Church Killers | Fauxnerability

We’re kicking off a series here at Voice & Vine called Church Killers.

The aim of our series is simple: to love the church well by identifying leadership behaviors which are hurting the flock and thus the church’s witness while pushing leaders and churches toward repentance.

To be clear, this is not an indictment of every church. There are many churches and leaders walking incredibly faithfully. But there is another side: moral failures, leadership cover-ups, managed information, denials, and fractured sheep left wondering whether they can trust their shepherds.

It can be easy to pile on a church once something major happens, like a lead pastor’s affair, financial mismanagement, or some other public collapse. But in this series, we want to pay attention to the quieter traits which often come first. The subtle habits, leadership instincts, and institutional patterns that slowly shape the church’s soil from which both public failures and less visible wounds can grow.

These are things may look faithful at first. They often have their true form in Christ, yet somewhere along the way a counterfeit has emerged within the Church.

It’s yeast (Luke 12:1).

It grows quietly and unnoticed until eventually the fruit appears and wreaks havoc throughout the body of Christ.

Part 1: Fauxnerability

Note: This is a term I first encountered in Chuck DeGroat’s book “When Narcissism Comes to Church.” This book is a tremendous resource to those who are healing from unhealthy church environments. It is also helpful for those who struggle to understand the problem or who think people simply need to “get over” their church hurt because all churches have problems (see my previous post Flawed or Foolish).

A couple decades ago, a beautiful Christ-centered gospel trait infiltrated many Churches in all the best ways.

Vulnerability.

Transparency. Authenticity. Opennness.

It changed my life.

I watched people experience freedom by ruthlessly confessing sin with specificity and modeling deep, true biblical repentance. The gift of vulnerability was either led by or helped lead to the creation of midweek recovery programs like Celebrate Recovery and re:generation, which offered believers safe places to confess long-hidden struggles and pursue Christ more fully. Still today, many of these recovery programs lead the way in promoting confession, vulnerability, transparency, and authenticity among believers.

I spent 10 years in a recovery ministry, first as a participant, then a group leader, then a ministry leader and even helped plant recovery ministries inside other churches. I got a front-row seat to the power of confession. I saw what full ownership looked like. I saw what seeking forgiveness with specificity could do for relationships. I saw the power of Christ’s love mixed with beautiful repentance and watched people’s lives begin to look radically different over time.

The Church was handed a gift from those recovering.

Not because others needed to wreck their lives in order to understand the Gospel, but because the ruthlessness with which many people in recovery modeled confession, authenticity, vulnerability, and repentance was worthy of imitation.

But somewhere along the way, something else began to happen. I noticed it during my seven years as a pastor helping lead both Sunday morning and midweek ministries. The vulnerability I saw on Sundays often looked different from the beautifully raw vulnerability I witnessed during the week. It was as if church leadership had learned the vocabulary of vulnerability without having to submit to the cost of it.

Fake vulnerability. Partial confession. Managed information. And, not surprisingly, little to no transformation.

Where there is power, Satan will try to counterfeit. And I fear that in too many evangelical churches, we have grown comfortable with leadership practicing a counterfeit version of vulnerability. So how can you spot it? What does fauxnerability look like?

Low-Cost Honesty

These are statements that are technically true but cost you almost nothing to say. In fact, they are often true almost all the time.

“We could have done better.”
“We could have communicated clearer.”
“I could have handled that differently.”

For example, as a spouse, I could say to my wife every night, “I could have been a better husband today.” That statement would be true whether I had my best day ever as a husband or whether I had an affair earlier that afternoon.

Ultimately, low-cost honesty sounds humble without actually revealing or owning anything.

Vague Confession

This is a sister trait of low-cost honesty, especially when we know something sinful has taken place. Imagine a pastor saying: “I’d be embarrassed if you knew how I treated my wife.” That sounds vulnerable. But what does it mean?

Did he speak harshly to her? Curse at her? Have multiple affairs? Hit her?

I’m not arguing every detail of every sin should be publicly shared. Wisdom matters.
But vague confession allows us to receive the benefits of appearing vulnerable without bearing the cost of truly being known.

Past Confessions

Every confession comes from the distant past. It is much easier to tell a story about the person I was 10 years ago than to tell you honestly about who I was 10 days ago.

Past confession can certainly be beautiful and redemptive. But when all of my vulnerability involves battles I have already won, wounds I have already processed, and sins safely buried in my history, it is worth asking whether anyone actually knows me today.

Unchanged Behavior

There is a willingness to “own” something. There may even be tears. Forgiveness may be requested. BUT the behavior keeps happening.

John the Baptist and Paul both talked about how repentance eventually produces evidence of its existence (cf Matthew 3:8, Acts 26:20).

To be fair, transformation often takes time. But when the same patterns continue indefinitely while the language of ownership remains unchanged, vulnerability has simply become performative not actualized.

Outsourced Ownership

This often sounds like: “I’m willing to own anything you think I need to own.” It sounds humble, doesn’t it?

