The first time the phrase came up, it did not feel like a theory.
It came from a board chair trying to describe what was happening in a church meeting where one person seemed able to change the whole atmosphere. The agenda would be moving along. A recommendation would be on the table. People would be listening, perhaps a little tired but still engaged. Then a certain voice would enter the conversation, and the room would begin to reorganize itself around that person’s reaction.
People stopped asking what the church was called to do. They started calculating what would happen if this person became angry, sent another email, called other members, questioned the treasurer’s motives, accused the pastor of hiding something, or reopened a decision the board had already made.
No one called it power at first.
They called it “difficult.” They called it “one of those personalities.” They called it “just how he is” or “how she has always been.” They reminded one another that the person loved the church, had given faithfully, had served for years, had history here, had strong feelings because the church mattered.
All of that may have been true.
It was also true that the governing body had begun shaping its leadership around the fear of one person’s response.
That is when anxiety had taken power.
Churches often use gentle language for unhealthy power because they are uncomfortable admitting that power is present at all. The word itself can feel too harsh for a community built around prayer, service, compassion, and belonging. Power sounds like something that belongs to politics, corporations, courts, or conflict, not to finance committees, congregational meetings, choir rooms, fellowship halls, and church parking lots after worship.
But power is always present where decisions are made, resources are stewarded, roles are assigned, information is shared, and people are trusted with influence. Power is not automatically harmful. Every governing body exercises power. Every pastor carries power. Every treasurer, committee chair, longtime member, staff person, donor, and volunteer with access to information carries some form of power.
The question is whether power is accountable to Calling.
Unhealthy power in church life rarely begins with someone announcing that they intend to control the congregation. More often, it begins as anxiety looking for safety. Someone is afraid the church is changing too quickly. Someone believes leaders cannot be trusted. Someone worries that money is being mishandled. Someone feels ignored. Someone has watched beloved traditions disappear. Someone fears the pastor has too much influence, or the board has too little courage, or the congregation is losing its identity.
These fears may contain real information. They should not be dismissed too quickly. Sometimes the person causing difficulty is pointing toward a truth the system has avoided. They may be naming weak communication, unclear authority, poor financial reporting, unresolved grief, or decisions that were made without enough participation. A difficult person is not always a bully. A hard question is not automatically an attack. Emotion does not always mean manipulation.
Faithful leadership has to discern the difference.
Someone can ask a hard question without using suspicion to control the room. Someone can disagree without refusing every decision the body makes. Someone can grieve without turning grief into veto power. Someone can seek accountability without making repeated accusation the primary form of participation.
The difference often becomes visible through repetition, intensity, and impact.
Does the pattern create fear? Does it narrow participation? Do people stop speaking because the emotional cost feels too high? Does the governing body begin managing one person’s reaction more carefully than it tends the church’s Calling? Does authority shift away from the body and toward whoever is loudest, angriest, most persistent, most connected, or most feared?
When those things happen, the issue is no longer only a difficult person.
It has become a power dynamic.
This matters because churches often try to solve unhealthy power at the wrong level. They focus on the personality. They say the person is the problem. They hope the person will calm down, leave the board, stop sending emails, stop stirring people up, stop making meetings so hard. Sometimes a person’s behavior does need to be addressed directly. Sometimes boundaries need to be named plainly. Sometimes formal intervention is necessary.
But if the church only asks, “Who is the problem?” it may miss the deeper question.
What in the system allows this pattern to keep working?
Unhealthy power grows where roles are unclear. If no one knows what authority belongs to the board, the pastor, the treasurer, the finance committee, the personnel committee, or the congregation, informal power will fill the open space. The person with confidence, history, anger, information, or access begins to shape decisions more than the agreed structure does.
It grows where conversations are avoided. A board may notice the same behavior for years and never name it. Leaders may talk privately about the pattern but avoid addressing it together. The concern becomes common knowledge everywhere except in the place where shared leadership is supposed to happen.
