Bullies, Mobs, and Thugs: When people you work with turn mean.

From Jim: This is the first in a series of seventeen blog posts on workplace bullying and related topics running Monday, July 2, 2012 to Sunday, August 12, 2012.  

Events and people depicted are fictionalized composites from multiple sources.  Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental.  

A man is called to co-pastor a mid-Atlantic US congregation to bring in young families, but is sabotaged by the senior pastor when he proves too effective for his own good. Despite great quarterly job performance reviews pastor tells the board the associate is "unsuited for ministry.” The locks are changed to the church doors and he is summoned to the pastor's office.  He leaves the church, and his wife bumps into a member of the congregation a couple of months later.   The church lady wonders if ex-pastor and his wife’s divorce is final yet.  His wife, shocked, asks where this lady would have gotten such an idea in her head. The senior pastor had "let it slip" that he had failed morally to the congregation (he hadn’t).

A pastor is in a toxic rural church for 3-1/2 years before resigning.  He’s in a healthy setting now, but still struggles to forgive people at the previous church. 

After only six months at his church, two families start a concerted effort to undercut the pastor with gossip and personal attacks. He is called in by the deacons three times to answer for gossip, most of which he knew nothing about until the meetings. Next they go after his wife.  They spread lies about her, and then two deacons call her in to answer for them. When pastor asks the deacons to identify who had spread these lies about his wife, they refuse to say. He resigns after just a year.  They are struggling financially, but he says one of the hardest things is explaining to their two young children why they don't go to that church any more.  He lives in a small town and isn't sure where to worship. 

• 89% of pastors have considered leaving the ministry at one time.  57% said they would leave if they had a better place to go – including secular work.
• 35-40% of pastors actually do leave the ministry, most after only five years.
• Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or strife in their churches.
• Fifty percent of pastors' marriages will end in divorce.
• Eighty percent of pastors feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastor.
• Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
• Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.
• Seventy percent of pastors constantly fight depression.
• Most statistics say that 60% to 80% of those who enter the ministry will not still be in it 10 years later, and only a fraction will stay in it as a lifetime career.
• 90 percent of pastors start off right with a true sense of call and the enthusiasm and the endurance of faith to make it, but something happens to derail their train of passion and love for the ministry.

Workplace bullying is gaining attention, and it doesn’t just happen in churches.  But churches have become more than ever sanctuaries for wolves to devour sheep, free from any real accountability.  The fox is in the henhouse, and they are often run by the foxes themselves.  Governing bodies are seldom equipped to deal effectively with pastor abuse, and state law often explicitly won’t get involved. 

This next series is on workplace bullying, especially in the church, and how you can face the Goliaths in your life.  You may not stay, but hopefully you will get out alive.