Rigney’s Right—Good Leadership Could Get You Fired
My experience with emotional sabotage & wrongful termination as a Southern Baptist pastor.
Introduction
In his book, “Leadership & Emotional Sabotage,“ Dr. Joe Rigney tells us, “…the moment that you begin to cultivate mature, soberminded leadership, you should expect sabotage, both from within and from without. In fact, almost like Newton’s Third Law, every act of faithful leadership will be met with an equal and opposite act of sabotage.” Rigney’s right. The sobering reality is that soberminded-leadership is, inherently, a provocation to those inebriated by their own sinful passions. The darkness hates the light, because the light, inevitably, exposes the darkness.
Good leaders are like physicians—they put their finger on pain points and reveal places of unhealth that need to be addressed for the well-being of the body. Leaders, like doctors, take an oath, “to do no harm”—but that doesn’t mean “to induce no pain.” The path to healing marriages, families, churches, and nations is often painful, as sin must be confronted with truth and rooted out with repentance. As Spurgeon reminds us, “…to save men’s souls, you must tell them a great deal of disagreeable truth”—and we learn from Paul that speaking truth to those who don’t want to hear it has a way of making us their enemy (Galatians 4:16).
There are no guarantees that good leadership won’t end badly. John the Baptist showed courageous leadership when confronting Herod’s sin, prompting Herod’s wife to lose her head. For that, John lost his head. David showed heroic leadership on the battle field, in service to King Saul. For that, King Saul tried to pin David to the wall with a spear. The Lord Jesus displayed flawless leadership as the true Shepherd of Israel. For that, He was crucified. As the saying goes: “No good [leadership] goes unpunished.” In fact, in our day, good leadership could get you fired. That’s what recently happened to me.
Several months back, Canon Press announced they were giving away (to pastors) free copies of Rigney’s book, “Leadership & Emotional Sabotage.” At the time, I was serving as an interim pastor for a small, rural Southern Baptist Church, and they had just interviewed me to become their permanent pastor. As the new, incoming leader for this congregation, I knew Rigney’s book would be required reading for me—but I couldn’t have the ‘Moscow Mood’ showing up in the mailbox of a Southern Baptist church in the throes of ‘Church Lady Mood’—so I reached out to Canon Press and asked if they could mail a copy to my personal address. They graciously accommodated me, and I wasted no time seeking to learn how to lead, “in an age of agitation and angst marked by raging anxiety storms and fierce social stampedes…,” as Rigney describes it.
Long story, short—I sparked the fastest, fiercest social stampede I’ve ever witnessed, and I was fired before I finished reading the book. In fact, the church had barely taken down the welcome sign, and I hadn’t even moved into the parsonage yet, when they kicked me to the curb. I lost my income, my housing, my health insurance, and my community, with my wife battling cancer and crippling rheumatoid arthritis.
A Case Study on Emotional Sabotage In the Church
In a matter of weeks, I went from a near unanimous church vote (98%) to call me as pastor, to a unanimous vote to dismiss me. How did this happen? The answer is found in Rigney’s book— where he builds upon Milton Friedman’s framework (five hallmarks) for understanding our chronically anxious and agitated day. As Rigney notes, these five characteristics—reactivity, herding, blame displacement, quick-fix mentality, and failure of nerve—“mark not only society as a whole, but also afflict the various institutions of society—family, churches, businesses, and the state.”
It’s uncanny how this framework captures what I went through as a small disgruntled group turned an entire church against me. For any pastors hoping to avoid having your ministry and livelihood torpedoed, I offer my experience as a case-study on emotional sabotage in the church.
One: Reactivity
The church that fired me was without a pastor for an entire year by the time I arrived. They seemed genuinely happy to have me. My interim preaching and shepherding were well received—attendance increased and morale improved. The people were warm—showering my wife and I with hot meals, kind words and thoughtful cards. We had fresh eggs and vegetables coming out of our ears. Not a week went by that someone in the congregation didn’t drop a hint that they’d like me to become their permanent pastor.
