Observations on Weak Leadership

Old sayings often ring true throughout history and Lord Acton's words about power are still alive and well a long time after he penned those famous words. I've been thinking through a slight variation on his take for a while, years now actually, adding "weakness" (mainly here referring to weak leadership), which accomplishes the same thing.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. ~Lord Acton

These two words placed together, weakness and corruption, aid each other in their own development, but ultimately it is the classic struggle for power.

Organizations Suffer

I'm mainly writing about weak leadership in the church because this is the area I have the most experience with, but it applies to countless other areas and organizations. The church, over the last say 20-30 years, has eroded trust and theological authority to the point where infighting among denominations and lawsuits between churches and conferences is the norm in our world. And I think weakness in leadership has a lot to do with our current day issues (or mess).

It isn't that I witnessed flat out corruption in the church, at least not at the highest level¹, but weakness in leadership, or the unwillingness to make necessary changes, difficult changes to strengthen the organization, is the root cause of so many issues.

In my experience, this continues to be the downfall of so many churches. Unfortunately, the result is these churches make the news, air their dirty laundry on social media, and then pretend like nothing happened, often changing their name (because that helps people forget), and then they move on.

Whether it is a moral failing in leadership, or strong differences in theological issues, weak leadership, directly leads to a corruption of trust an individual has in the church itself, large or small. This directly affects the decline in church attendance of that person, many times, for life. People ultimately move to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, outside the church, and who can blame them.

There are countless examples of this from small indecencies of individual moral failures, to the mega-large where weak leadership inside an entire denomination can damage the small local organizations trying to help those seeking a Godly relationship.²

There Are No Perfect People

Unfortunately, in the end, one has to conclude, there are no perfect people, and people run organizations, and therefore, people will bring their faults and issues into any organization they lead. But the church should rise above these, hold their leadership to a higher standard, let iron sharpen iron, and make hard but strong decisions for the strength of the future church and the people they lead.

People over the years have approached me with questions they had about leaving this church or that church, or leaving the overall big-C church in general. My standard response was... there is no perfect church because there are no perfect people. But at some point, we (Believers) have to recognize the problems, stand up to those in power, and make changes that matter. Doing so will make the church stronger, not weaker. Otherwise, the only option left is to just leave.³

I wish this wasn't the case. I tried to change it. But, eventually, I took the only option I had left instead.⁴

A small sub-note about this article: this was actually written over a period of many years. And it wasn't intended to be just a long rant about the weakness in the church. At the time it was meant as more of an encouragement to those of us in the church who could make a difference. Unfortunately in the years from, say, 2016-2026 things, to me, got even worse. The split of the United Methodist Denomination, a broader organization I have been part of most of my entire life, is now the pinnacle of my thoughts here. The weakness in leadership that attributed to this broad shift has had, and will continue to have a generational affect on the regular ordinary person who just wanted to seek out a relationship with God. I think the opposite could be true as well. Strong, Godly, leadership, could reverse trends, and bring hope to many.

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1. Mid-level outright mis-management of church funds seems to be the most overwhelming sin in the church, beyond that of even sexual scandals or doctrinal theological disagreements. I personally witnessed this many of my previous churches and also in the ones I visited or worked (partnered) with as well. These organizations were either totally inept at managing money properly or outright spent money in countless ways that never should have been spent. I feel new arriving pastors can do this at an overwhelming level when they first arrived to either make new changes or set a tone for who is in charge. ↩︎
2. My experience does not come from the news, or from social media gossip, but from personal life experiences over a long period of time, decades. I believe those reasons are the hardest to dispute in my own mind. So these thoughts are not based on anything other than my own experience. ↩︎
3. I do not write this because I have some hate for the church, just the opposite. The Church is the Bride of Christ and I want to see it do well, spread, and grow. So if you can change it for the better do so, if you can't, go somewhere where you can. ↩︎
4. This is not a pandemic concern about every church in existence, but a warning to the naive (as I was for a long time), that weak leadership can damage a small local church beyond repair, and therefore damage individuals who look to the local church for love, guidance, discipleship, and community. If recognized, do something about it before it's too late. ↩︎