Too Big To Succeed

“Too big to fail.” We’ve all heard that saying, and it usually refers to the idea that once an organization gets a certain size, and becomes important to culture or society, it’s too big to be allowed to fail; the life of the organization must be preserved at all costs. But that doesn’t account for the problem that sometimes, the harm that the organization is doing is so bad that perhaps it ought to fail, for the very good of society.

I was thinking about that problem with large organizations, in light of a potentially abusive leadership situation that recently came to light. Because I think that in some cases, it’s the very size of the organization that is what causes the problems.

And I think that applies to churches just as much as secular organizations. And recently, a situation with a large religious organization got me thinking that, sometimes, organizations actually get too big to succeed.

For the last week or so, I’ve been uncomfortably watching a situation develop with Tim Whitaker and The New Evangelicals (TNE) and the GRACE report. I say “uncomfortably” because it hurts to watch an organization that I had admired come to such trouble.

If you’re not familiar with The New Evangelicals, you should know that Tim Whitaker founded TNE a few years ago, as he walked away from his former evangelical church roots and began the process of deconstructing his beliefs and trying to understand how evangelicalism had become so toxic for so many people. He founded TNE as a nonprofit to help people recover from their experiences, and the TNE podcast has been a huge part of his work. His following exploded over the last few years, and he reports something over 300,000 followers on his social media and podcast platforms.

Also, it’s important to know that GRACE is an organization called “Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment.” Their mission is just what it sounds like: helping Christian organizations learn to respond appropriately to abusive situations. They were formed in the early 2000s, in the middle of the Catholic Church’s priestly abuse scandal, and since then they have been active across a wide range of churches and religious organizations. They don’t insert themselves into situations; they offer their services and provide independent assessments and studies for hire.

Sometime in 2024, a situation occurred with a contractor employee and member of the TNE nonprofit organization. It allegedly involved Tim “rage driving” with the employee in the car, making her very scared for her safety. As discussed in the GRACE report, she brought her concerns to Tim’s attention not long after the event. But she felt as if his response was dismissive and in fact somewhat abusive. She filed a grievance with the TNE board of directors, and felt like she was further stonewalled, so she resigned her position. In a desire to be accountable, TNE hired GRACE to explore the situation and make recommendations for growth and maturation of both Tim and the TNE organization. Notably, GRACE found that there were other abusive situations, not just involving the first individual, and also identified a number of potential character flaws in Tim Whitaker.

While that sounds pretty bad, it’s actually not particularly concerning to me – we all have blind spots and areas we need to grow. Moving quickly from obscurity to massive popularity is tough for anyone to handle. And it should really be a good thing when someone without personal involvement helps us see our flaws, and we have the chance to change. And TNE did reach out to an independent agency for accountability.

However, what has been reported recently is that Tim Whitaker’s response to this report was also potentially very inappropriate. After its recommendations were not followed to the satisfaction of the individual, she and one other aggrieved party created a website and social media profiles to share the GRACE report and discuss how they felt that Tim and TNE abused them. And some other actions allegedly taken by Tim since this report was publicized, seemingly trying to suppress reporting about it, have been very troubling.

Given Tim’s very influential position in deconstruction and exvangelical and progressive Christian spaces today, this is obviously a big deal, especially if the latter allegations are true.

With those things in mind, I should note that I was a big fan of TNE for a while, but less so lately.

For the last few months, I’d stopped regularly listening to Tim’s TNE podcast. If it was the only thing available on my phone, I might listen, but I found myself regularly stopping before getting to the end, often not even halfway through. I’d started to get uncomfortable with something on which I couldn’t really put my finger. I suppose it was partly because in almost every “interview” that Tim did – and I put the quotes around “interview” on purpose – Tim did far more talking than his guests got to talk. He’d spend minutes asking a question, then interrupting them before they finished talking, moving on to a counterpoint or his next question – or perhaps I should say his next brief monologue. I guess his vibe started to grate on me, and feel a bit too self-absorbed.

I was also a bit disconcerted by April Ajoy’s move from Evangelicalish to TNE. As with TNE in general, although no detailed explanations were given, something in my gut just felt odd about that transition.

I know this report has caused thousands of members of the TNE community to rise up in defense of Tim Whitaker. Those 300,000 or so followers certainly did not take this news gently. And the Christian community, in general, deconstructed or not, tends to strongly defend its own, often (in my opinion) to the point of ignoring truth. In this case, when a TNE board member posted an official response to the controversy,
https://www.instagram.com/p/DHT4jgFvLIU/
the comments section lit up with a ton of people saying “What’s the big deal? Someone got heartburn because a guy drove aggressively and now everyone is mad at him.”