But it places all the work of discernment on the wounded person.

You tell me what I did. You explain why it hurt. You identify the pattern. You do the emotional labor. Then I’ll decide whether I’m willing to own it.

True vulnerability and repentance does the hard work of self-examination before requiring someone else to hand us an itemized list.

Rushed Forgiveness

This occurs often when someone hears that they have deeply wounded another person and quickly responds: “Will you forgive me?”

There is certainly a time to ask that question. But the work of seeking forgiveness (especially with deeper wounds) requires the offender to slow down enough to understand the wound. Healthy vulnerability will be curious enough to ask questions and spend time considering how their choices have truly harmed another person.

Fauxnerability simply wants to use gospel language to resolve relational discomfort as quickly as possible. It will lead a person to ask for forgiveness before they have taken the time to understand what they are asking forgiveness for.

Sharing of Blame

“I’ll own my part if you own yours” is not confession … it’s negotiation.

Repentance does not require equal ownership from everyone else before it is willing to tell the truth about itself. There may absolutely be multiple wounded parties and shared responsibility in a conflict.

But true vulnerability is willing to go first and acknowledge their shortcomings and failures without demanding reciprocity.

Manipulated Sympathy

Sometimes fauxnerability takes the form of exaggerated self-condemnation.

“I guess I’m just a terrible leader.”
“Maybe I just shouldn’t be an elder anymore.”
“I guess I can’t don’t anything right.”

Those statements may occasionally come from genuine anguish. But they can also subtly redirect the conversation. Suddenly, the wounded person finds themselves reassuring the offender.

“No, no. That’s not what I meant.”
“You’re a great pastor.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds.”

The focus has moved from the actual harm caused to the emotional state of the person who caused it. Self-deprecation can sound humble while functioning as a surprisingly effective defense mechanism.

Ownership with the Wrong Audience

Sometimes people become vulnerable but just not with the people they actually wounded.

Meanwhile, the person who experienced the deepest harm has never heard direct ownership. There is a unique cost to looking someone in the eyes and saying:
I did this to you. Will you forgive me?

Fauxnerability often prefers audiences where authenticity can be admired rather than relationships where ownership might actually cost something.

•••

True Vulnerability Will Always Costs Something

Maybe the simplest way to distinguish the real thing from the counterfeit is the reality that true vulnerability costs something.

It costs control of the narrative.
It costs the ability to carefully manage how others see you.
It costs the comfort of trying to manage parts of the story.
It costs the certainty that forgiveness will come quickly.
It costs the ability to explain away every failure.
It costs the possibility someone will use your vulnerability against you.
In short, it costs you your pride.

Of note, DeGroat highlights curiosity as one distinction between genuine and counterfeit vulnerability: vulnerable people become curious, while fauxnerable people often become defensive and reactive. That feels important too.

A genuinely vulnerable leader wants to know:

What am I missing?
How did this affect you?
What did my behavior communicate?
Who else has been hurt by this pattern of behavior?
What would repentance look like from your perspective?
What other ways can I make amends?

Fauxnerability wants the conversation to end. Vulnerability is willing to discover what else might need to begin.

•••

The Way Back

The leaven of fauxnerability is hurting churches. As long as we tolerate fauxnerability, we will continue to experience managed information, shallow ownership, pride-filled leadership, and large pockets of wounded people quietly (or not so quietly) slipping out the doors.

But I have tremendous hope for Christ’s Church.

My goal in writing is not merely to identify wounds. It is to help us long for the cure.

The counterfeit only exists because the real thing is extraordinarily powerful.

True vulnerability will change your church. Real confession with specific ownership of sins, shortcomings, and failure. Curiosity (and not defensiveness) toward the harm caused. A genuine desire to repair, repent and seek forgiveness. I’ve watched it a 100 times. It will lead to something beautiful.

Grace.

I have watched true vulnerability transform lives, families, even entire communities. I have watched marriages actually heal. I have seen people experience a freedom they never knew existed. I have watched Christ take broken people and slowly remake them into people of honesty, humility, compassion, and joy.

I know it can happen in our churches, too. The Church does not need leaders who have mastered the language of vulnerability. Churches need leaders who are willing to be courageously vulnerable.

Leaders willing to sit long enough with someone else’s pain to understand the wound they caused.

Leaders willing to confess specifically, repair patiently, and repent deeply.

Leaders willing to be corrected and willing to accept love despite their shortcomings.

Ironically, leaders desperately praying for transformation in their churches may already hold one of the keys to seeing it happen: model the thing you want your people to live out.

The Gospel gives us the freedom to stop protecting ourselves because Christ has already paid for our sins and secured our identity. So tell the truth. Own what you need to own. Truly receive forgiveness and then repent.

If you’ll do this, buckle up for what God will do in your midst. That type of leadership will lead sheep toward green pastures and still waters.

Fauxnerability cannot. It is a shortcut around repentance, and shortcuts around repentance never lead us toward life.