I tend to have controlling tendencies. My first wife, my kids, my second present wife, as well as some very close friends have all told me this. Because of how I have seen how my controlling nature has damaged relationships with others, I have been open to God changing this aspect of my personality.  

The book, “I’m Okay – You’re Okay” by Thomas Harris, M.D. has helped me in my journey. I do not agree with everything he says in the book, but I have truly benefited from his following insights: 

People can choose to relate to others in one of three ways. They can choose to relate to them as a parent, as an adult or as a child. Generally speaking, all of us have a Parent, an Adult, and a Child within us, and each of our different kinds of relationships draws out these different approaches we take toward people. 

The Parent: When we choose to relate to others from the Parent within us, we treat everyone else like immature children. We feel superior to them and look down on them as our inferiors. We tell them how to think and what to do. We give pat “answers” and automatic “explanations” for everything that happens in their lives. We function as their judge, jury and executioner – even as the Holy Spirit! 

The Adult: When we choose to relate to others from the Adult perspective, we treat others with mutual respect. We try to understand what others are saying even before we state our own opinions. Instead of using “You…” statements, we try to use mostly “I feel…” statements. Even when we have strong convictions about certain topics, we admit to the possibility of being mistaken. 

The Child: When we choose to relate to people from the Child within us, we demand that everyone else conform to our beliefs and desires. We use various emotional techniques to try to manipulate others or shame them into doing what we want them to do – when and how we want them to act. When others do not service our needs or wants, we call them names, get sarcastic, stomp our foot, shut down, raise our voice, withdraw by leaving the room, etc. to show our disapproval of their lack of responding to us.  

One of the systemic social problems in churches run by pastor-kings instead of pastor-servants, is that pastor-kings usually relate to their staff and to their congregational members as a Parent to a Child. In my own life, I felt talked to as a child by parent-leaders more than once:   

“I told you never to come back here unless you were completely willing to submit to every part of the vision of this church!” (one of my former pastors to me upon my return to "his" church) 

“No, you shouldn’t have preached on that topic on Sunday night because I’m the one who makes the doctrines of this church!” (one of my former pastors to me after I preached a postmillennial-type of sermon during a Sunday night service) 

“I will counsel you and your wife only on the condition that you do not counsel with anyone else!” (one of my former pastors to me and my first wife when we needed marriage counseling)  

"We're going to have to talk if I'm going to allow you to start prophesying in my church!" (one of my former pastors to me after I prophesied in church) 

I take responsibility for my over-controlling nature. I do not blame my former pastors for it. Nevertheless, I have observed that over-controlling pastors seem to produce over-controlling staff members as well as over-controlling congregational members and associates. When I read the comments from “Vroom,” for example (2/6/07), in his response to one of my blog articles, I felt attacked by that same strong spirit of his Parent coming out toward me:  

“Why are you harping on it?” 

“Why are you complaining about it, you don't even go there.” 

“How do you really know PF preaches too much about money? Is that your opinion or God's? I personally could care less… Don't know where
you got your information and don't care…” 

“Why do you spend so much energy on this stuff, let it go and go do something for God.“ 

My hope is that I will become totally free from the over-controlling spirit of the Parent that is in me. I pray that I can learn how to care for others with genuine love and mutual respect even when I completely disagree with their ideas. I want to learn how to maintain my belief systems with an open mind without resorting to treating others as a parent would treat a child. I want to learn how to treat others as one adult would treat another.

Questions says: My general opinion of all MFI churches are that they are are a dusted-off, revived version of the 1970s discipleship movement of the Charismatic movement.

Questions: Excellent insight! Back in the 1970's, one of my former pastors had Juan Carlos Ortez, a leader of the discipleship movement in Argentina and author of the book, Disciple, came to Portland and spent several days talking in private to the church leadership and preaching in the church. Although I was not in those private meetings, I believe that they directly and strongly contributed to this church's increasing control over its people. If I'm not mistaken, it was after those meetings, that the leadership began making sure that everyone attended the home meetings "in their district" and was "under" their district pastor.

I have personally spoken with one of the Christian psychologists who was involved in counseling many of the leaders and victims of the Discipleship Movement because of their over-emphasis upon submission to spiritual authority and the doctrine of spiritual "covering." Thousands of Christians were exploited, hurt and abused, but, fortunately some, I was told, like Bob Mumford, publicly repented.

I remembered how I felt that this church's leadership used to criticize albeit subtly and question the Shepherding Movement's leaders (Ern Baxter, Bob Mumford, Derek Prince, Don Basham, Charles Simpson, and John Poole) for most of them not being pastors of traditional "local churches." (And yet the senior pastor would have they some of them come and minister at his church at times!) This church's leadership implied that their abuse of authority and power came about because they were not in traditional "local church" structures.  

In my view, this is a ridiculous half-truth. Authoritarianism and over-control is rampant – mainly through the spread of the Senior Pastor Cult – throughout the world – both in house churches as well as mega churches – both inside "local church" structures as well as outside of them. To me, it's not the structure, it's the heart of self-centeredness and a twisted ministry philosophy that drives this abuse of power. In my view, local churches like the one to which I am referring simply adopted the general views of the Discipleship Movement and began to practice them inside their own local church structures. They justified these practices by saying that they were implementing them into what they thought was the only "biblical" form of church: the "local church."

I find it interesting that, to my knowledge, MFI membership is open only to those pastors who practice "senior pastor" ministry. This raises a very interesting question: Why would the MFI leadership not encourage pastors of congregational and elder-run churches to join its ranks? ….Another interesting question is why, at least on the surface, does it appear that Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians are more prone to being both spiritual abusers as well as being spiritually abused than other Evangelical and Protestant groups?

No matter what the structure or group, however, I think we must always keep in mind the words of the apostle Peter who tells us what the true purpose of any Christian leadership is: "…not as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock…" (I Peter 5:3, NKJV) In my view, it is when leaders turn away from their true calling of humbly serving and being examples to the flock to getting money, power, volunteer (slave) labor and prestige from the flock that the doors to all forms of spiritual abuse open wide.

Note: There is an excellent article in The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Baker Book House) called, The Discipleship Movement (pgs. 319-320) which has a great bibliography for further reading.