Apparently, one of my responsibilities as a pastor was to keep tabs on the sex lives of other adults in the congregation. Nobody had mentioned this in my job description.

I discovered this rather unexpected addition to my pastoral duties one afternoon when the senior pastor called me into his office.

“What’s going on with David?” he asked.

David (not his real name) was our worship pastor. He was a genuinely good bloke, well-liked by the congregation, and in a committed, long-term relationship with his girlfriend. As far as I knew, things were going swimmingly. So I wasn’t entirely sure what the senior pastor was getting at.

He’d heard that David and his girlfriend were having sex, and wanted to know what I knew about it. He was even thinking of sacking David over the whole thing.

Now, you might be wondering how this information had made its way to the senior pastor’s desk. Had David confessed some terrible indiscretion? Had someone caught him doing something scandalous in the church car park?

Nothing quite so dramatic.

David’s girlfriend had confided in the senior pastor’s daughter, who promptly passed the information on to Daddy. And now here I was, sitting in his office, being asked to account for another grown man’s bedroom activities.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. The senior pastor’s daughter had developed a habit of reporting on the activities of other young adults in the church. Someone had been drinking at a party. Someone else had drugs at a birthday celebration. There was always another piece of juicy information making its way from the young adults’ social circles into the senior pastor’s office.

The people sharing these things with her had absolutely no idea that their conversations were being relayed to her father. As far as they were concerned, they were talking to a friend. Meanwhile, the senior pastor was receiving what amounted to regular intelligence briefings on the private lives of his congregation.

This time, however, he wanted to take things further. He proposed hauling David into his office to answer some questions about his relationship, with the possibility of dismissing him from his role.

I told him I thought that was a terrible idea.

I told him we shouldn’t even know about any of this. David’s girlfriend had told someone something in confidence, and now here we were discussing whether he should lose his job over it. I couldn’t see why we needed to get involved at all. Whatever was happening between David and his girlfriend was between them and God, and I told the senior pastor I wanted no part in dragging him into the office to explain himself.

The senior pastor wasn’t particularly impressed with my response, but eventually he backed down. David kept his job, continued his relationship, and eventually married his girlfriend. As far as I know, civilisation survived.

What bothered me most was that these young adults had no clue what was going on. They trusted the senior pastor’s daughter as a friend, shared things with her that they probably wouldn’t have told their own parents, and had no idea she was passing it all on to her father.

I wonder how many of them would have felt safe in that church if they’d known what was happening.

How Safe Is Your Church, Really?

When people look for a church, they usually want to know what it believes, what the preaching is like, whether the worship is any good, and perhaps whether there’s a decent children’s program. They might visit a few times, meet some friendly people, and eventually decide they’ve found somewhere they feel at home.

Yet the qualities that make a church attractive aren’t necessarily the ones that make it safe. A congregation might have excellent preaching, a welcoming atmosphere, and an impressive commitment to serving its community, while remaining remarkably intolerant of dissent. You might attend for years without encountering a problem, particularly if your beliefs and behaviour align comfortably with the expectations of those in charge. It’s often only when someone challenges a decision, questions a leader’s conduct or steps outside the boundaries of what’s considered acceptable that the underlying culture becomes apparent.

These are the sorts of questions that researchers Lianna Chong and Leanne Tortez have been investigating, and their findings are worth paying attention to. In July 2026, they published a study in the

Journal of Religion and Health

looking a spiritual abuse.

One of the difficulties with identifying spiritual abuse is that some of the behaviours associated with it are widely accepted in church culture. Pastors are expected to provide spiritual guidance, which can sometimes extend into areas of people’s lives where their involvement is neither necessary nor welcome. Questioning a leader may be interpreted as a challenge to their God-given authority, while complaints about mistreatment can be dismissed as evidence of bitterness or an unwillingness to forgive.

When everybody around you insists that these things are normal, you can start wondering whether you’re the problem.

Chong and Tortez set out to develop a more systematic way of assessing spiritual safety, which they define in terms of being able to practise one’s spirituality without coercion, manipulation or emotional abuse. They began with 60 potential survey items and refined them through two studies involving a combined 822 participants, eventually producing a 20-item scale.

