When Church Leaders Disappoint You

Nwakaego had sung alto in the same choir for fourteen years. She joined the church at twenty-three, the year her mother was dying of kidney failure at the teaching hospital in Ikeja. The pastor in those days led a congregation of about two hundred people in a rented hall in Ogba. He came to the ward four times in six weeks. On the last visit he sat by her mother’s bed, opened his small black Bible to Lamentations and read, “It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not” (Lamentations 3:22). Then he looked at Nwakaego and said, “Whatever happens this week, God will still be faithful to you.” Her mother died two days later. Nwakaego clung to that sentence for years.

Everything she knew about God’s faithfulness she had learned in that hall, from that man. He taught her to read the Bible. He married her and her husband. He dedicated both of her children.

The change was slow enough that she could not have told you when it began. The church grew and moved into a new building on the expressway. The pastor acquired assistants, then protocol officers, then a second phone that only his personal assistant answered. His sermons became shorter on Scripture and longer on testimonies of giving. None of it seemed wicked. It just seemed further away.

Then her husband lost his job. For seven months they lived on her salary as a school administrator, and the school fees for two children stood on the calendar like a wall. She asked for an appointment with the pastor and waited five weeks for twenty minutes. He spent most of them answering messages. Near the end he told her, without looking up, that lack was often a sign of a closed hand, and that she should sow a seed toward the new auditorium. The following Sunday he preached about a choir member, unnamed but unmistakable, who had come to him “complaining about money” while giving nothing to God’s house. People laughed. Some of them turned to look at the alto section.

Nwakaego did not leave the church that day. What happened was worse. That evening, at home, she tried to sing “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” while she washed the plates, and she could not get past the first line. The words had his voice in them. If the man who had taught her that God was faithful could treat her like that, how could she be sure that what he had taught her was true?

That is the question this article is for.

Why it hurts so deeply

A leader’s failure is painful in ways other disappointments are not. When a colleague betrays you, you lose a colleague. When a pastor wounds you, you can feel that you have lost something of God. The leader stood near the place where you met the Lord. His voice is woven into your memory of Scripture. He prayed over your marriage and your children. So when his conduct falls apart, the truths you received through him can seem to fall with it.

Scripture does not pretend that this is a small grief. David wrote of a betrayal that cut deeper than any attack from an enemy: “For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it” (Psalm 55:12). He goes on to describe the man who had hurt him as “my guide, and mine acquaintance,” someone with whom he had “walked unto the house of God in company” (Psalm 55:13-14). The one who wounded him was the one he had worshipped beside.

If you have been hurt by someone who led you, you are allowed to grieve. You do not need to hurry to the conclusion that it does not matter. It does matter. Something good was damaged, and grief is the honest response of a heart that valued it. Bring that grief to God in the words of the Psalms. He is not offended by your sorrow.

What you must guard against is allowing the grief to make a theological decision on your behalf. Pain tends to argue backwards. “He was wrong about how to treat me, so he was probably wrong about God.” That conclusion feels logical in the moment, but it does not follow. The rest of this article is about learning to separate the two.

Paul saw it coming

One of the most remarkable speeches in the New Testament is Paul’s farewell to the elders of Ephesus. He had spent three years in that city. He had taught publicly and from house to house. Now he was on his way to Jerusalem, convinced that he would not see them again, and he called the church’s leaders to meet him at the port of Miletus. His words to them include this:

Notice where Paul begins. “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock.” The leaders’ first responsibility is to watch over their own souls. Paul knew that a shepherd who neglects his own walk with God will eventually harm the flock, even if he never intends to. Much leadership failure begins exactly there, in years of neglected prayer, unexamined motives and unchallenged habits, long before anything visible collapses.

Then Paul gives a warning that ought to sober every church. Wolves would come from outside, he said. But he also said, “of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.” Paul was speaking to the elders themselves. Some of the men listening to him on that beach would later become part of the problem. The danger would arise from inside the leadership.

This should change how we think about disappointment. The New Testament never told believers that their leaders would be flawless. On the contrary, the apostle warned them in tears that some leaders would fail them. If that happens to you, your faith has not been proven false. The Word of God has been proven accurate.

Then look at verse 32. Having warned them about failing leaders, what does Paul give them? “And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up.” He commended them to God and to the word. He did not commend them to a particular personality, not even to himself. Paul knew that he was leaving, and that some of the elders might fail. So he handed the believers over to the One who would not leave and to the word that would not change.

Your spiritual life was always meant to rest there. The word of His grace, says Paul, “is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance.” The building up and the inheritance come from the word and from God. A faithful leader is one of God’s ways of bringing that word to you, and you should be grateful for every such leader. But the power was never in the leader’s personality. It was in the word he carried.

