(OPINION) The evangelical church is facing a crisis in leadership. According to the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), 94% of its members surveyed said that leadership failures are “negatively impacting trust.”

But the ECFA has a solution. For the first time in 45 years, the organization has added a new standard for its members.

Called the “leadership standard,” this new benchmark requires the board to discuss “at least annually how the organization can provide appropriate support in proactively caring” for its senior leader. Then, the board “must follow up with the leader at least annually on the leader’s commitment to upholding biblical integrity principles” that have been agreed on in writing. Lastly, the board must document these annual discussions about the care of the leader in its minutes.

As I’ve said before, I would love to be out of a job because there are no longer any scandals within the evangelical church that need to be exposed. And I would be thrilled if the new ECFA standard accomplished that. But I know it won’t.

Attorney Mitch Little, a former megachurch elder who represented abuse victims of disgraced pastor Bill Hybels, said it well. After receiving a book from ECFA about developing a policy manual for church boards, he commented: “If your leadership lacks the requisite character and experience, no manual will help you. If you have the appropriate level of character and experience, no manual is necessary.”

We have an epidemic of senior leaders in evangelicalism who lack character. And their boards are often stacked with yes-men, who are no better.

Giving these boards a new standard will do nothing to stop the scandals plaguing the church. Plus, the ECFA has shown it’s incapable of enforcing its standards.

In 2018, when I discovered that Harvest Bible Chapel maintained a black budget that only James MacDonald and a few of his cronies knew about, the ECFA visited Harvest and promptly declared Harvest a member in good standing. The next year, after firing MacDonald, the church commissioned a financial review by an independent law firm, which found that MacDonald had millones mal utilizados.

Similarly, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) was an ECFA member in good standing for decades. But a 2021 investigation revealed not only that Zacharias sexually abused numerous women. It also showed that ministry funds were used to provide financial support for Zacharias’ victims. This included a fake humanitarian effort, called Touch of Hope, which provided wire payments to benefit four of Zacharias’ massage therapists.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Other former ECFA members include Evangelio para Asia (GFA), which paid $37 million to settle a fraud lawsuit in 2019, and Jim Bakker’s former PTL Club. Bakker was convicted in 1989 of 24 counts of fraud and served nearly five years in prison. ECFA eventually revoked both GFA’s and PTL’s membership, but only after the media revealed both groups’ gross financial misconduct.

The problem in evangelicalism isn’t lack of good policies or benchmarks. As author and church planter Lance Ford stated at our last Restaurar conferencia, “It’s the system stupid.”

Ford was referring to the leadership system that’s been imported from the corporate world into the church. That leadership system emphasizes the importance of a strong, senior leader to the success of an organization.

So, instead of pastors being trained to be shepherds, who minister to their congregation, we’re forming pastors into corporate CEO’s, who inspire the masses and direct their staffs. But very few do any actual ministering.

And despite Jesus’ commands that his followers aren’t supposed to be like the gentiles, who “lord it over” each other, these pastors lead in a top-down manner.

A friend of mine, who recently left a megachurch, told me that her pastor announced to his congregation that he doesn’t do any shepherding, but if you look at the org chart, he’s at the top.

Given that we’ve adopted the world’s leadership model, is it really any wonder that our pastor/CEOs are abusing power the same way the world does?

But the evangelical church doesn’t want to scrap its corporate leadership model because it has a vested interest in keeping it alive. That’s because these celebrity pastors fuel yet another system—the evangelical industrial complex.

For the uninitiated, the complejo industrial evangélico is a term coined by author, podcaster, and consultant Skye Jethani. It refers to the money-making industry (the Christian publishing houses, media outlets, megachurches, conferences, colleges, and seminaries) that relies on celebrity pastors and big events to sustain its business model.

So, the aspiring, narcissist pastor, who has little interest in serving people, gets trained by a church planting group like the Association of Related Churches (ARC). There, he learns to “launch large,” or essentially, build a megachurch overnight.

Then, he leverages his large congregation to build a big social media platform online. This enables him to get a book contract with a major evangelical publishing house.

After publishing his book, Christian radio stations feature the pastor on their programs, enabling him to sell his book and build his platform. This enriches both the preacher and the publishing house. And it gives the Christian radio program free content.

