Little Men and Their Empires

As Communications Director for a group of YMCAs in western WA, one of my many duties was to write speeches, talking points, and articles on behalf of our CEO, a man not-so-affectionately nicknamed “Bob the Builder” by his subordinates.

There’s no easy way to describe the guy. Imagine Donald Trump in the non-profit sector—an incredible visionary with almost impossibly unreasonable ambition driven by one of the most fragile egos under the face of the sun. A spray-tanned, thin-skinned hyper critical tyrant who played golf while his minions bent themselves into pretzels to jump through the never-ending barrage of hoops he set in front of them.

I’ll give a snapshot from one of my own interactions with him:

As an organization, we were hosting a special event to celebrate the opening of one of our new branch locations. I had spent hours painstakingly crafting the perfect speech for him to read at the party. The speech would be filmed and broadcast across all our social media platforms and beyond.

In addition to writing his speech for him, I had about a hundred other small tasks on my plate to make the event a success. In anticipation of his high maintenance demands, I printed two copies of his speech, one in size 12 typeface, the other in size 14. (He liked to have options.) I also brought cue cards in case he preferred his prompts that way.

We arrived at the venue about 45 minutes early, and he was already there belaboring the choice between two different shirt selections: “Tacoma blue” or “crisp white.” He asked, then ignored, my opinion before settling on the blue and turning his attention to which tie to wear. I tried not to laugh out loud. As a woman who spends a grand total of MAYBE 10 minutes getting ready to go anywhere in the morning, this was not my language at all.

A few minutes later, he was finally ready to start practicing his speech. He opted for the size 14 copy, read through it a few times and then determined to rehearse it as though the camera were recording him. I watched the dissatisfaction creep across his face as he practiced.

“This won’t work,” he said. “I’m spending too much time looking down at the page. People need to see me make eye contact with the camera. I need this on some posterboard, please,” he demanded.

I didn’t have any posterboard. We were slated to begin recording in under 30 minutes, and I still had a ton of other work to do. It wasn’t a short speech. How was I going to accomplish this?

“Yes, sir,” I replied, my mind secretly scrambling. I frantically called an office mate. “Can you get down here with about a dozen pieces of poster board in the next 10 minutes? I’ll owe you forever,” I pleaded. She could, and she did. She also agreed to help me delegate some of my other tasks to co-workers so I could dedicate my entire morning to making our CEO look perfect.

So I got to work personally hand writing every single word from the speech onto the posterboard as legibly as possible. I thought we would set each of the pieces of posterboard up in a row so he could read them sequentially, but as I worked to coordinate this effort, Bob the Builder interrupted.

“What are you doing? Those aren’t going to be the right height, and it will still look like I’m reading. I need you to hold these up for me one at a time by yourself and raise them slowly as I read so that my eyes remain focused at the right level.”

You guys.

So there I stood in my dress and heels, arms outstretched, posterboard in hand, slowly raising the words I could not see in front of my face and hoping against hope that my timing was right. My arms shook as he read, and I cringed as he added his own gratuitous, self-aggrandizing tangents to the beautiful speech I had worked so hard to write for him. All that labor, and he still found a way to butcher my work.

When we were finally done, I think he did manage to squeak out a brief “Thanks” before turning to hobknob with the elite and leaving me to clean up the mess.

It’s a funny story now, but I think there’s greater truth to be discerned from recalling it.

There’s no denying the man got stuff done. He single-handedly grew the organization into an empire and elevated the standards of operation to a whole new level of greatness. I can’t take that from him.

But the way he accomplished it? That left a lot more to be desired. In observing his interactions with people, I was often reminded of the pyramids built on the backs of slaves. Even the most faithful employees were little more than pawns in his economy, a dynamic that left top-notch, lifelong staff members frequently discouraged and looking for an exit strategy. He worked them into the ground and then took credit for their labor. He went to dramatic lengths to remind us that we were each expendable, that we only mattered as much as our capacity to make him shine.

Everything was about his image and his kingdom and his power.

And there are countless deeply insecure, egomaniacal people like him out there building empires in the world the same way he does, frantically trying to escape their own feelings of inadequacy by dominating others, micromanaging seemingly irrelevant minutiae, and trampling all over subordinates to achieve the illusion of perfection as they bask in the limelight and applause other people have secured on their behalf.

I expect this in a fallen world. That’s the nature of narcissism and of sin. There’s this constant tension between dominance and integrity. I mean, just look at the dramatic depths to which our respective political parties are willing to stoop to secure a victory for the party. It’s generally just accepted that we have to endure some awful leaders in order to foster “the greater good.”

But there are consequences to this willful blindness, and I think they’re especially startling in the context of the people we elevate as leaders in the church. Because there are megalomaniacs building selfish empires there, too, and they’re doing it in God’s name. Y’all already know where I see this most prevalently. There are only so many times I can warn about John MacArthur and Doug Wilson and Owen Strachan and “Christian” patriarchy and nationalism before I start recycling my own talking points and boring myself to tears.

But I will say this: As a survivor of every type of domestic and sexual abuse imaginable, my senses are pretty finely tuned to recognize a house built about a fragile male ego, and I’m not eager to see people I care about be blindsided when their chosen safety network comes crumbling down around them. Much like Bob the Builder, the aforementioned leaders consistently produce admirable results. I understand why people are drawn to them; they exude strength and stability. They do a lot of things really right. They set lofty goals, and they achieve them. But whose kingdom are they really building? What’s their motivation? Loyalty to Jesus, love for the brethren, or something more insidious?

I see ample evidence of the latter. Any time I observe these guys waxing on about how “masculine” God is, how an “effeminized”church is the decline of civilization… Any time I see them preaching the eternal subordination of women or pathologically obsessing over their own headship, lordship, and dominion, I see an orphan spirit, a perfomance-based identity crisis, an arrogant insistence on earning something Christ insists on giving away for free. I see chest thumping and striving and a relentless need to conform God to their own image instead of the other way around. I see them clamoring over the needs and hearts of others (especially women) in order to position themselves at the top of the pyramid. They surround themselves with yes men. They answer to no one’s authority. They publicly repent for nothing. Everyone around them becomes another person to either demonize or subdue en route to their lordship. I see a Nebuchadnezzar in a throne that ought to belong to King Jesus.

In lieu of Christ’s mandate to love the broken, I see sermons framing empathy as a sin. In place of Christ’s demand that we pursue justice, I see the fullscale condemnation of anyone who dares to wade into grey political waters to bind the wounds of racism or misogyny. Where the Bible commands us to “Go ye therefore and TEACH all nations,” I see these guys substituting an agenda to go ye therefore and conquer all nations.

What I don’t see is the suffering servant, the faithful friend, the washer of feet, the lifter of heads. All I can see is an insecure little man with a spray tan demanding handwritten cue cards in the shaking hands of qualified people who don’t even realize they’re meant for more.

Lord, grant freedom FOR these men. That kind of relentless insecurity has got to be exhausting. May they learn to rest in your acceptance. In the meantime, please grant us freedom FROM them. They’re doing a lot of harm in your name.