Their analysis identified three key dimensions of spiritual safety: psychological safety, leadership and organisational culture.

In other words, assessing a church involves looking at much more than the pastor’s personality or whether people seem happy on Sunday mornings. It means examining how power is exercised, how people are treated when they disagree, and what kinds of behaviour the community tolerates or encourages.

And that brings me back to David, his girlfriend, and the senior pastor’s office.

The problem wasn’t simply that one pastor had an unhealthy interest in another man’s sex life. There was an entire culture operating in the background that allowed private conversations to become material for pastoral scrutiny, without the people involved knowing anything about it.

What Makes a Church Spiritually Safe?

Chong and Tortez’s research identified three dimensions of spiritual safety: psychological safety, leadership and organisational culture. They’re closely related, of course, but considering them separately helps explain why a church can appear perfectly healthy to some members while being a deeply uncomfortable place for others.

Psychological safety has to do with the freedom to express yourself without fear of being humiliated, rejected, or punished. Within a religious community, that includes being able to question established teachings, acknowledge personal struggles, and disagree with those in authority.

And this is where things can get complicated. Plenty of churches claim to welcome questions, but the invitation sometimes comes with an unspoken expectation that you’ll eventually arrive at the correct answers. You’re free to wrestle with Scripture, provided you don’t wrestle your way to a different conclusion. People quickly learn which subjects are open for discussion and which are best avoided, often without anyone needing to tell them explicitly.

Leadership is the second dimension, and given my experience with David, it’s one that particularly interests me.

Pastors are routinely entrusted with intimate details of people’s lives. They hear about struggling marriages, financial difficulties, personal failures, and questions that people might be reluctant to share with anyone else. That trust creates opportunities for extraordinary care, but it also gives religious leaders considerable power. When a pastor begins to confuse spiritual guidance with the right to supervise another person’s decisions, the relationship can become controlling while still being described as pastoral care.

As far as the senior pastor was concerned, David had broken the rules and needed to answer for it. I found the whole thing ridiculous. Since when did being a pastor give you the right to interrogate people about what they got up to in bed? David was a grown man, for goodness’ sake.

The third dimension, organisational culture, concerns the habits, expectations and unwritten rules that shape everyday life within a congregation.

This is particularly important because unhealthy religious environments aren’t necessarily created by a single domineering leader. Sometimes the wider community reinforces the problem. Members learn to avoid certain conversations, protect the reputation of the church, or regard criticism as evidence of spiritual immaturity. Practices that might seem extraordinary to an outsider gradually become part of the normal functioning of the organisation.

The senior pastor’s daughter was a good example of this. She’d hear something about one of the young adults and go straight to her father with it. And he was quite happy to listen. I never understood why he didn’t tell her to mind her own business. Instead, he seemed to enjoy being kept informed about who was drinking, taking drugs, or sleeping with whom. Meanwhile, the people she was gossiping about had no idea any of this was happening.

The study found a strong relationship between feeling unsafe in church and experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress (r = −0.56). People who felt less safe were also more likely to struggle with feelings that God had abandoned them or was punishing them. Think about the implications of that. People go to church looking for hope, belonging, and some assurance that God loves them, only to find themselves questioning their worth, doubting their own judgment, and living with the psychological fallout of their religious experiences. That’s a terrible indictment of any community claiming to represent Jesus.

A congregation can be deeply committed to what it considers biblical truth and still have serious problems with how authority is exercised. It can preach grace convincingly while making people fearful of admitting their mistakes. And it can enjoy a reputation for being warm and welcoming while quietly discouraging anyone from challenging the status quo.

Which raises a rather practical question: how would you know if your own church was one of them?

How to Tell If Your Church Is Actually Safe

So, how do you put any of this into practice?

I wouldn’t suggest turning up to church next Sunday with a clipboard and announcing that you’re conducting a spiritual safety audit. Although, come to think of it, the reaction might tell you quite a lot.

A better approach is to pay attention to what happens in the ordinary life of your congregation, especially when things don’t go according to plan. The following questions aren’t taken directly from the Spiritual Safety Scale, but they’re informed by the areas Chong and Tortez identified in their research.