So I have to say that I’m in an odd place about TNE and the GRACE report’s allegations. On the one hand, along with his fans, part of me has that natural desire to defend someone who I’ve admired before. On the other, part of me just has a kind of gut sense that, yeah, this doesn’t totally surprise me; I’m not sure I trust TNE any longer.

But at the same time, I see a lot of abuse-victim-advocacy influencers starting to chime in, and apply a bit of the “MeToo” logic: “I believe her” was the buzzphrase for that movement, and I’m seeing a lot of “I believe her” floating around right now. And more than that, they are pointing out, appropriately I think, that the overall pattern here is troubling: a powerful and very influential person’s failed response to the concerns addressed by a very non-powerful underling – which isn’t much different in general character from what we’ve seen done in the last few years by quite a few disgraced megachurch pastors, and the responses by their defenders.

And in the midst of this, Rick Pidcock, writing for Baptist News Global, presented an article on how the things which exvangelicals love to complain about the conservative evangelical church don’t just fall away when people leave those spaces. The toxicity that seems to happen in those churches follows them.
https://baptistnews.com/article/allegations-against-tim-whitaker-and-the-new-evangelicals-show-how-hierarchy-transfers-to-progressive-ministries/

Okay, so people are just people. Like TNE supporters, I might have thrown this whole affair into the “overreaction” category, were it not for Rick’s second article,
https://baptistnews.com/article/that-time-i-got-an-angry-call-from-the-subject-of-an-article-about-anger-and-abuse/
where Rick talks about some very direct confrontations from Tim to Rick after Rick’s first article was published, effectively using threatening language and attempting to coerce Rick to pull down or at least soften his article. And there are indications that Tim has been calling a lot of other influencers too, trying to tamp down the discussion.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18YkwTruTm/

Later in the same day as Rick’s second article appeared, news broke that Tim’s wife had admitted creating a number of “burner” accounts trying to argue on social media platforms against the points being made by the GRACE report. This lends credence to Rick’s report of exactly how those new social media accounts commented on his article.

In the days since, this topic has blown up further on social media, including rebuttal videos posted by Tim and members of his organization, countered rather aggressively by people who have been hurt by abusive leaders in the church.

Matthew 18:15-17 says: “If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If you are listened to, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If that person refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector.“

It’s apparent to me that this procedure was actually followed at first in this situation. Private attempts to reconcile were made. The victim, if I can use that term, of Tim’s apparently abusive behavior did not feel listened to, so she took along some witnesses (the TNE board, followed by GRACE), and when they were rejected, took it essentially to the whole church (along with a lot of disenchanted former evangelicals who had plenty to say about the situation).

So let me shift slightly here from discussing this one situation with Tim and TNE, to talking about large organizations and highly influential individuals, because I think it’s relevant to the state of the American Christian church.

I have observed a trend lately of people doubling down when they are confronted with their own “misbehavior”, to use the word that appears in this GRACE report. And that is, I think, caused by the human desire to avoid public shame. Rather than humbly admitting our fault, we tend to lash out at the accuser, even if they are correct in those accusations. It’s often the foundation for DARVO: Deny, Attack the accuser, Reverse the Victim and the Offender by making the offender seem like the one who is the true victim in the situation. I think the Bible’s direction to go to a person privately is really wise, because of this very–human tendency; public visibility into a controversial situation doesn’t tend to encourage humility and repentance. And to all appearances, that Matthew 18 approach is what correctly happened first in this case, and only once there was no successful resolution, was the issue made more widely public.

But once it becomes public, I’m not sure that most people can back down publicly and admit their fault, because of that human need to avoid shame.

And the more well-known the accused, the more pushback, because the shame is that much larger.

More concerning, it occurs to me that when the issue that we’re talking about is narcissism and abuse that is founded in a sense of power and control, such a pushback and DARVO becomes even more likely because the person’s humility is already the problem. Accepting reproof publicly is vastly harder for a narcissist.

And when that person is a well-known public figure, such as in this TNE case, or other high profile cases recently, such as Mark Driscoll, their need (financial or political or merely narcissistic) to avoid losing followers (and their donations) further amplifies that rejection of responsibility.

And therein lies one massive flaw of megachurches, or mega-anything: it is a breeding ground for, among other things, not only the underlying abuse of subordinates, but also the lack of humility and the narcissism and self-defensiveness, and an overwhelming need to hold onto followers. The larger the organization and the more followers, the worse the situation becomes, the more pressure to hang on at all costs. And perhaps that’s why we are seeing so many public collapses of high profile people in the last few years. Misbehavior snowballs rapidly into horrible situations.

While the exact same misbehavior or abuse certainly can happen in a small house church or other tiny organization, I suspect that the outcome would inevitably be much different, simply because of the lack of those pressures.