It grows where boundaries are weak. If someone can interrupt, intimidate, accuse, triangulate, bypass the agenda, question motives, or reopen settled decisions without correction, those behaviors become part of the church’s leadership culture.
It grows through fear of loss. Churches tolerate unhealthy behavior because they are afraid someone will leave, stop giving, resign from a volunteer role, gather others against the leadership, or create a public conflict. The system begins organizing itself around prevention: prevent the blow-up, prevent the resignation, prevent the angry email, prevent the meeting from becoming uncomfortable.
That kind of prevention can look like peace for a while.
It is not peace.
It is anxiety governing the body.
When anxiety governs, the church’s questions change. The board stops asking, “What response is faithful to our Calling?” and begins asking, “How do we avoid another reaction?” The pastor stops asking, “What does this moment require of the whole body?” and begins asking, “How do I keep this from becoming worse?” The treasurer stops asking, “What financial truth needs to be made clear?” and begins asking, “How do I say this so I will not be accused again?”
The church may still use the language of mission. It may still pray before meetings. It may still care deeply about ministry. But its attention has shifted. It is no longer centered primarily on Calling. It is centered on reaction.
That shift is spiritually costly.
Calling recenters leadership because it moves the governing body out of the immediate emotional storm and back into its deeper responsibility. Calling asks: Who are we being invited to become? What has been entrusted to us? What must be protected so ministry can remain faithful? What kind of leadership does this moment require? What response serves the health of the whole body rather than the anxiety of the strongest reaction?
Returning to Calling does not mean ignoring conflict. It means refusing to let conflict become the center around which everything else turns.
Energy tells the body what unhealthy power is costing.
Meetings become heavy. Leaders dread certain agenda items. Volunteers still love the church but become reluctant to lead. Board members stop asking honest questions. Staff begin documenting every interaction defensively. A treasurer softens reports because one person will accuse them of hiding something no matter what is presented. A pastor spends hours calming people after another side conversation, another accusation, another attempt to reopen a settled decision.
The church may still function, but its Energy is being consumed by anxiety rather than released for ministry.
This is one of the hidden dangers of unhealthy power. It does not only create conflict. It drains the very capacity the church needs for faithful response. The most patient leaders become tired. The most thoughtful members become quiet. The people who might have offered wisdom decide the room is not safe enough to risk it. The governing body still meets, still votes, still carries responsibility, but its attention is spent on managing pressure instead of discerning direction.
Resources can also become leverage.
In church life, Resources include more than money. They include keys, passwords, files, donor relationships, institutional memory, building access, volunteer schedules, committee control, communication channels, financial records, and the ability to tell the story of how things have always been done.
All of these can serve the shared Calling of the church.
They can also be used to control outcomes.
Someone may hold financial information in a way that keeps the board dependent. Someone may control building access in a way that makes others hesitant to challenge them. Someone may use donor relationships as pressure: If we do this, people will stop giving. Someone may use volunteer service as leverage: If you do not do what I want, I will resign, and you will not find anyone else. Someone may use institutional memory to end discernment before it begins: That is not how we do things here.
The resource itself may be legitimate. The person may have served faithfully. The history may matter. The giving may be generous. The volunteer role may be important.
The question is whether the resource is serving the body or being used to shape outcomes without shared accountability.
Faithful governance has to ask that question without panic and without cruelty. The goal is not to overpower the person who has become difficult. The goal is to restore authority to the body, where it belongs.
Authority belongs to the body.
Not to the loudest voice. Not to the longest-tenured member. Not to the largest donor. Not to the person who knows where every file is stored. Not to the committee chair who has always handled it. Not to the pastor as the emotional container for everything the structure cannot hold. Not to the person who can make the meeting most uncomfortable.
In a healthy church system, individual leaders have roles, but those roles remain accountable to the governing body, the congregation’s governing documents, denominational polity, shared discernment, and the Calling of the church. Authority does not become faithful because it is forceful. It becomes faithful when it is held with humility, clarity, accountability, and care for the whole body.
