I was alerted to this blog post on abusive congregations yesterday by a tweet from a friend on Twitter. So I'm passing it along. The post itself is fairly moderate, but the several comments that follow show an appalling problem within the church - an appalling lack of Christian behaviour from people in some congregations towards their ministers. You have to wonder if they ever pray, read their Bibles, think about Christian discipleship.
I've heard of such things with other colleagues, and experienced it myself in a somewhat less severe way when I was filling in as pastor at a former church, so it's by no means an American problem.
The post itself refers to research on the topic from the Clergy Health Initiative, and one of the people commenting adds several useful links which anyone suffering this kind of abuse should follow up.
One of the other awful things from the comments is how many of them talk about the way in which the ministers' spouses were also abused. As Paul says, if I remember rightly, Brothers (Sisters), these things should not be!
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