So the longer I spend in this de/re-construction process, the more unhappy I become with anything related to large-sized Christian organizations. Size certainly has some advantages and enables some amazing things to happen, but I’m not sure the overall fruit is good. Just as the finances of massive organizations tend to waste more money on their own internal needs, and just as massive organizations tend to breed and groom narcissistic leaders due to human pride and shame issues, massive organizations also seem to create situations where harm cannot be reconciled easily because of the pride involved.

And in the context of this debate, TNE’s follower fan base vastly exceeds the congregation size of almost every megachurch. Given that TNE podcast posts an hour or more of new content approximately weekly, focusing on religious issues, one might conceptualize Tim as a pastoral figure, effectively preaching weekly to his huge congregation. As such, it seems to me that all of the same moral and character temptations that accrete to a megachurch pastor must also play into such an influencer. For example:

• There’s a pressure to keep tithers – or in this case advertisers – happy.
• There’s a temptation to think more highly of oneself than one ought.
• Content becomes more important than relationship. Everything becomes a potential sermon – or podcast – illustration.
• Content that tickles the ears of a congregation – or podcast audience – takes priority over speaking painful but necessary truth that might cost followers.
• External relationships take priority over family and friends, as market and audience and potential interviewees become the constant focus.
• Public and private lifestyles begin to diverge, as public image becomes increasingly critical.
• Relationships switch from flat to tiered, with chains of command and power structures.
• Surrounding people become employees instead of just spiritual brothers and sisters and coworkers for the kingdom.
• There’s a temptation to use influence and status to get their way over underlings.
• To protect the organization, nondisclosure agreements for employees begin to eliminate transparency.
• There is less patience with minor errors and faults of employees, due to the perceived public impact on the huge organization.
• The life of the ministry becomes more important than strict truth and transparency; after all, the ministry is doing God’s work, so sustaining its viability is the primary focus.

And when those temptations result in things going wrong in these large religious organizations, recovery is much harder.

• Real and useful criticism can be seen as an attack against what is perceived as a Kingdom-critical mission.
• There’s a temptation to cover up errors to avoid losing followers.
• Apologizing is dangerous because lawyers are more likely to be involved, due to the budgets and number of onlookers and especially critics watching for any slipup.
• Apologizing is dangerous because followers could see it as an admission of weakness, and harm the congregation size – or podcast subscriber or Instagram follower counts.
• It becomes tempting to DARVO, to avoid taking responsibility in any kind of public fashion.

So, I can’t pinpoint any of these that definitely have taken place with TNE, but I see a lot of these general tendencies identified in the language used in the GRACE report about TNE.

Given all these risks, it seems quite dangerous to grow a large Christian organization. And that presents me with an interesting quandary, to be sure: I’d love to know that what I’m doing here at Crucible of Thought was making a difference to more than a handful of people. So naturally I would like more followers. But at the same time, I don’t want to find myself succumbing to those temptations as the leader and visible face of a large organization. And I’m quite sure that I’d be just as prone to making these mistakes as most humans.

So the longer I spend in this process of deconstructing and rethinking and remapping my Christianity, the more I believe that small groups of people coming together to worship and seek God are far safer and much more in line with the principles that the Bible describes. I understand that larger organizations are not explicitly discouraged in the Bible, and that they have opportunities that a small house church or similarly-sized group of believers can never replicate – but I have to keep asking, is the bad fruit that seems to infect so many of those large churches really worth it?

I think it’s worth observing that the churches described in the New Testament did amazing things together without these hero leaders we see today, that really drive these mega organizations. There were city churches with thousands of believers – but Paul directly challenged the human tendency to find a hero 1 Cor 3:4-9, asking whether identifying as a follower of a specific human, be it himself or Apollo, wasn’t inherently carnal! Instead, consider that those house churches were models of equality among believers. They didn’t thrive on power structures; when they met, EVERYONE was expected to come contributing to the meeting. The modern idea of having a single worship leader and preacher that did all the singing and speaking would have been unthinkable.

Is that flat, non-hierarchical model feasible today? I suppose the answer depends on whether you think of it as “church” or not. If your definition of “church” is a building where people gather weekly to be led by a handful of important people, you’ll get a different answer than if you think “church” is all the diverse believers in a city who meet from house to house.

To some extent, challenging modern concepts of church is a quixotic pursuit. One must be comfortable with a vastly different way of relating to God, and must find enough other like-minded people who are willing to cast off the deeply-embedded cultural norms around “church.” To me, that seems nearly impossible today. But nonetheless, I think that even within the American church concept, we can still choose to eschew the megachurch model, choose to attend a much smaller church where relationships are central and there is no hero worship driving the system, and focus our energy into intimate small group relationships and deep personal discipleship within that congregation.

And, considering this story about TNE, I think it’s also important for us to be very careful how we interact with these massively-followed social media personalities of any kind, and not let ourselves be thinking of them as pastoring us in any sense. Reserve that place in our lives for someone we know intimately and with whom we spend regular time.