Things began to change after I interviewed for the permanent position. There was a small group of women in the church clamoring to take on more visible leadership—they wanted to teach co-ed Sunday School and have a woman lead Sunday worship as a de facto worship pastor. As often happens, this special interest group had finagled their way (or their husband’s way) onto the pastor search committee. The issue of ‘women in leadership’ was, far and away, the chief concern of the committee—a concern they circled back to, again and again, over the next several weeks. I made my convictions painfully clear, and reasoned from Scripture, as well as historic orthodoxy, to support my unpopular views. Over the next several weeks, the committee tried, multiple times, to negotiate with me, hoping I might ‘flex’ a little to accommodate their egalitarian agenda. They were met with disappointment. I was certain this issue would be a deal breaker, yet, to my surprise—the search committee announced their unanimous vote to recommend me to the congregation. In reality, I was the only viable candidate to express interest in pastoring this church, and the congregation had really taken to me, so it was, essentially, ‘me or the firing squad.’ Two weeks later, I was voted in as pastor.
That’s when the subversive monkey business began—as this group unleashed an undercurrent of reactivity aimed at sabotaging my ministry. As Dr. Rigney describes it, “The common thread [of reactivity] is that the passions of the members govern and dictate both the mood of the body and its direction. The atmosphere of the institution is volatile, as though there are gas fumes ready to ignite at the stroke of a match.”
It was almost imperceptible at first. As my wife and I were received into membership, and our new church family extended the right-hand of fellowship, the youth pastor and his wife were quietly absent. Perhaps they simply got caught up visiting with guests? That’s what they claimed. Then, I noticed certain people, previously very friendly, seemed to be avoiding me, while others appeared to be low-key scowling and scoffing as I preached. Was I imagining things? Then a handful of people stopped attending. When I’d check on them, they’d say they were sick, and, sadly, they never seemed to get better. Maybe they had ‘Long Covid?” By this point, Amanda and I were feeling about as welcome on Sundays as a couple of lepers. Then, one day, I received a phone call from a former church, informing me that a deacon was snooping around for information about me.
By the time I realized what was going on, this deacon (who was also the ‘Youth Pastor’) had already called three deacon’s meetings behind my back, and was campaigning to have me fired. When I asked why, he told me I had offended him and his wife with my recent Mother’s Day sermon, and this had prompted him to begin “researching” me, as he put it.
As it turns out—when your church is being steered by disgruntled feminists—nothing will get you fired faster than giving a Biblical exhortation to protect and promote motherhood, on Mother’s Day.
I was summoned, by the deacons, to an inquisition, where I was grilled, for about an hour and a half, as the Deacon ‘Youth Pastor’ leveled a mountain of accusations against me. He accused me of preaching an errant gospel (Calvinism), of having a low-view of women, of ‘guilt-by-association’ with ‘a known racist and misogynist’ (Doug Wilson), and of making sinful ‘mean tweets.’ It was clear he (and the ‘special interest’ group) had spent the past several weeks digging up every speck of ‘dirt’ they could find on the internet, and he was now hoping to bury me in the cemetery out back.
He left that meeting sorely disappointed. The deacon body concluded, unanimously, that I was not at fault in the matters raised, but that I had, rather, been the target of an online smear campaign—which any level-headed person could see. In fact, after my examination, I was walking out to the car, and one of the deacons flagged me down. He told me, “I’m sorry we had to put you through that. I thought you acquitted yourself very well. All of your answers were sound and thoroughly Biblical.” I told him I hated to see the church divided, and that I was sorry for all the grief we were going through. I’ll never forget his response—“Sometimes a church has to go through things like this to get healthy.” I breathed a sigh of relief. This deacon was the most influential man in the entire church—the bull of the woods. He clearly recognized the situation for what it was and seemed willing to push through the pain for the opportunity to have a healthy church. For the moment, I still had my job.