The message does not belong to the messenger

Paul faced an unusual situation while he was in prison in Rome. Some preachers in the city were proclaiming Christ out of rivalry, hoping to make Paul’s imprisonment more painful. Their motives were bad. Yet listen to Paul’s response:

“Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice.” Paul did not approve of their envy. He named it plainly. But he understood that the truth of the gospel did not depend on the purity of the person preaching it. When someone with mixed motives says “Jesus died for your sins and rose again,” that sentence is still true.

This principle can help you sort through what you received from a leader who later disappointed you. Take the truths one at a time and ask where they came from. When Nwakaego’s pastor read Lamentations by her mother’s bedside, where did the words come from? They came from Lamentations, written in the ruins of Jerusalem and attributed by long tradition to Jeremiah, centuries before her pastor was born. “They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:23). God’s faithfulness was true before her pastor read the verse and remained true after he hurt her. He was the messenger. He was never the source.

Paul applies the same logic to God Himself in Romans. Some in Israel had been unfaithful, he says, but “shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar” (Romans 3:3-4). Human unfaithfulness does not cancel divine faithfulness. And to Timothy he writes, “If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). If our own failures cannot make God unfaithful, a pastor’s failures certainly cannot.

At the same time, this sorting process works in both directions. Some of what you received from a disappointing leader may need to be examined, because it was never Scripture in the first place. Nwakaego eventually realised that the idea that every financial hardship signalled a closed hand had not come from the Bible at all. It had come from the pastor’s own emphasis, and it had been used against her. Scripture does call believers to generous, joyful giving, and God does honour it. But Scripture also gives us Job, Paul in his hunger and thirst, and the poor widow commended by Jesus. A formula that blames every struggling believer for her struggle cannot survive a careful reading of the whole Bible.

So keep what is Christ’s. Examine what was merely the man’s. You may find that his failure becomes the occasion for you to know the Scriptures better than you ever did while you depended on him.

Punchline

A leader carried the word to you, but he was never its source. What God said was true before your pastor spoke it, and it remains true after he has disappointed you.

One foundation, many builders

The Corinthian church had a habit of forming camps around different leaders. “I am of Paul,” some said. “I am of Apollos,” said others. Paul responded by reminding them that ministers are only servants: “Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed?” (1 Corinthians 3:5). One plants, another waters, “but God gave the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6). Then he changes the picture from a field to a building:

There is one foundation, Jesus Christ, and nobody can lay another. Every faithful leader builds on Him. But notice the warning in verse 10: “let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.” Builders are accountable. Some build with gold, silver and precious stones. Some build with wood, hay and stubble. And “the day shall declare it.” God Himself will test the quality of every minister’s work.

This passage gives you two gifts when a leader disappoints you.

The first is stability. If your faith was built on the foundation of Jesus Christ, then a builder’s poor workmanship cannot remove the foundation. Some of the walls he built in your understanding may need to come down. Some of his materials may prove to be stubble. But the rock underneath is untouched. You can rebuild on it.

The second is relief from the burden of judgement. You do not have to be the final judge of your pastor. God will examine his work with perfect knowledge, perfect justice and perfect mercy. That does not mean you ignore wrongdoing, as we will see. It does mean you can lay down the exhausting work of replaying the injury, building the case and nursing the verdict. “The fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.” The fire belongs to God.

Not every failure is the same

Nugget

It helps to be clear about what kind of failure you are facing, because the right response depends on it.

Some disappointments come from ordinary human weakness. A leader forgets a promise, speaks carelessly, makes a poor decision, or is simply less wise than you had hoped. James reminds us that “in many things we offend all” (James 3:2), and that includes those who teach. Weaknesses like these call for patience, honest conversation and forgiveness. It is unrealistic, and unkind, to expect a pastor never to have a bad week.

Some disappointments come from sin that needs to be addressed. Humiliating a member from the pulpit, as Nwakaego’s pastor did, is a misuse of a sacred position. Jesus gave a clear starting point: “go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother” (Matthew 18:15). If a private conversation fails, others may need to be involved. Paul instructed Timothy that accusations against an elder should be established by witnesses, and that an elder who persists in sin should be corrected openly (1 Timothy 5:19-20). Fairness to the leader and accountability for wrongdoing belong together.

And some failures involve serious harm: abuse of a child or vulnerable adult, sexual exploitation, fraud, violence, or the use of spiritual authority to control and frighten people. These are not matters for quiet patience. They require that people be made safe, that the appropriate civil authorities be informed, and that qualified safeguarding help be sought. No call to honour leaders, and no slogan about touching God’s anointed, can require you to keep silent about such things. Ezekiel heard the Lord say of faithless shepherds, “I will require my flock at their hand” (Ezekiel 34:10). God takes the protection of His sheep seriously, and so should we.

