(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.”
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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.
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33 Responses
Even if you go to a small church where the pastor knows you, you need to look at the resources the church is using. I went to a small church. This church was steeped in Sunday school and small group Bible study material produced by megachurches with a celebrity pastor’s name on the cover. They sang the songs produced by the megachurch bands. The study Bibles used by many of the church members had a mega pastor’s name on the cover. People in the church would talk about the mega church pastor radio show or devotional material they consumed during the week. The church hosted live feed sessions of the stadium conference events. On multiple occasions I tried to have conversations with the pastor about the issues with megachurch pastors and he would just dance around it.
Small evangelical churches are feeding the evangelical industrial complex and behave like megachurch mini satellites. I tried other small evangelical churches in my area and they all seem to be feeding into this system. I now attend a mainline protestant church.
Agreed. This issue can be addressed most effectively at the individual level. Doesn’t mean it’ll go away, but it will mean I’m no longer aiding and abetting. Its my sense individual change won’t happen until the personal cost of doing nothing exceeds the personal cost of doing something. But, TNSTAAFL* See below my post to the initial ECFA story on 05/27
*There’s No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
05/27 post…………….
“I know I sound like Johnny One Note, but my post for every story along these lines is the same. Final accountability rests with the people in the pews. Whatever they do or don’t tolerate will influence the leadership. Sometimes costly? Oh, yeah, but its also costly to sit and do/say nothing, but that cost never accrues to the one who sits and does/says nothing. It will always be someone else who endures the cost of inaction. The best advice I have heard is really short….step up or step off. That door where you came in that swung open so easily the day you first arrived swings the other way as well. I’ve tested the concept. Its true. Easy? Cost free? No to both those questions. But in the long run, it remains the right thing to have done, in one case later affirmed by folks who didn’t act.”
The key sentence here is “very few do any actual ministering.” That’s a basic fault that occurs right at the beginning of these tragedies: They.don’t.minister. And I’ve run into so many pastors who couldn’t shepherd their way out of a paper bag. So they build their brand instead, although underneath, the emperor has no clothes.
….there’s much I’d like to say, Julie Roys, but you have that pesky 300 word limit regarding comments! I’ll just go with this…….YOU GO!!! I support only two faith based non-profits, largely because both of them are headed up by strong women. Stuff happens. Always forward. Always into the fray. No excuses. Risk takers. Boat rockers. Accountable. Visible. Fearless. Honest. Kind. Available. Listeners. Gonna be expanding my support list to three organizations. Will be reaching out in coming weeks. Thank you for what you do!!
You’ve perfectly elucidated the reality of the Evangelical Industrial Complex. I’m so grateful.
I agree with Benjamin Wheeler Ady
Julie, Thank you for this good editorial offering needed reforms. You mentioned or alluded to many scandals I recall from your reporting. Have you also reported on scandal involving John Maxwell? I do not recall seeing any but I could have missed it.
Thanks for this article.
This definitely happens on the small scale- I experienced this situation battling “yes” men who rubber stamped everything the pastor wanted to do, looked the other way when it came time for financial accountability, and left the church a mess. Fortunately (sarcasm) the pastor was immediately put in another position of authority immediately after he was dismissed from our church.
One person who seems to fly under the radar is Larry Osborne (sticky church). I was in a meeting once with him and a few other leaders and he was rude and condescending towards anyone who questioned him. See also his role in re-platforming mark Driscoll. That in itself is disqualifying.
Personal.dishonesty is manifesting from the pews into the pulpit. The problem isn’t in the pulpit it’s in the pews. I could play lala land here a bit evangelical style and say Jesus would ask, “who is at fault exactly?”
It annoys me to pull that stupid immature troupe out like that. “What would Jesus say?”
Jesus isn’t our personal hand puppet to be a magical being we can manipulate to say what ever we think is facts. regardless of ones belief in God,.or i it’s first cousin atheism or second cousin agnosticism.
You all need a bit more John Muir and a whole lot less name that idiot theologian whom ever it is. DysfunctionAl. My degree theology.
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In every church I’ve ever been a part of, the congregation duplicates the unnamed sins of the leadership. If there’s sexual sin in the congregation, I guarantee you that there’s sexual sin in the leadership. Same with bullying and abuse, financial crimes- everything. Sometimes I didn’t find out about the leaderships sins until decades later, but that’s when it all clicked in. Any sin you see in the congregation has tacit permission of the leadership because they’re doing it too- they won’t disciple it out of you.
The people abused by the men behind the pulpit will beg to differ…
Mixed feelings about this article.
On one hand, I agree that the model is worldly and flawed. However, lots of evidence indicates that making adding some sort of pastoral accountability to the “process” can move the needle. Organizations are collectives and until they start tracking something they won’t focus on it.
