When a Leader Falls: Why Does His Team Circle the Wagons?

By Phil Cooke

I worked as a prosecutor watching Catholic priests charged with sex abuse and saw firsthand how the “circle the wagons” mentality revictimized the innocent, coddled the guilty, and made matters worse for everyone.

—Christine Pelosi, “Penn State Knew and Looked the Other Way,” HuffPost, 13 July 2012

 Recently, we’ve seen numerous high-profile crisis situations in both churches and ministries with a pastor or other senior leader accused of sexual immorality or abuse. And in most cases, the initial response was to defend the leader at all costs. In at least one case, a woman who had accused a leader of sexual advances was ridiculed by ministry leadership, and in another case, multiple members of a church leadership team publicly denounced the victim.

In almost all these recent cases, once the facts were revealed, the church and ministry leaders were embarrassed, forced to apologize, and, in some cases, resigned. During these situations, people are asking one big question:

Before spiritual leaders fall, why doesn’t their inner circle hold them accountable?

While there are many reasons leaders may fail, in my new book “Church on Trial: How to Protect Your Congregation, Mission, and Reputation During a Crisis,” I point out two particular causes for why I believe the leader’s inner circle—even when they see problems—doesn’t take action:

First, the inner circle has a very different dynamic with spiritual leaders than with secular leaders. Keep in mind that in so many cases, many of those members of a leader’s inner circle were led to Christ through that pastor or ministry leader. In other cases, the leader had a powerful impact on saving their marriage, helping them through addiction, or counseling them through other challenging times.

In those cases, a person will be very slow to indict a leader who in some way played a key role in their salvation, deliverance, or healing. Plus, because of that impact, they naturally have such great respect for the leader that they couldn’t imagine him or her committing a serious sin—even as the evidence emerges.

It may be worth noting that in my experience, these pastors or leaders weren’t threatening the staff or even reminding them of some kind of spiritual debt. These leaders weren’t manipulating them in any way. It was just there, and the staff members expressed their loyalty because of it.

A number of years ago, I experienced that situation first-hand with a particular church where the pastor made teasing jokes to women in staff meetings, joking about the color of their panties, how they looked in a bathing suit, and so forth. Shocked, when I brought up how inappropriate it was to the executive pastor, his response was, “Oh, that’s just the pastor. Everyone knows he’s joking. It doesn’t bother anyone. That’s the way he is.”

Later, when I thought back on that staff meeting, I realized that nearly everyone in the room was spiritually indebted to the pastor in some way. Multiple staff members had been saved through his ministry. One had been through the church’s addiction program. Another had been mentored by the pastor. In so many ways, they were in awe of that pastor.

But a few months later, that pastor confessed to having an affair with a member of the congregation.

In her book Celebrities for Jesus, Katelyn Beaty describes the situation with Ravi Zacharias:

Some of Zacharias’s victims said that his celebrity status made them hesitant to speak up. “You have this world-renowned evangelist who is being inappropriate, and I had no idea what to do,” one woman said, noting that some of his books were sold at the spas. “He wasn’t just the head of the company. He wasn’t just a CEO. He was a Christian leader.”[i]

The contrast is that while corporate or nonprofit leaders can have a major impact on the lives of their team, it’s not the same as a pastor or ministry leader. In our company meetings at Cooke Media Group, I often joke that our entire team feels perfectly free to call me out on bad ideas, dumb decisions, and more. They’re not held back by any spiritual guilt that would make them hesitate to do the right thing. And while sometimes that can be more annoying than the unfettered admiration spiritual leaders can get, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The second reason—particularly with large churches or ministries—is that people in the inner circle have great jobs. They’re often highly respected, probably make a good salary, and because of their role, have a certain amount of prestige. In those cases, they’re going to think twice before taking an action that could bring it all down. Along that line, I read a quote from David French, again related to the Ravi Zacharias situation:

Christian ministries are populated by leadership teams who derive not just their paychecks but also their own public reputations from their affiliation with the famous founder. They’re admired in part because the founder is admired. They have influence in part because the founder has influence. When the founder fails, they lose more than a paycheck. There is powerful personal incentive to circle the wagons and to defend the ministry, even when that defense destroys lives.[ii]

Years ago, I had a friend who was in the inner leadership circle of a large ministry. While the ministry leader never experienced a failure, from the outside, it became obvious that people returned my friend’s calls primarily because of his role in working so closely with this highly respected ministry leader. It was proven true a few years later when he left that ministry, and people stopped taking his calls. He was shocked to learn that all the “influence” he thought he previously had was only because of his proximity to his former boss.

Please don’t take either explanation as a justification or defense of destructive behavior—but they’re warning signs we need to be aware of in church and ministry leadership. We’re all fallen creatures, but even in the heat of battle, the spiritual debt we owe another leader or the reputation or prestige that relationship gives us should never overpower the need to stand up when we see wrongdoing.

But it is a reason the pressure is so great to stay quiet. If you’re in the inner circle, particularly of a large church, ministry, or nonprofit, I’d encourage you to reflect on both situations and always be on guard that your integrity is stronger than loyalty, personal friendship, or professional success.

[i] Beaty, Celebrities for Jesus.

[ii] David French, “‘You Are One Step Away from Complete and Total Insanity,’” The Dispatch, 14 February 2021, https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/frenchpress/you-are-one-step-away-from-complete/.

This article is an excerpt from the book “Church on Trial: How to Protect Your Congregation, Mission, and Reputation During a Crisis” by Phil Cooke and published by AVAIL Publishing.