The recent surge in scandals involving religious leaders may stem from flawed motivations for leadership, including ambition for personal gain, ideological agendas, and simple expediency. Discover the destructive patterns behind these...



Every week, it seems there is another religious leader revealed to have a hidden shadow life of immorality, a ruthless approach to power and control, or a narcissistic personality. Is it just that social media is affording more awareness for what has always been a rampant problem? Is it that a religious leader’s failings are of more interest to the press? There is, after all, an old line in journalism that says, “Dog bites man” is not news, but “Man bites dog” is. A person without faith having moral flaws is not news; a person of moral faith having flaws is.

But I sense that something else is afoot that is not being considered, and it has to do with the motivations for entering into leadership roles. Or perhaps, more to the point, the motivation for pursuing one. Three motivations, to my thinking, are fatally flawed and will, in the end… not end well.

The first motivation is ambition.

This person enters into a leadership role because they desire personal fame or fortune. If they weren’t on the “stage” of a church, they would be seeking some other stage. The goal is notoriety, recognition—they crave the crowd, the conferences, the books, and the interviews. Their leadership is more performance than passion. In truth, however, it’s not even leadership at all. It’s the use of an organization and well-meaning people for personal prestige. A sense of entitlement, of being “above the law,” sets in. An embrace of immorality often follows or, at the very least, egocentric behavior and greed. In almost every case, ambition as a motivation leads to narcissistic behavior and a personality-centered church.

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