Every church has a culture. But how do you know if your church culture is toxic?

More importantly, how would you know whether you’re creating a toxic church culture as a leader?

I’ve interacted with many church leaders (and readers of this blog) and the sad reality is that there is no shortage of toxic church culture stories and experiences.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. And it certainly isn’t always that ways.

Social media has made us experts at shaming.

We see something outrageous on Facebook (which happens approximately every 3 minutes), and we immediately start lobbing shame grenades.

How could they do such a thing? What a lousy scumbag! Humanity has sunk to a new low! They should be utterly ashamed!

It feels so good in the moment. So uplifting. So self-affirming. As the shot of self-righteousness courses through us, we thank God that we aren’t like those people. We thank God that our moral standards are still intact in the face of the cultural onslaught. We thank God that we, the remnant, still remain.

And we don’t only play the shame game with non-Christians.

Dispossessed is an identity of disempowerment, but it is a powerful identity. Borders may temporarily hold back the flow of humans adrift, but in a world where we are so tightly and dizzyingly interwoven, physical boundaries are far less obstructive than the lasting confinement of imposed narratives. Such is the double-edged power of stories: They can hold us together — and they can distort, isolate, and divide. The dispossessed: The tag’s impediment persists even after the bearer has crossed a border or town limits, settled in, become a neighborhood cop, a high school teacher, a daughter’s girlfriend, or a boat captain living next door. Unless the world finds compassion for this new communality, learns to make sense of one another’s voices, its humanity will perish.

This post is a wake up call for all leaders of people. Your words carry an enormous and lasting impact in the lives of people. Your position puts you in a place to encourage, build up, develop, challenge, coach, train, and teach. It also puts you in a place that can cause others to lose heart, lose hope, give up, and to even be deeply hurt with scars that last for years or a lifetime. Be aware of the weight of your words on people.

Even when hard conversations need to take place with people — even conversations that mean a person is no longer on the team — there are some words that should never be said.