I don’t think it was fair of you to make insinuations about Craig Groeschel. I’m uncomfortable with the company he keeps (Michael Todd and others…), but as far as I know, he’s got a completely clean reputation, and his leadership and messages are stellar. Praying he doesn’t stumble like so many of his peer group.
It’s difficult to disagree with the premise of this article that a worldly leadership model has permeated many aspects of the evangelical church.
But it could be said that American capitalism & consumerism – ‘soft power’ – has done likewise with the result that consumers and customer’s are consciously or unconsciously asking what this person or organisation has done and what can he/she/they provide me/us? while thinking little of the virtue and overall biblical credence with which they act. This of course raises the key questions of what constitutes the church and whether such models and organisations are really churches at all?
Unfortunately NOTHING helps narcissists like these well He can but truly that their and our only solution
One of the best autopsies I’ve ever seen, analyzing the walking-dead church and what keeps it mysteriously walking and even growing.
Yet it’s not a mystery at all, it’s embarrassingly simple:
“You cannot serve GOD and Mammon.”
“Oh, really? Watch us.”
The bright spot is, the two-timing harlot’s days are numbered by a righteous GOD, who is not to be mocked.
“Come out of her, My people….”
Are they ashamed of their detestable conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; they will be brought down when I punish them,” Jer. 6:15
Yes, and.
I totally agree that unless there are leaders (pastors and board members) with integrity, no standards, guidelines, or requirements will prevent them from going rogue. The only way to reduce this stain on the church is through high-integrity, healthy church governance that earns congregational trust and operates with an appropriate degree of transparency.
However, I don’t know that this standard has been introduced to address that. Over the last 36 months, I have watched as a hermeneutic of suspicion crept into our church boards. The cultural distrust of institutions, authorities, and “experts” has crept into church boards. I have watched as high-integrity, healthy leaders have been run off because of the assumption that all pastors are like the ones who have been on the news… they are paying for the sins of bad actors, and they are being brutalized. This is not as public, as it doesn’t play on the news well, but I think it is more prevalent than the bad actor pastors that get all the press. My hunch is that the new standard is aimed at this phenomenon.
In regard to pastor scandals, one thing not likely to change. That is, the hyper-penchant the great majority of church attendees have for star preachers. The small church down the street from the megachurch may have a godly pastor who exudes humbleness, dignity, and a servant’s heart. The church may not have the funds to hire a skilled worship band, mount large video screens on each side of the platform, and space in the vestibule for bagels and craft coffee. The pastor does not preach pandering messages that do not produce conviction or a standard for godliness. In short, it is a a struggle for true Christianity to survive in an environment of hybrid Christianity. The former exists to provide substance for people who have committed their lives to God. The latter trends with some version of the Hybil’s anti-biblical “Seeker” paradigm that dumbed down spirituality with carnal professing Christianity. No matter what anyone says or does about the issue, until the greatly ignored “a” (apostasy) word is addressed, people will not understand that the solution is not to wash the pig, but to get as far away as possible from the sty.
Dear Julie Roys,
Thank you for keeping to your standard and to that of the Roys Report: Telling it straight, without diplomatic happy talk.
I know that you have taken hits when you have shined a light into dark places.
You have earned my trust and that of many others, because of your consistent, demonstrated integrity.
Atentamente,
Joel A. Webber
Lincolnshire, IL
Hola julie,
I had the exact same thought you had when I heard this initiative from the EFCA. If you look at Harvey Little’s text message in the latest VOM article, you can clearly see that “evidence is not my desire”, meaning ‘I don’t care what evidence you have, I don’t want to hear it’. How then is the rest of the board supposed to make informed decisions if they are deliberately kept in the dark by Harvey Little? Is this man supposed to hold Cole, the CEO of the Voice of the Martyrs (and he is using a fake name to skirt further accountability) accountable? accountable to what? Harvey Little does not want to hear any wrong doing?
to be continued
Julie Roy’s has described mega churches today perfectly. It’s just a business. Keep up the good work with your journalism.
Harvey Little (chairman of The Voice of the Martyrs) has a double standard and here it is. When confronted with extreme abuse by the CEO he is ultimately responsible for, he uses delay tactics that he could use in DC as a politician under the guise of ‘wanting to hear from the Lord’. Yet when TRR starts exposing VOM and all of its abuses, Harvey Little very quickly releases statements clearing Cole Richards (CEO of VOM and using a fake name) of all wrong doing. So Harvey Little prays for one thing, Delaying justice, yet Harvey very quickly responds in another case, not even wanting to look for the truth.
How is this new ECFA standard supposed to help with this at all?