Two: Herding
When the Youth Pastor and his wife couldn’t get me fired, the Youth Pastor resigned, abruptly, in protest. In the days that followed, they smeared me to everyone who would listen. Attendance dwindled. A flurry of behind-the-scenes complaints ensued. The deacons called me in for another meeting, where they informed me that “half the church was threatening to leave” if I wasn’t terminated immediately.
I watched, in real time, as the deacons’ principled stand, from days earlier, melted into pragmatism before my very eyes. It was one thing when just the youth pastor was threatening to leave, but now the entire ‘youth ministry’ was in revolt, including Mr. Bull of the Woods’ family—his daughter and grandsons. In short, the screws had been tightened, and now a social stampede was afoot, threatening to trample the unity of the church if certain demands weren’t met—namely, my head on a platter.
Dr. Rigney describes ‘herding’ as “a process where togetherness triumphs over individuality and everyone adapts to the least mature members of the community. …Disruptions by the immature will be accommodated; anyone who seeks to take a stand will be characterized as cruel, heartless, insensitive, unfeeling, uncooperative, selfish, and cold. As a result, the most immature members of a community come to set the agenda for the whole.”
As we sat in a circle, the deacons took turns expressing their dismay at the situation. One of them said, “In all my years, I’ve never experienced anything like this.” Another chimed in, “I don’t understand. I am certain God called you to be our pastor.” With emotion quaking in his voice, he repeated himself—“I am certain God called you to be our pastor.” His own family, and the church family he served, had put him in an untenable position—if he stuck to his guns, they would leave, and he would be branded as the bad guy who covered for the mean preacher.
It was painful to watch as grown men allowed emotionally-manipulative ‘children’ to hold them over barrel. With their sullen faces set like flint, the deacons told me to stay home that Sunday, so the church could hold a ‘family meeting.’ I pleaded with them to let me attend my own trial—to defend myself against false accusations, and to help lead those being misled. My plea, for common sense and decency, fell on deaf ears. Clearly, these men had decided to join the herd, for fear of being trampled by it.
Three: Blame displacement
I stayed home that Sunday, by order of the deacons, as they called their kangaroo court into session. They had denied my fundamental right to face my accusers, claiming my very presence might trigger emotional distress amongst the entitled group trying to string me up by my neck.
Dr. Rigney defines blame displacement as “an emotional state in which members of the community focus on forces that have victimized them rather than taking responsibility for their own being and destiny. …This often produces a kind of social cohesion, as members of the group unite against the scapegoat.”
I’ll never know what all happened in that meeting; what lies and slander were leveled against me, in my absence, but it’s safe to say that my reputation was destroyed that day, and along with it, my livelihood. The very same people who—just weeks earlier—had voted, nearly unanimously, to call me as their pastor, now turned around and voted, unanimously, to fire me.
Rather than take responsibility for the carnal state of the church, including some of their own family members, and seek to lead them in a new, soberminded direction—the deacons opted for a scape goat—someone they could send out from the camp, to bear the guilt and condemnation of a blame-shifting church co-opted by a gaggle of cry-bullies.
Four: Quick-fix mentality
You never fully know what problems you’re inheriting when you accept a call, as an outsider, to shepherd a new church—but you find out, soon enough. When a church is unhealthy, no matter how much you ‘walk on egg shells,’ you eventually step on a land mine.
By simply preaching the Bible—the full counsel of God’s Word, for the full scope of our lives—I had, inevitably, pressed upon a pain point, and exposed an area of unhealth in the church; an area that had been festering for years. This was an opportunity to lead the church towards a place of health and stability, but there was a cost to be counted—it would mean enduring the short-term pain of discipline, for the long-term gain of levelheaded maturity.
Unfortunately, as Dr. Rigney points out, “Broken institutions frequently choose long-term chronic pain rather than short-term acute pain that would actually address the issue.” In a word, they operate with a ‘quick-fix’ mentality, driven by “a desire for symptom relief rather than fundamental change, flowing from a low threshold for pain.”