It is also worth asking, honestly and gently, whether part of your pain comes from what you expected. Some of us place leaders on pedestals that no human being can stand on. The psalmist gives counsel that is still wise:

“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man.” That includes princes of the pulpit. A pastor is a son of man. His breath goes forth like everyone else’s. “Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help.” Learning this does not make you cynical. It makes your love for your leaders healthier, because you are no longer asking them to be God.

When you need to speak

If a leader has wronged you, there may come a time to speak to him. That is often harder than leaving or than complaining to others, and it is usually more fruitful.

Before you go, pray about your own heart. You are not going to win, or to humiliate him in return. You are going because truth spoken in love can lead to restoration, for him and for you. Write down what happened as plainly as you can, without exaggeration. Distinguish what you saw and heard from what you suspect.

When you meet, describe the facts and their effect. “On that Sunday you described my situation from the pulpit. People recognised me. I felt humiliated and I have struggled to worship since.” Statements like that are hard to dismiss, because they do not require anyone to read your mind. Listen to his response. He may apologise. He may explain something you did not know. He may become defensive.

If the conversation goes nowhere, you may need to speak with other elders or with whoever holds him accountable. If the matter involves serious harm, go straight to those responsible for safeguarding and, where appropriate, to the authorities. You are not required to meet alone with a person who has abused you.

Whatever happens, guard against two temptations. The first is gossip: telling everyone except the person concerned, or turning your hurt into a campaign on social media. That rarely heals anything and often wounds bystanders. The second is pretending: telling yourself that it does not matter, smiling on Sunday and carrying a quiet poison in your heart. Forgiveness is not pretending. It is releasing the debt to God while still telling the truth. You may forgive fully and still decide that trust needs time to rebuild, or that you need to worship elsewhere.

Consider Him

When the writer to the Hebrews wanted to encourage believers who were growing weary, he turned their eyes to Jesus:

“Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.” The word consider here means to weigh carefully, to compare. Think about what Jesus endured. Some of the most painful contradiction He faced came from those closest to Him. Judas, who had shared His bread, betrayed Him. Peter, who had sworn to die with Him, denied Him three times. And on the night of His arrest, “all the disciples forsook him, and fled” (Matthew 26:56).

Jesus knows what it is to be let down by people inside the circle. He is not a distant Saviour who cannot understand your disappointment. He felt it in His own soul, and He kept loving and kept going to the cross. After the resurrection He restored Peter tenderly by the lake. That is the Lord you are being asked to look at.

“Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.” He began your faith, and He will finish it. Your pastor did not author it, and his failure cannot end it. The writer says that this looking is the cure for weariness and fainting. When you have been hurt by a leader, the natural instinct is to keep looking at him: at what he did, what he said, what he should have done. But looking at the injury keeps it open. Looking at Jesus begins to heal it.

There is a moment in John’s Gospel that has helped many wounded believers. After a hard teaching, many of Jesus’ followers walked away. Jesus turned to the twelve:

“Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.” Peter did not understand everything at that point. He was confused, and the crowd was thinning. But he knew where life was. When a leader disappoints you, you may have many questions you cannot answer yet. Let this be your one settled answer: whoever else fails, Jesus still has the words of eternal life. There is nowhere else to go, and you do not need anywhere else.

And keep belonging to His people. One leader’s failure does not mean every leader is false, or that the church is a mistake. You may need a different congregation, a season of quieter involvement, or the help of a mature believer or a trained counsellor to work through what happened. But do not let one wound persuade you to live without the body of Christ. Isolation is the place where bitterness grows best.

Nwakaego wrote to her pastor three weeks after that Sunday. It took her a long time to make the letter calm. She described what had happened and asked to meet with him and one of the elders. He agreed. The meeting was uncomfortable. He apologised for the sermon, though less fully than she had hoped, and he said that he had not realised how distant he had become. She believed he meant it, at least partly. Over the next year she and her husband moved to a smaller church closer to home, and she left with his knowledge and his blessing.

What changed most, she told me, happened one evening at the kitchen sink. She had been reading through Lamentations on her own, slowly, without anyone to explain it. She noticed for the first time that Jeremiah wrote “great is thy faithfulness” while sitting in the rubble of a destroyed city, after Israel’s priests and prophets had failed the people terribly. The verse had been born in a season of failed leadership. It had never depended on a good pastor.

She began to sing, quietly, over the plates. This time she reached the end of the hymn. The voice in the words was no longer her old pastor’s. It was the Lord’s, and it always had been.

Punchline

If someone who led you has let you down, grieve honestly, speak truthfully, and seek help where harm has been done. Then lift your eyes. The foundation is still there. The word of His grace is still able to build you up. And He who began your faith is not finished with it.