Question by : Can you help me figure out if my preacher sounds like an egotistical creep, and if I should leave church?
I need some help with this situation. I go to a church that I love with people I love, and a preacher I trusted until a few months ago. My husband and I were in “counseling” at the church with the preacher for personal issues due to our relationship. I did confront my husband about his abandonment of me physically and emotionally during that session. The preacher seemed nervous, and afterward he pretty much “threw” a book at us and told us never to discuss our personal lives with him again. It was creepy and weird to me, and I wondered what we had done. He made me feel like I was at fault for seeking his counsel.

Shortly after that he started acting really nervous around me during gatherings, and staring at me all the time. He even kept coming up and putting his arm around me and one time whispered to me, “You know, I get yelled by a woman who doesn’t love me,” meaning his wife, and I just broke his arm hold and walked away. I have felt like he was trying “something” with me, or going to try something with me, so I just avoided him like mad.

Then he turned cold on me and started making public comments in the church that seemed anonymous like, “You know the people who always start stuff in this church, and we need to put an end to that.” Plus I’m friends with him and his wife on face book, and I have posted a few things in general on face book about narcissism and ego, and that had to do with a “personal” situation of mine and had NOTHING to do with him. But sure enough, after I posted that, that week he started giving speeches and sermons about people in the church who post too much on face book and talk bad about other people and “you know who you are” kind of stuff, and I’m thinking now that this guy is FULL of himself and has an ego larger than life, and thought that because I’m having problems with my husband he could hit on me, and I now see that he takes everything anyone writes on facebook as a personal “attack” against him. One other thing I’ve noticed recently that bothers me is he took down the “cross” at the front of the church and put up LARGE tv screens, two on either side, of himself as he preaches–we are a “small” country church house, not a mega church, and I think this preacher is full of himself and not the Lord.

He has recently apologized to the entire congregation, saying this: “I haven’t been a good Christian lately and Jesus has forgiven me…” but he never “told us” what he did during that “forgive me” speech he gave–though I’m assuming it was the way he tried to hit on me among other things he may be doing. And I’ve just been ignoring him and trying to do what I’ve been assigned to do at church etc… but just this last week he tried to put his arm around me and say hi, and it just made me afraid and mad and I pulled away and said “hi” and just walked away. Later, he passed by my chair and made it VERY obvious that he was standing beside me so I could see and he was talking with some other people and very loudly next to me he said, “LIKE PEOPLE WHO DON’T FORGIVE YOU!” Really loudly next to me. It was awkward, strange, filled with dysfunction and “crazy.” I feel like he is trying to make me feel guilty for his actions, and that is narcissistic and egotistical.

I think all of this is directed at me and I’m freaking out. I love my church and the people who go there, but I think this pastor is full of himself and he’s being covertly abusive. I don’t want flippant answers or ignorant answers, and I don’t want to hear, “oh preachers are people too,” I get all of that. I want to know if you’ve had a personal experience like this and if you had to leave or not. I have a good friend who is meek and humble and who is a ministerial music leader and she goes to another church and she told me she had to leave her church originally (not my church) because of the same thing happening to her with a minister behind the pulpit being passive aggressive and calling people out without using their names, and accusing people of dissention etc…when those people were innocent.

I don’t know what to do, and I know the bible talks about “confronting” the party you have an issue with but in this case, if the preacher is that egotistical, it’s only going to “fuel his fire.” Should I un-friend him on facebook? Should I just run from the church? It hurts because I’ve been through so much in my life, and I got baptized there and have been part of this community for many years now and I feel like I’d be leaving some of the only support I have in the world, but I cannot abide by his creepiness, and I feel beaten down every Sunday I go to church. What would you do? Thank you for any real advice you can give with

Best answer:

Answer by Alex
how about leave church just because christianity is a load of fascist hogwash and incompatable with the world of “reality”?

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