How To Spot and Survive Narcissist Pastors

After this show was broadcast, Julie posted a blog that addresses very serious issues about the study in Let Us Prey and its authors. Read Post Guest Bios Show Transcript Have wolves in Shepherd's clothing infiltrated the North American Church? And are sheep being systematically devoured as a result? Joining me this week on The Roys Report is Darrell Puls. Darrel is a researcher and author of the book, Let Us Prey! How can you detect if your pastor is a narcissist? And what do you do if he is? Don’t miss The Roys Report, this Saturday morning at 11 on AM 1160 Hope For Your Life, and at 7 p.m. Sunday evening on AM 560 The Answer. This Weeks Guests Darrell Puls Darrell Puls is a professional conflict interventionist with forty years of experience, and founder of Peacebridge Ministries, a Christian nonprofit that works directly with faith communities experiencing internal conflict. He is the author of The Road Home: A Guided Journey to Church Forgiveness and Reconciliation (2013). R. Glenn Ball is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in Canada, where he has served for more than thirty years in parish ministry and as a specialist working with distressed churches. Show Transcript Note: This transcript has been edited slightly for continuity. Segment 1: JULIE ROYS: Welcome to The Roys Report, brought to you in part by Judson University. I am Julie Roys. And I’m so glad that you’ve joined me for today’s discussion. We’re going to be talking about an issue that’s extremely important. But frankly, I wish it weren’t an issue, and I wish that we didn’t have to talk about it. But we do. That’s because this issue is ravaging churches and unsuspecting staff and laypeople. It’s the issue of wolves in shepherd’s clothing—pastors who are supposed to be protecting their sheep, but instead, they’re preying on them.  And if you’ve been a part of a church where this is happening, you know how painful and confusing and disorienting this can be. And here in the Chicago area, there’s been a lot of talk about this issue. That’s because over the past 18 months, we’ve had two megachurches—Willow Creek Community Church and Harvest Bible Chapel—where the pastors have been accused of abusing the flock and the staff. But this doesn’t just happen in big churches; it happens in churches of all sizes. And it’s not necessarily because pastors are just human or they’re sinful. According to my guest today, sometimes, there’s something else—something very sinister, to blame. Now before I go any further, I want to speak to you pastors who are the majority of you out there, who are honest and kind and sacrificial. And, you know, again, I recognize this isn’t about you. And I hope that nothing that we discuss today casts aspersion on you. Again, the majority of you pastors I just so appreciate. We love you. And we recognize how thankless your job often is. So just want to make that very-very clear. But my guest today is Darrell Puls, and he’s worked with many churches as a mediator. And he says that over the years he’s seen a “different quality” to some of the church conflicts. At first, he said he didn’t know what to make of it. He writes in his book Let Us Prey, “In many cases, there was something deeper going on (in these conflicts), but I couldn’t tell you what it was. Though I expected the pastor to be involved, and even be part of the problem, my training—and my biases—said that he or she was caught in the middle. So, like most interventionists, I looked for the issues and then probed the deeper meanings behind them so that we could fashion a workable settlement. But what I didn’t expect was that the pastor . . . was at the very center in almost every fight that had this ‘different’ quality to it.  I also didn’t expect that the pasto