Church Leadership Blind Spots Lead to Wrecked Congregations

Traveling North on I95 I merged into the left lane only to discover that someone had gotten there ahead of me! Hidden in the blind spot between my driver side mirror and my peripheral vision was the pickup truck I was about to sideswipe. This was (sadly) NOT a near miss, and a minute later we were both on the side of the road trading insurance information. Fortunately, no one was hurt and, thankfully, I had insurance to cover the damage. However, in the church world, ministries don’t carry insurance for the “wrecks” they experience caused by leadership blind spots.

Church leadership blind spots have less to do with one’s peripheral vision and more to do with turning a “blind eye” to issues that leadership chooses not to face. This is an ancient problem and Jesus addresses it in His letters to the churches in Pergamum and Thyatira in Revelation 2.

In Thyatira, church leaders had “tolerated” a dominate personality, a self-proclaimed “prophetess,” whom Jesus calls “Jezebel.” She led part of the congregation away from Him into false teaching. Jesus charges the church with tolerating her activity, meaning they knew full well it was taking place, but they either did not recognize the danger or lacked the courage to confront someone so dominant and popular. In either case, they avoided conflict with her and ended up having a major conflict with the Lord! They had a serious blind spot that would leave the church a wreck!

You may not think you have such a dominate false teacher in your congregation, who leads people astray, but what about someone who exercises unhealthy influence, causing leaders constant grief, but all they do is roll their eyes in a “here we go again” tolerance? Left unconfronted, such opinionated, combative, and/or spiritually abusive people can do as much damage as any false teacher. They tend to gather disaffected followers who share their spirit! They go undisciplined though they badly require it, but, like the Thyatirans, the cowardly leaders of the church never muster the nerve to do so.

Just down the road from Thyatira in Pergamum, Jesus charges another church with getting comfortable with false teaching. The churches in Thyatira and Pergamum were similar in that they both suffered from a particularly malignant variety of false teaching, one that led to cultural compromise in general and sexual immorality in particular!

But the fascinating aspect of Jesus’ letter to Pergamum is that He tells them that if they do not deal with the issue, He will! Jesus warns them, “Therefore repent. If not, I will come and make war against them with the sword of my mouth.” In other words, if church leaders in cowardice continue to turn a blind eye to the situation, Jesus will bring war into the congregation, impacting the entire church.

Has your church suffered from a “war” of sorts, one that causes wreckage in many lives? How do you interpret such a conflict? Do you see it through the paradigm of spiritual warfare, the enemy stirring up discord or resistance to leadership? Or maybe you view it as a test that the church must get through and become stronger as a result? Jesus’ letters to these two churches suggest another possibility. It could be that Jesus has brought a disciplinary “sword” into your congregation because church leaders have a blind spot, one that they have tolerated even though it presents significant danger if it stays uncorrected.

Some church conflicts are not about the current conflict itself. And, focusing only on the immediate battle, leaders and congregation members miss the real issue(s) Jesus has against the church. If you attempt to solve the most recent congregational collision without examining the leadership blind spots that caused it, you set your church up for what the churches of Thyatira and Pergamum faced: a very unhappy Lord!  He may inflict disciplinary pain until church leaders repent and have the courage to address what they may have inappropriately tolerated.

Rev. Mark Barnard serves with Blessing Point Ministries which works to help ministries experience healing from painful crises. For more on avoiding church leadership blind spots read, The Eighth Letter – Exploring Jesus’ Letters to the Seven Churches and Discovering What He is Saying to Yours by Mark Barnard and Dr. Kenneth Quick.