“I think that there are particular kinds of churches, church planting networks, that are more inclined to this than others, if that makes sense. I wouldn’t want to paint the entire church with broad brush-strokes…In the West, we may be more inclined to this than the global church, and that’s a conversation to have too.”
“There’s a difference between making an impact and having to have an impact.”
“Whenever [narcissistic church leaders] were succeeding, they were sort of warding off this inner sense of emptiness.”
“The desire to have an impact, even the desire to achieve, these are not bad things in and of themselves, but I do think we’re living in a season where there is a kind of addiction to impact.”
“I don’t think NPD is exclusive to men. Certainly the general statistics do show that more men suffer from this than women. But I also think that a large majority of our church planting networks are complementarian. The large majority of our church planters are men. If that changes in the next 20 years, I think we’ll see many women with narcissistic personality disorder.”
“When we look at collective narcissism, it is the features of narcissism showing up in an entire group of people.”
“You do see [narcissism] in smaller churches. They just don’t get the press that larger churches do.”
“It’s not just the megachurch pastors. There are small church pastors who lead with this grandiosity, these narcissistic characteristics.”
“It can be really confusing for folks because [narcissistic] pastors are spiritual leaders.”
“When confrontation happens, the times I see it going well, it’s not a reactive confrontation…It usually works in and through a denominational system or church polity that allows for some kind of process.”
“We can’t reduce [a narcissistic] person down to a set of behaviors that are toxic or abusive…this person is an image-bearer. And there’s always a story.”
“By and large, a lot of what we see with narcissistic personality disorder emerges out of really painful life experiences.”
“I think if I boil this whole project down to one thing, it is to say to folks [who have suffered from someone else’s narcissism], ‘You are not crazy.’”
“There is the narcissistic leader, but then there is what we call the ‘ideal hungry follower.’”
“Get care. Get counseling, get with a clinician…who understands these kinds of dynamics.”
Mentioned in the Show by Chuck DeGroat
When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse by Chuck DeGroat
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