Why passive-aggressive Christian leadership must go away

June 21, 2013 at 12:06 pm Leave a comment

Passive-aggressive attitudes manifest themselves in different ways, and in different situations. As with all sinful attitudes and actions, Christians are not immune to passive-aggressive responses to conflict.

My friend Marty Duren just posted a good blog post titled “Why passive-aggressive Christian leadership must go away“. Marty gives five reasons.

Jesus was not passive-aggressive.
It fosters a negative “blame the many instead of the problem” culture.
It is contrary to New Testament fellowship.
It creates distrust in the leader.
It removes the imperative for the person to change his or her ways.

He expounds on these reasons on his blog. Marty begins this post on a personal note:

“When I was a young pastor I had a scattergun approach to preaching. Like many I tended to take a text, depart therefrom and go everywhere preaching the gospel.

Regrettably this approach also led to preaching in which I would “confront” a member of the congregation at the expense of the many. Rather than meeting with people individually about a certain issue, I would use the preaching time to address it. I would scattershot. In my ignorance it never dawned on me that the majority of the congregation had no idea what I was talking about and the intended target probably thought I was talking about someone else.

When I wanted to do it, I could really put the “bully” in bully-pulpit. This was a terrible pattern of preaching and leadership. Over the course of many years God got me mostly beyond preaching and leading that way, and I am grateful.”

I encourage you to read the whole thing here.