1. What happens when a leader gets something wrong?

Everybody makes mistakes, including pastors. The question is whether leaders can acknowledge them without making excuses or blaming someone else. Think about the last time your church leadership made a poor decision. Was it openly acknowledged? Did anyone apologise? Were members given an opportunity to express their concerns?

A pastor who can stand before a congregation and admit they got something wrong is demonstrating a kind of maturity that no amount of impressive preaching can replace.

2. Who can hold the pastor accountable?

I’d want to know who has the authority to remove the senior pastor if things go badly wrong. Churches often have boards, elders, or leadership teams, but it’s worth looking at who appoints those people and how independent they really are. If the pastor chooses the board, controls what information it receives, and can influence who stays on it, I’d have serious doubts about its ability to investigate a complaint against him. And please don’t give me the line about being accountable to God. We’re talking about real people potentially being harmed, and they deserve somewhere to take their concerns that doesn’t involve asking the person responsible to investigate himself.

3. What happens to people who leave?

This is one of my favourite ways of assessing a church’s culture. Listen to how people talk about former members, particularly those who left after a disagreement. Are their decisions respected, or do they become cautionary tales about people who have lost their way?

Leaving a church should be considerably less complicated than leaving a marriage. People change, circumstances change, and sometimes a different community is simply a better fit. Healthy relationships allow for that.

4. How seriously is confidentiality taken?

If you share something personal with a pastor or church leader, who else might hear about it? Are there clear expectations about privacy, including the circumstances in which information may need to be shared for someone’s safety?

Confidentiality isn’t absolute, particularly where abuse or serious risks are involved. But there should be a world of difference between responsibly reporting a safeguarding concern and discussing someone’s personal life because the information happens to be interesting.

I would have liked my former senior pastor to understand that distinction.

5. Are you allowed to say no?

Churches are notorious for asking the same reliable people to do more and more. Another roster, another ministry, another request for money. There’s nothing inherently wrong with asking people to contribute, but I’ve seen how easily a polite request can turn into an exercise in spiritual guilt. Tell someone you’re too busy to volunteer and suddenly you’re having a conversation about commitment, sacrifice, and putting God first. If saying no requires an explanation, an apology, and half an hour of defending your priorities, I’d be questioning just how voluntary your involvement really is.

6. Do you feel like you have to manage how you’re perceived?

You can attend a church for years and still feel that certain things about you need to be kept quiet. Maybe you’ve stopped believing something the pastor teaches, or your views on sexuality have changed, or you’re simply tired of pretending that every sermon is wonderful. You know the people well enough to anticipate how they’ll react, so you keep your mouth shut.

I find it disturbing that people can spend so much of their lives surrounded by fellow Christians and still feel the need to censor themselves. Some have perfectly good reason to worry about what would happen if they spoke freely. They might lose friendships, ministry positions, or the respect of people they’ve known for decades. I’d be asking whether a community that places those kinds of conditions on belonging deserves the trust its members give it.

Here’s a useful piece of advice: If you’re beginning to recognise some of these problems in your own church, talk them through with someone who isn’t part of it. Preferably someone who won’t immediately tell you to pray harder, forgive the pastor, or stop being so critical. An outside perspective can be enormously helpful when you’ve spent years in an environment where you’ve been taught to distrust your own judgement.

Sometimes the first useful thing you can do is give yourself permission to take your own experiences seriously.

A Church Should Be a Safe Place

Had the senior pastor gone ahead with his plan, I’m quite certain David would have left the church, and his girlfriend would have gone with him. We would have lost two wonderful people, damaged their trust in church leadership, and achieved precisely nothing of value.

David kept his job, and the whole thing was quietly dropped. He and his girlfriend never knew how close he’d come to being fired. I can’t help thinking about how easily things could have gone differently, especially if I hadn’t challenged the senior pastor that afternoon. And I doubt David’s situation was particularly unusual. Plenty of people have had their trust in the church shattered by leaders who thought they had every right to interfere in their lives.

Churches will never be perfect. Having spent ten years as a pastor, I’m painfully aware of that. But surely we can expect communities that preach love, grace and forgiveness to treat people with some basic dignity and respect.

After all, what good is a church that teaches people about the love of God if being part of it makes them afraid?