue. If you didn’t witness it, you can’t bring it forward. And it needs to be established by multiple witnesses all of whom are first person witnesses. Hearsay and gossip are absolutely not OK.

What if your authority structure is OK with pastoral anger? What if they don’t feel it violates the qualifications of an elder/pastor/leader? Then you are at a crossroads. I Tim. 3:3 includes both drunkenness and anger as disqualifications of an elder. It may be valuable to think through how you would react if a pastor had an alcohol problem. What if he was drunk (maybe just twice a year, but drunk nonetheless)? I don’t know what to tell you except that at some point, ignoring the qualifications set up in I Timothy 3 undermines the value of the office altogether. You can’t ask people to submit to church leadership if we don’t submit to the Scriptural constraints that set them up as leaders in the first place.

There are many godly, humble, gospel centered shepherds out there all across the world. Many, many, many! God has not left us as orphans. And God calls us to value the truth they speak into our lives. God Himself set up the office of pastor/elder. And He did it because He loves us. But He also did it with restraints. And it is to our great benefit to deeply respect His own limitations on this office in the church.