God gave a dramatic warning to His people on October 20, 1996 in a church in Houston, Texas. The atmosphere in that church that day was so thick with the Presence of God that the visiting evangelist, Tommy Tenney, scheduled to speak was hesitant to go to the pulpit. Finally, the church’s pastor, Richard Heard, went to the pulpit and read 2 Chronicles 7:14. The pastor then closed his Bible and said, “The word of the Lord to us is to stop seeking His benefits and seek Him. We are not to seek His hands any longer, but seek His face.” At that instant, a thunderclap was heard in the building, the pastor was picked up and thrown backward about ten feet and the pulpit split into two pieces across its middle.
God further demonstrated His desires by incapacitating many members of the congregation as He ministered to them as they lay on the floor in His Presence for hours that day.
These demonstrations of the manifest Presence of God not only drew attention to what Pastor Heard said, but were revelations communicated through prophetic symbols. Symbolically, God was showing that the typical pastor – pulpit led model has hindered His people from connecting with Him in a mutual loving relationship. God wants His people to have more direct access and connection to Him.
The celebrity is supposed to be Jesus, not the pastor. In this realm, the Spirit of Jesus Christ is now omnipresent. Twenty-four hours every day, everywhere, the Spirit of Jesus Christ is available to be loved and adored or, conversely, to be ignored and rejected. This is why Jesus explained in John 16:7 why it was going to be better for mankind for Him to “go away.”
“I felt the presence of the Lord come on me so powerfully I grabbed the podium, the pulpit, to keep from falling, and that was a mistake. Instantly I was hurled a number of feet in a different direction, and the people said it was like someone just threw me across the platform. The pulpit fell over that I had been holding for support, and I was out for an hour and a half. … I could not move.” – Richard Heard
A “number of feet” or 10? The pulpit split or fell over?
You accurately quoted Pastor Richard Heard from an article in the Renewal Journal (https://renewaljournal.com/2013/04/15/gods-awesome-presence-bydrrheard/)
Other sources have additional information. The June 1997 issue of Charisma Magazine had an article on pages 27 and 28 entitled, “Houston Pastor Says God’s Power Split His Pulpit in Half.” The article included a picture of the split pulpit with Tommy Tenney standing by it.
Tommy Tenney’s 1998 book, “The God Chasers,” is another source for additional details (see page 7). “In that instant, I heard what sounded like a thunderclap echo through the building, and the pastor was literally picked up and thrown backward about ten feet . . . . . When he went backward, the pulpit fell forward . . . . but by the time the pulpit hit the ground it was already in two pieces. It had split into two pieces almost as if lighting had hit it!”
There is so much truth in this well written article. Thank you for laying it out so clearly.
Love the deserved and righteous cynicism about the ECFA’s latest failings and flailings.
One should always remember, the ECFA was created by evangelical leaders in direct response to the threat of government investigations into various financial scandals in evangelical churches going on in the 1970s.
The ECFA was designed from the very beginning to protect the churches, not the congregations, and yes, these are two very different things in modern American Christianity.
My husband and I were in a megachurch for 12 years. We had recently arrived to the US when we started going. We (stupidly) thought the differences from the Christianity we knew were simply cultural differences. After much wasted time, energy and money, of course, the Lord made us realize we needed to leave that place. Two days later, after giving notice to our ministries that we were not going back, we received the Holy Spirit at home while praying at night. The Lord started to work on us like we didn’t even think it could be. Since that summer of 2019, we’ve been meeting together at home with our son. But I have to say that for me to leave that “church” was such a shock. I had grown up believing you have to be faithful not just to Jesus but to the “church”. It took 3 years for the Lord to convince us with facts through a range of experiences there that those people were not honoring Him at all, it was just a (very lame) form of godliness. May the rest of the remnant wake up soon from all the deception.
I had a dream about a year ago where persecution came to the American Church. The government was arresting non-compliant pastors, megachurch properties were being confiscated, genuine believers moved into homes, godly men in their 40s (who had never been in formal leadership) became the preachers and old men became their mentors.
Although persecution will be painful, it may be necessary.
Yes the corruption will continue…. as mentioned, the Evangelical Industrial Complex has many vested interests…..
Donald Trump is now a convicted felon…. will the majority of white U.S. Evangelicals still support him…. yes absolutely….
What I have noticed over the years in church is that Evangelicals can be so Machiavellian ….. and at the same time they will pound the table to tell you how much they love Jesus….
Outstanding reporting and analysis, Julie. Thank you so much for your fearless coverage of the biggest issues facing the Church in today’s world.
Lots of great comments here that I agree with. Our church system is not His Church System. Our pastors are not His Pastors. Our institutions are not, in any way, His Institution. Most are trying to have a 2nd hand relationship to God which is just a great way to end up in hell while thinking you will not. Jesus has to know us personally, or we are goats. This is what King Jesus said.