Churches often hesitate here because boundaries feel unkind. Many congregations value openness, compassion, and relationship, as they should. But without boundaries, openness can become chaos, compassion can become avoidance, and relationship can become dependency.
A boundary says: this is how concerns are brought forward. This is where decisions are made. This is how we will speak to one another. This is what confidentiality requires. This is what staff and volunteers can expect. This is what we will not allow in meetings, emails, hallway conversations, or leadership culture.
A boundary does not need to be dramatic. It may sound calm and plain.
That concern needs to come back to the board through the agenda process.
We will not continue this conversation if people are being personally criticized.
The finance committee can recommend, but the board must decide.
We have heard the concern, and we are not going to repeat the same discussion unless there is new information.
This decision belongs to the governing body. Your concern can be heard, but it cannot replace the process we have agreed to follow.
Those sentences are not harsh. They are part of how a church protects the conditions for faithful participation. Boundaries help quieter members speak. They protect staff and volunteers from becoming emotional shock absorbers. They allow disagreement without personal attack. They help the governing body hear concerns without surrendering its responsibility.
This is where the church has to move from personality to process.
When unhealthy power appears, leaders often personalize everything. She is the problem. He always does this. Everything would be easier if that person would stop. There may be truth in the frustration. A particular person may be causing real harm. But if the church focuses only on the person, it may miss the process that failed, the role that is unclear, the boundary that is missing, the policy that has never been practiced, or the conversation that has been avoided.
The shift from personality to process gives leaders something faithful to do.
They can clarify committee authority. They can strengthen financial reporting. They can define how concerns come to the board. They can establish communication expectations. They can create meeting norms. They can document staff supervision procedures. They can decide that side conversations will not replace board action.
None of this guarantees that unhealthy power disappears. Some patterns require direct conversation. Some require formal intervention. Some require denominational support, mediation, documentation, insurance guidance, legal counsel, or outside professional help, especially when behavior becomes threatening, abusive, harassing, discriminatory, or legally concerning. Faithful leadership includes knowing when a matter has moved beyond ordinary discomfort and requires a more structured response.
But much of the work begins earlier, in the quiet discipline of clarity.
Observe the pattern. Name the impact. Clarify the boundary. Return to role and process. Follow through consistently.
That sequence is not dramatic. It does not make for a stirring speech. It will not satisfy the part of the church that wants the problem to disappear quickly. But consistency teaches the system what is real. If the boundary matters, it has to matter more than once.
The deeper goal is not to defeat a person.
The deeper goal is to restore a leadership culture where unhealthy power cannot easily take root.
A healthier leadership culture makes room for truth. People can say what is real without being punished for it. It makes room for grief. People can name loss and change without turning those emotions into control. It makes room for disagreement. Leaders can hold different perspectives without treating one another as enemies. It makes room for courage. The governing body can act faithfully even when someone is unhappy.
Most of all, it makes room for shared Calling.
The church remembers that leadership is not about managing the strongest personality. It is about stewarding the mission, people, trust, and Resources entrusted to the congregation. It is about holding authority with humility and enough steadiness that the body does not have to organize itself around anxiety.
Churches do not become healthier by pretending unhealthy power does not exist. They become healthier when leaders are willing to tell the truth with care.
So when these dynamics appear, the first faithful question is not, “How do we defeat this person?”
The better question is, “What clarity is missing?”
Where does authority actually reside? What policy needs to be strengthened? What boundary needs to be named? What process needs to be followed? What conversation has the church avoided because it fears the reaction it may cause? Where have staff, volunteers, pastors, or board members been absorbing anxiety that belongs to the system?
Those questions move the church out of reaction and back toward discernment.
When anxiety takes power, Calling gets pushed to the side. When the governing body returns to Calling, holds authority with humility, and practices boundaries with consistency, the church becomes less vulnerable to unhealthy power and more available to the work it has been called to do.