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On Bully Pastors and Bully Pulpits

Dr. Randy White

On my weekly broadcast, “Ask the Theologian,” a listener asked, “How do you talk to a pastor who always uses the pulpit to put down other ministries and seems to just correct his church instead of lifting up his church?”In so many words, he was asking, “How do you deal with a bully pastor?”Bullies exist in all walks of life—even in the pastorate. I’m willing to bet that if I were to ask you about a time in your life when you were bullied, you’d have an experience to share. It’s an unfortunate rite of passage, especially during those awkward adolescent years, that most people endure but ultimately overcome. Whether it was another student, a co-worker, or a parent, you know what it means to be bullied.But you may not know what it means to be bullied by a pastor. For instance, I’m willing to bet your pastor has never stopped you in the hallway right before a service, grabbed you by your freshly pressed lapels, and thrown you against the wall while asking for your lunch money.But has your pastor ever taken a few minutes (or even a whole sermon) to criticize another church or ministry? Or has he beaten his fists on his pulpit shouting fire and brimstone at the ample ways your church has been woefully under-giving?Although those illustrations are exaggerated, I believe this is the kind of stiff-necked, stone-hearted, hard-of-hearing, bullish, unpastoral attitude that the listener was inquiring about. I also believe that to answer the question in full, I’d need more information about the pastor and his teachings.

What is a Bully Pastor?

Essentially, a bully pastor is one who says, either by word or deed, “I have no place for you.” He has no available time, no interest in your opinion, and no recognition of your role as a thoughtful Christian. A bully pastor doesn’t make himself available and often believes himself to be like Moses on Mount Sinai: all alone and the closest to God. Such a pastor doesn’t need your input because he already knows everything. And if you waste his time, you may have wasted his most precious commodity.Consequently, this bully pastor may use his pulpit to criticize those who have spoken against him, even if those people are within his church. Personally, I have to watch against such creeping pride, and I’m convinced every man of God must do the same.As in other spheres in life, it’s rather easy to spot a bully pastor. The harder issue to tackle is: what if the bully’s right?

The Apostle Paul Was a Bully Pastor?

I’d seek to know more about the listener’s bully pastor to assess a number of issues, chief among them being, “What if the bully pastor is right in his supposed bullying? What if the other ministry or pastor needs to be called out for preaching false doctrine?”The real litmus test is to ask yourself the listener’s question and evaluate whether or not the Apostle Paul could then be described as a bully pastor. After all, how much of Paul’s writing in the New Testament was corrective in nature?Put another way, how should we describe Paul when he constantly used his pen to call out and put down other ministries of his day? His writings were mainly correctional and seldom blatantly encouraging. In my opinion, Paul was a bully pastor, at least in the minds of many.We live in a world where people are having their ears tickled by pastors around the globe. We were warned this would happen in 2 Timothy 4. Maybe the bully pastor in question is tired of getting tickled and seeing his flock be fleeced with heresy. Sometimes a bully pulpit can be used for the right reasons.

Not All Who Tear Down Are Bullies

When a pastor chooses to forgo “tickling ears” by telling his church what they want to hear, he may be setting himself up for complaints. Maybe the bully pastor in question is attempting to exhort his members with Scripture toward biblical truth and a worldview that results from such spiritual teaching. If that’s the case, he likely won’t be popular. His church may even accuse him of “just correcting his church” all the time instead of “lifting them up.”I strongly believe today’s church needs more biblically based tearing down than comfort-yielding building up. If this bully pastor is preaching biblical truth that his church members find hard to hear, he’s not a bully pastor; he’s a theological demolitions expert clearing the way for a stronger spiritual house to be constructed.

How to Know if Your Pastor is a Bully with Just Four Questions

You likely already know if your pastor is a bully or not, but if you have any latent doubts, answer these questions. If he passes this short test, your pastor is likely not a bully.

  1. Is your pastor available?

If you had to call your pastor at this very moment, even if it wasn’t an emergency, could you? Or, so as not to be so demanding of his time, could you call his office and schedule an appointment with him tomorrow, or the next week, or the next month? To be blunt, if you can’t visit your pastor face-to-face within a reasonable timeframe, you don’t have a pastor. (Also, I’m not talking about a pastor. Rather, I’m talking about the pastor, and you know who that is for the church you attend.)

  1. Does your pastor know you?

You may not be friends. You may have only spoken a few times. You may not have ever even seen your pastor outside of your church. But does your pastor know you? If he saw you at the grocery store, would he recognize you? Even better, would he initiate conversation with you?I lament the church growth movement and its leaning on the “bigger is better” mentality. Megachurches have likely suffered from the adverse effects of one person “pastoring” tens of thousands. In my opinion, there’s simply no way for that pastor to truly pastor that church. A pastor is a shepherd, and a shepherd knows his sheep by name.

  1. Does your pastor speak the truth?

Even if your pastor speaks a word from the Bible that cuts you to the core, can you hear those words and still say, “That’s the truth?” If his sermon feels more like a Band-Aid® suddenly being torn away from your flesh rather than it being gently removed, can you still say, “Amen?”Does he hold unswervingly to the Bible regardless of the ebb and flow of popular culture (and even church culture)? Is he the same person behind the pulpit as he is in the grocery store? Does he speak the truth from a life aligned with the truth?

  1. Does your pastor open and teach the Word of God?

This ought to be a rhetorical question for today’s pastors, but its answer can’t be taken for granted, unfortunately. As I wrote last week, many churches seeking to hire pastors don’t ask about applicants’ theological understandings because these churches assume that applicants have at least a rudimentary understanding of the Bible. That’s not always the case.Can you ask your pastor a biblically based theological question and receive a coherent, thoughtful reply? He doesn’t have to showcase a Doctorate of Ministry-level vocabulary, but he ought to be able to easily enter into a biblical discussion with you. And if you dig further, he ought to be able to hold his own, or at least point you to other books or resources that can help you.Today’s pastors ought to be theological experts, and we should hold them to such a standard.To summarize, if your pastor is available, knows you, speaks the truth, and knows the Bible, he’s not a bully pastor. Some may call him a bully pastor, if what he’s preaching is truth that rings untrue within tin ears, but it’s not the pastor who needs to change in situations like those.When Theodore Roosevelt coined the phrase “bully pulpit,” “The word bully itself was an adjective in the vernacular of the time meaning ‘first-rate,’ somewhat equivalent to the recent use of the word ‘awesome’” (“Did You Know?”).I hope that today’s bully pastors in bully pulpits will allow themselves to be transformed so that the phrase could be restored to its original intent.And maybe the Apostle Paul w