Then, the preacher raises enough money to launch a broadcast ministry and buys airtime on networks like the Salem Radio Network and the Moody Radio Network.

This gives the preacher a huge platform from which he can raise even more money. Plus, he gets an additional, six-figure salary for essentially doing nothing. (An editor simply repackages his Sunday sermons into radio format.) The radio network also benefits from hundreds of thousands in revenue from the broadcast ministry.

The pastor’s megachurch then grows larger and larger as his sermons become increasingly popular. This raises the prominence of his church, along with his salary.

This enables the church to attract hundreds, or even thousands, to conferences, bringing in even more revenue. The pastor then launches cohorts for other pastors, training them to be like him, while charging them $1,500-$3,000 per person.

The pastor gets more book deals.

He gets richer and richer. His head gets bigger and bigger. And then, he begins abusing his staff and begins taking liberty with women.

But now, his brand has become critical to the survival of his empire. Plus, his board is stacked with men who have their own ministries, which the pastor has the power to make or break. Or, some board members simply love the perks that proximity to the pastor bestows.

So, the board and the staff look the other way.

Meanwhile, the church proudly displays the ECFA logo on its donation page.

The audited financial statements all look legit. The pastor’s $500,000 salary is approved each year by an independent compensation committee.

The board even has annual discussions with the pastor about how it can proactively support him. They may even pay for counseling because his marriage is suffering from his womanizing, pride, and ever-increasing ego.

Meanwhile, nobody offers any help to his staff who are wilting under his constant demands and bullying.

Donors continue to give. The pastor continues to abuse.

This keeps going until finally, someone the pastor abuses refuses to sign a non-disclosure agreement, foregoing a five-figure severance, and instead speaks to El Informe Roys or some other media outlet.

Now, the scandal becomes public. The board acts shocked. The pastor resigns. The church implodes.

And the pastor goes to a lodge at the megachurch of one of his pastor friends for six months. A year later, the pastor is restored to ministry, and a Christian publication runs an article on how God has redeemed the pastor’s life.

He relaunches a church in a different state. Wash, rinse, repeat.

It’s all so unbelievably corrupt—and unbelievably predictable. But that’s how the evangelical industrial complex, propped up by our perverse leadership system, works.

And the scandals are going to continue until we dismantle these twin systems. And the only way to dismantle the systems is stop buying what they have to offer.

For example, stop attending the Cumbre de Liderazgo Global (GLS), which disgraced megachurch pastor Bill Hybels created to teach church leaders business and management skills. That’s the last thing pastors today need.

Interestingly, though, Life.Church Pastor Craig Groeschel has headlined every GLS since Hybels resigned in 2018. And the Vice Board Chair of ECFA is Amy Nikkel, chief financial officer of Life.Church. This is yet another reason why the ECFA will never address the systemic problems in evangelicalism. They’re part of the system and will do all in their power to protect it.

Also, stop reading John Maxwell’s leadership books and attending his Maxwell Leadership events. Instead of becoming a leader fashioned after the world, become a servant fashioned after Jesus.

Then, stop attending churches pastored by celebrity preachers. Stop listening to their radio programs. Stop buying their books. Stop going to their stadium events.

Money fuels these systems. Cut off the demand and the supply will dry up.

Christians have survived for centuries without a plethora of celebrity preachers telling them how to live their lives. Christians today can do it too. My guess is we’d be better off reading the Bible for ourselves, attending a church where our pastor knows our name, and serving where average people are welcomed in ministry, rather than supplanted by professionals.

But the transition will be hard. Our leaders are addicted to the world’s leadership model. And our lay people are addicted to the celebrity pastors and their inspirational Sunday services that cost them nothing.

So, the scandals will likely continue. And El Informe Roys will continue to expose them.

But eventually, I believe committed Christians will face the hard truth that we need radical change, not band-aids like the new ECFA standard. And for the sake of Christ and His Kingdom, we’ll stop building ours.

Julie Roys es una reportera de investigación veterana y fundadora de The Roys Report. Anteriormente, también presentó un programa de entrevistas nacional en Moody Radio Network, llamado Up for Debate, y ha trabajado como reportera de televisión para una filial de CBS. Sus artículos han aparecido en numerosas publicaciones periódicas.