3min chapter

The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast cover image

CNLP 581 | Chuck DeGroat on Signs You Work for a Narcissist, How to Tell If You're a Narcissist, Why Church Planters Are Prime Candidates for Narcissistic Leadership, And the Problem With Hyper-Therapeutic Culture

The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast

CHAPTER

The Challenge of Narcissism in the Church

The author of a new book says the church is filled with narcissism. "It's time for us to have these kinds of conversations," John Hagee says. Every 500 years in the history of the church, there is this moment of reckoning where it becomes sort of like a rummage sale, he says. The Reformation was one of those moments when people were misusing their power.

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Speaker 2
Okay, that's super helpful. And I would encourage people do your homework, get Chuck's book. It goes into a lot more detail than we can get to in 90 minutes. It's called When Narcissism Comes to Church. But the argument you make in the book, which I think is so convicting and alarming, is that actually the church is filled with narcissism. Like you're saying, okay, you can over-diagnose it. On the other hand, we have a serious problem here, folks. So you're seeing this as a relatively pervasive challenge for the church. I'd love your comment and your thoughts on sort of where we've drifted or landed as a capital C church when it comes to narcissism in the West.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean, I do think that that's right. And I do think it's time for us to, I think it's time for a series on integrity, by the way, Kerry is doing my best. What do you want to do? My little part. I think it's time for church planting as assessors and leaders of networks to reassess how they understand church planning, how they assess church planters, how they understand the processes and the kinds of logistics that go into church plan. I think it's time for us to have these kinds of conversations. It's one of those, I call it a moment of reckoning. Other people have used that language too. There are these moments in the life of the church. Phyllis Tickle wrote a great book about 10, 15 years ago called The Great Emergence, where she says every 500 years in the history of the church, there is this moment of reckoning where it becomes sort of like a rummage sale, she says, for the church. And this is one of those moments where it's uncomfortable. We don't like what we see. We sort of open up the closets and we've opened up the door to the attic. We're pulling things out that we don't want exposed. But that's how we grow. That's how we change. That's how we grow and change individually. When I work with people in therapy, it's when they begin to share with me the things that they've kept secret for a long time, the things that they'd rather not look at in themselves. And so we're doing that as a church right now. So have we probably under diagnosed abuse and narcissism in the church and a church plan? Probably so. We face these moments. The Reformation was one of those moments too, where people who are responsible and empower responsible for the mission, given authority for the church, where they were misusing their power. And just because we follow Jesus doesn't mean that we're immune to misusing our power. So I have to look at myself and you have to look at
Speaker 2
yourself and it's tough.

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