The deacons, and the church, voted to kick the can down the road. Rather than endure a painful season of pruning, they chose to appease the agitators, and run off their second pastor in a year. By caving to the special interest group, they only perpetuated the problem. As Kipling warned, “Once you pay the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane.”
Five: Failure of nerve
Evangelicalism, in general, and the SBC, in particular, is predominated with churches just like this—churches that are “shot through with conflict, rivalry, and confusion….tossed about by the passions of its members.” They don’t get this way by accident—it stems from “a lack of mature, decisive leadership.” As Rigney puts it, “Abdication at the top leads to insubordination at the bottom.”
In private, the deacons were all very supportive of my ministry, and they vocalized strong agreement with my preaching and teaching. At no point, did they lay any blame at my feet. Even my infamous sermon on marriage and motherhood, which I preached a couple of weeks before being voted in as pastor, had been met with their approval. As leaders, they knew the direction we needed to go, but they abdicated.
My being fired, ultimately, came down to —a failure of nerve. Dr. Rigney describes failure of nerve as “an empathetic paralysis [that] sets in as everybody seeks to appease the most reactive members.” Simply put, the deacons were emotionally manipulated and pressured into submitting to the demands of the special interest group. They stood strong, at first, but as the screws were tightened, and the stakes were raised—they lost their nerve.
The Tail Wags The Dog—Southern Baptist Church Culture
Reactivity, emotional sabotage, and social stampeding are perennial threats that call for soberminded leadership and ‘non-anxious’ nerves, steeled by clarity and conviction. Milton Fredman has provided an apt portrait of such leadership:
“[A well-differentiated leader is] someone who has clarity about his or her own life goals and, therefore, someone who is less likely to become lost in the anxious emotional processes swirling about. I mean someone who can be separate while still remaining connected and, therefore, can maintain a modifying, non-anxious, and sometimes challenging presence. I mean someone who can manage his or her own reactivity in response to the automatic reactivity of others and, therefore, be able to take stands at the risk of displeasing.”
This is the kind of leadership sorely needed in the Southern Baptist Convention—pastors who are willing to “maintain a modifying, non-anxious, and sometimes challenging presence.” Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of pastors not welcome in many Southern Baptist Churches.
The problem is reinforced by the SBC’s upside-down ecclesiology. In most Southern Baptist Churches, congregational polity means the members rule over the deacons, and the deacons rule over the pastor. Essentially, the tail wags the dog—the most reactive members of the church set the agenda by turning the screws on the deacons, who pull the strings of the pastor. If the pastor doesn’t dance like a puppet, he’s cut loose. This results in a culture where only ‘yes men’ hirelings can have job security, and actual leaders get branded as “trouble-makers.”
This pervasive ‘anti-leadership’ culture has, no doubt, contributed to the SBC’s steep decline over the past two decades as Southern Baptist churches hemorrhage millions of members and face a shortage of pastors. The inverted leadership hierarchy of congregationally-led churches makes the SBC more susceptible to reactivity, herding, and emotional sabotage. Couple that with the fact that far too many Southern Baptist deacons and pastors show themselves to be (Biblically) unqualified to lead, and it’s not hard to see why so many churches are suffering from a chronic ‘failure of nerve” as they’re habitually led around by the nose, and taken off mission, by special interest groups.
When it comes to the issue of egalitarianism and the push for women pastors, the Southern Baptist Convention is facing an historic “failure of nerve” that dates back 175 years—to Lottie Moon and the founding of the Women’s Mission Union—when feckless leaders made a Faustian bargain for mission finance, and thereby entrenched feminism within the convention. (See here.) The tail has been wagging the dog ever since.
If the SBC doesn’t reckon with this fundamental problem—of unprincipled pragmatism, far too easily steered—then it’s just a matter of time before soberminded leaders and members shake the dust off their feet, and go somewhere else.
As Dr. Rigney explains, “The most motivated members of a community grow discouraged and exhausted by never-ending drama.” And, “…Eventually the leaders check out or burn out, and the community drifts along, tossed about by the passions of its members.”
My video response, plus two interviews on my wrongful termination: