> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://thepulse.org/en/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Toxic Church: How Do I Protect My Teens? - URL: https://thepulse.org/en/toxic-church-how-do-i-protect-my-teens/ - Published: 2023-04-25T13:32:09.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-20T13:22:02.000Z - Description: By now I’ve realized that my parents and my youth leaders had a good deal to do with the fact that I am not a disappointed victim of a toxic church. - Author: Priscilla Alvarez - Tags: Articles, #target-leaders, #topic-planning, #age-teens, #age-young-adults, #target-parents, #topic-safeguarding First of all: I never thought I would write an article titled “Toxic Church.” The topic has been completely foreign to me until now. It’s their own fault if they let themselves be exploited and manipulated by leaders instead of talking to God about their volunteer work or their tithing, I thought. But by now I’ve realized that my parents and my youth leaders had a good deal to do with the fact that I am not a disappointed victim of a *toxic church*. More on that later. ## What does “toxic” mean? “Toxic relationship” is a technical term from psychology that has been getting more attention lately. > It often involves working through unhealthy beliefs that were (un)intentionally drilled into children by their parents, and general abuse of power in the family and among acquaintances. Toxic relationships get examined in the corporate world too. There it’s about bosses or colleagues who use manipulation to bind their employees to themselves emotionally and make them dance to their tune. ![Animated image: a man in a shirt and tie points his finger threateningly](https://thepulse.org/en/content/images/2026/09/giphy-2.webp) Image [Giphy](https://giphy.com/gifs/moodman-you-better-XbOS81uTvbeyEtVZ1s?ref=thepulse.org) So-called toxic churches are fundamentally about unprofessional behavior and speech on the part of leadership toward churchgoers and members. Unprofessional here means: narcissistic, manipulative, exclusionary. You could also call it sinful nature or simply … human. The misguided goals of these people can be: their own honor, money, a feeling of power. The Bible already has many examples of believers who put their own goals ahead of God’s and caused a lot of suffering. ![Brian Houston in front of several English-language headlines about his resignation](https://thepulse.org/en/content/images/2026/09/Brian-Houston-resigns-2.png) Houston, we have a problem: the resignation of the Hillsong founder was a call to a sober life. Photo [thri.st](http://thri.st/?ref=thepulse.org) In the recent past, abuse in churches has been covered widely in the media. Podcasts like [“The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill”](https://open.spotify.com/show/5rJtwcRM7WNYs0LNTrlP5N?si=71ef2943af234224&ref=thepulse.org), “Toxic Church: Die Hillsong Story,” or “frauthentisch” with the series #churchhurt (the latter two in German) shine a light on various cases of spiritual abuse and human manipulation in evangelical churches. Often it is young people who become victims of the abusive, expansion-hungry, narcissistic behavior of leaders and who don’t notice for a long time that they aren’t serving God, but people. ## How do I protect my teens from abusive leaders? So how do I make the teenagers in my youth group or my family strong enough not to be exploited? The answer is very simple, but difficult. You teach your teens and yourself to live #Godcentered. Because wherever we put our hope in God, we make our well-being and our personal development, our volunteer work and our success independent of people. King David in the Bible gave us the best example of a God-centered life. > David sought God daily, wrote him songs and poems, laid his thoughts and feelings before God, and let himself be impressed by God’s greatness and guided by him in his decisions. That helped him not to listen to the human voices in his life when it came to fighting a giant. It helped him survive the abuse of power by his boss, King Saul, physically and psychologically. It helped him postpone building a house for God, even though he first thought he would be doing God a favor with it. (Book tip: *A Tale of Three Kings* by Gene Edwards.) So here are a few points for self-help: **#1 Teach the teens in your youth group or your family to read the Bible themselves.** Show them how to become a Bible explorer, [for example with the inductive method](https://thepulse.org/en/inductive-bible-study/), and how to find their way through the maze of Bible interpretation. Watch Bible movies with them, buy Bible comics for the less bookish teenagers. That way they can tell the difference between a well-cited source and nonsense during a sermon. **#2 Create opportunities for their own spiritual experiences.** How on earth do you have spiritual experiences? Well, first, by reading the Bible and letting it speak to you. When your teen experiences God suddenly speaking very clearly into their life through a verse, they have had a spiritual experience. Second, the same thing often happens while admiring nature. In prayer in general. In worship. While listening to a sermon. When experiencing an answered prayer. In evangelism. On a mission trip. A really good opportunity for your own experiences with God is the so-called time of quiet. That’s why many Christian camps hold a morning of silence. The teenagers are sent to a quiet place with something to write with and a short guide, each on their own. The guide usually contains Bible verses of God’s affirmation and questions about the teenagers’ life situation. They are encouraged to write God a letter, or to write a letter from God to themselves. So basically a psalm 😉. Many teenagers experience moments of real peace and reconciliation with God and themselves during this time. With experiences like these in their backpack, your teens are hopefully more strongly bound to the faith itself and less to people. When people then make mistakes, they don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but keep their self-respect and their trust in God even after experiencing church problems. **#3 Pray for your teenagers and stay in touch with them when they look for a new church.** Or find people who stay in touch with them and can help them find their way in the new church by checking in regularly. That way you help them address inconsistencies and assess them with other adults who aren’t directly involved. **#4 Allow and encourage them to visit other Christian events and so broaden your teenagers’ spiritual horizon.** No church has a monopoly on the wisdom of how best to worship God. Maybe God loves rock ’n’ roll, had to wait thousands of years until it was finally invented, and is disappointed that today only hymns and pop music make it onto church stages? Maybe he loves the 10-point sermon, but it was reduced to a standard 3-point sermon because of American management insights? By visiting other Christian events together, not just your own (for example [Taizé](https://www.taize.fr/?ref=thepulse.org), a festival, a conference, a monastery or a summer camp), you help your teenagers take questions of church style less seriously. In my own life, this point may have been the decisive one. I didn’t just grow up in one church; with my parents’ encouragement I was always able to take part in other churches’ offerings (dance, kids’ club, camps). As soon as I was a teenager, I found a church on my own after we moved. When it fell apart because of toxic behavior on the leadership team, I was already away at university, and when a small group leader there began to behave like a cult leader, I quickly found another church. Its style was about as quirky as Adrian Plass’s church in *The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass*, but God could actually be experienced there too. Because of these church changes, mostly due to moves and time abroad, I got to experience a wide variety of church styles. Unlike in marriage, God allows a “church for this season of life” when it comes to choosing a church. Several people in the New Testament had more than one too. > This is not a call to church hopping as a first frustrated reaction to exhausting people or bad music in your church, but an invitation to check with God each time where he wants you to be. **#5 Let them make decisions with God.** “I’ll pray about it.” When someone says that to you, you can almost count on a no. God is just being used as a shield to avoid giving you an immediate, cold rejection. Or: “Pray about where God wants you, because the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.” That means something like, “Decide soon, and God will definitely want you somewhere on the team, because we urgently need volunteers.” Still, the saying “Man proposes, God disposes” should be taken literally when it comes to volunteering. Of course your teenagers are called to use their talents. But living out their gifts goes hand in hand with God’s calling. > Just because you can shoot well doesn’t mean you have to join the military. Just because you can sing well doesn’t mean you have to be on the worship team every Sunday. (Priscilla Alvarez) So encourage your teenagers to weigh a request soberly (for example with a pros and cons list) while praying at the same time. Sometimes a church makes the mistake of continuing a “successful” program that was initially inspired by God and seems to be THE calling, even though it has long since run out of people who can carry it wholeheartedly. Then a lot of “no’s” from church members help to rethink the program. **#6 Teach your teenagers self-defense and forgiveness.** We like to smile at Gen Z’s great passion for recognizing their own rights and positions as incredibly important. And sometimes we wish they would just grit their teeth and work. But exactly this self-awareness can help them stand up against abusive behavior in church. In the Bible, believers are explicitly invited to admonish one another, and there is no age limit for that. A humorous youth night on the topic of “admonishing” or “constructive feedback” could nurture this art. Or holding a regular family meeting at home. Giving constructive, well-timed feedback can be practiced by you. > Create time slots and processes in which your team members can give you (and each other) feedback. Even if your teenagers are well armed, they will experience disappointments. Or be disappointed in themselves because they don’t live up to their own expectations. Through forgiveness, God has shown us a way to live in peace again with him, with ourselves and with the people around us. Let’s model forgiveness and choose love over lashing out. **#7 And finally: stop behaving toxically yourself** … and stop passing on your own shortcomings and unhealthy behavior patterns to others. Live that out very concretely: love instead of lashing out. Away with old patterns: “Stop It!” (Bob Newhart, Mad TV) As already mentioned, protection against toxic relationships is simple, but difficult. 😇 So stop striving for money (for your church). Stop wanting to make a cool impression. You are important and valuable, but the world doesn’t revolve around you. Stop ranting when something at home doesn’t go according to your plan. Stop courting only the obviously gifted in your youth group. Stop feeling valuable only when you achieve something. Stop seeing your next vacation as paradise and enduring the time until then like a martyr. You are living now, and God with you. (PS: Just because we’re putting up a signpost in the right direction here doesn’t mean we’ve already managed to walk there ourselves.) ## Dogma: THE pull-out from the community of Christians Wherever people come together, there is stress. And no church has perfect people or flawless structures. Francis Chan writes in *Letters to the Church* that we have drifted far from what God calls church, and we all know it: what we experience is radically different from the church in the Bible. For decades, church leaders like himself have lost sight of the mystery inherent in the church and have trained the people in the pews to become addicted to lesser things. It’s time for that to change. (Paraphrased.) On the other hand, church is fundamentally dogmatic. That means it will always offend and exclude people who hold on to certain behaviors that flatly contradict biblical teaching. And to justify their own decision, some then distance themselves from the strictness of the church. Like a speeder who would rather rant about speed limits than show insight. But which dogma is right? The church is above all committed to its own dogmas. No local tennis club should change the rules of tennis just because some members don’t feel like losing. Those members should rather leave the club. God is no fan of lukewarm, undecided hangers-on. He is full of grace, but he prefers people to be either hot or cold toward him ([Revelation 3:16](https://www.bible.com/bible/111/REV.3.16.NIV?ref=thepulse.org)). But which tennis rules are we talking about? In the podcast “Toxic Church,” alongside burned-out volunteers, we also hear from people who felt forced to choose between their church and a partner far from faith. Or between church and party life. One interviewee said she feared she couldn’t stay with her boyfriend because he surely wouldn’t understand her credo “no sex before marriage.” Many are stuck in dilemmas like this. In her case, she broke up with her partner after hearing it from God in her quiet time. Whereupon, against all expectations, she no longer felt God at all and suddenly felt completely uprooted. ![A teenager reading the Bible](https://thepulse.org/en/content/images/2026/09/teenager-liest-bibel.jpg) “So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves.” (Romans 14:22) Photo [Ben White](https://unsplash.com/@benwhitephotography?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) How can our teens tell whether something their church suggests to them regarding their volunteer work, their finances or their sex life can be justified biblically or not? And how should they then decide concretely in their own lives? > “We try to teach our kids to think for themselves. In the end they have to be at peace with what they believe.” (Simea Gut, podcast frauthentisch) In that sense, tip #1 from above helps again, with Bible study. And this verse: “So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves.” ([Romans 14:22](https://www.bible.com/bible/111/ROM.14.22.NIV?ref=thepulse.org)) **Questions you can discuss with your teenagers:** - Would you rather take your church less seriously or try to submit to the teachings or “requirements” of your church? Why? Who do you talk to about questions like these? - Have you ever decided for yourself what you think is right regarding a teaching of your church? How did that feel? - Which dogmas of the church do you think are no longer in keeping with the times? Why? Should the church adapt or not? Why? **Resource for church leadership** - [GRACE](https://www.netgrace.org/?ref=thepulse.org) (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) offers safeguarding certification, training and resources for churches that want to prevent and respond to abuse, including abuse of spiritual power. *English version: September 2026* ![](https://thepulse.org/en/content/images/2026/09/Signup-1.jpg) ## Stay on the pulse. Pulse in English has just begun: ready-made material for youth leaders, parents and educators, free. We let you know when something new is out. Count me in Almost done: check your inbox and confirm the link. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.