How To Recognize Toxic Church Culture

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Churches are where broken people go to find refuge, restoration, and healing. Sadly, some churches are hurting much more than they’re helping due to the sheer toxicity and dysfunction that has been allowed to fester for years.

If you’re going to church week after week and leaving feeling more weighed down than you did before you walked through the door, it may be that the level of toxicity within your church’s culture has become so great, the messiness is clouding the message. Continue reading for the tell-tale signs of a toxic church culture.

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Offering shaming

Churches need money to operate. All of the love and well wishes in the world are not enough to keep the lights on or the building heated. Many churches are only able to keep their doors open through the generosity of its members. We get it. However, there’s something particularly troubling about churches that resort to offering shaming in order to meet their marks. In mild cases, this looks like $10.00, $20.00, and $50.00 lines. In more severe cases, this looks like church leaders calling specific people out from the pulpit and non-tithing lists being posted publicly.