How to Spot a Cult-Like Church Leadership

You would think the members were listening to God himself whenever this pastor preaches. It'll be impossible to hear a hint of criticism from congregants who listen to his sermons. In everything he says and does, the pastor often focuses on his vision and is never interested in what anyone else thinks. His whole staff is a rubber stamp that never confronts or challenges the pastor's position. In meetings, anything you suggest that's aligned with the pastor's vision is considered "from God." If you try to correct him, he’ll pretend to listen while already planning how to ease you out of his community. You are suddenly seen as an antagonist, someone who doesn't "hear from the Spirit" or have "heart issues" and not the kind requiring a cardiologist. But it was never the pastor's fault or his minions when something went wrong. He loves playing the victim. The pastor even uses his special leadership meetings to subtly steer everyone toward his views, making it clear that his story is the only "inspired" one. To enforce the pastor's story, the whole staff mobilizes different levels of group chats, from the temple courts to the holy of holies.

These are some of the experiences that I and several others have encountered in several churches we've been part of.

Church is supposed to be a good thing. It's a community of true believers who hear and apply the Word, worship God, enjoy fellowship, and live out discipleship. But sometimes, things can go wrong. Churches can drift off track. Unfortunately, there are times a church, when its issues are left unchecked and accountability is not present for its leaders, can be dominated by cult-like tendencies.

This is a very difficult subject to discuss. No one wants to think their faith community, which for some long-time believers is almost always like family and the center of one’s social life, is becoming a cult. However, we must be aware of the early warning signs of a church leadership's potential problems before they get serious. Knowing the early signs of a health issue doesn't mean you're sick, but it does help you take care of yourself. Same goes for church institutes, which are run and led by human beings.

8 Signs to Watch For

These aren't definite proof of a cult, but they should make you stop, think, and pay closer attention. The keys to addressing these challenges and responding to them are discernment and, most crucial of all, prayer. So, if you’re experiencing these things, it might be time to go inside your prayer closet or go outside and leave the faith community you’re part of.

Here are eight warning signs the church you’re attending is exhibiting cult-like tendencies:

Weaponizing Scripture: Twisting the Truth to Control People

Cult leaders don't teach the Bible; they weaponize it to promote and fulfill their carnal intentions. They take verses out of context and select passages to control members and enforce obedience. Scripture gets used to justify their authority, demands for your money or time, or compliance to rigid, often moralized rules. Disagreeing with their misguided, theologically unsound interpretations of the Bible is like disagreeing with God himself.

Healthy churches teach the Bible in context, encourage study and questions, and don't use it to manipulate or silence. Unhealthy groups distort the Scripture to gain power and suppress thoughts and insights.

Leader-Centric: Unquestioning Loyalty, Zero Accountability

Once Scripture is twisted to support it, the focus shifts intensely to the leader. Unhealthy groups demand unquestioning loyalty to a leader. This leader is presented as uniquely special, almost always right, and the key link to God. "Honoring the leader" becomes a central theme, often emphasized more than honoring God's word in practice. Challenging or questioning the leader is seen as disloyalty, rebellion, even sin. They’re spared accountability, with language like “trust your leaders,” “they hear from God,” and “they are accountable to God.” If you try to raise concerns about a leader's behavior or teaching, you'll likely be shut down, ignored, or punished. There's no process for holding leaders responsible. Their authority is presented as absolute and from God; therefore, it is untouchable. All of these are unhealthy traditions not aligned with Biblical leadership or obedience in any way.

Healthy churches value leadership but emphasize following Jesus and His Word as the final authority. They also have clear structures for leadership accountability and welcome honest feedback and legitimate challenges. Unhealthy groups make the leader the focal point, demanding loyalty that belongs to God alone. The leader's word, subtly or overtly, begins to replace or overshadow the authority of Scripture in members' lives. Accountability vanishes, making leaders immune to correction or oversight and further solidifying leaders' unchecked power and potential for abuse.

Emotional Control: Love Bombing & Guilt Traps

Guess happens once the leader's authority is established and accountability is removed? Emotional manipulation. Unhealthy groups use emotional tactics to control members. They may start with intense "love bombing," showering new members with excessive praise and affection, forging a deceitful sense of belonging, and making them feel uniquely valued.

As members become more committed, this "love" morphs into control and guilt. Emotional pressure is used to enforce obedience and suppress questioning. Members are made to feel obligated to constantly serve, give, and conform to group expectations to maintain approval and avoid rejection. Guilt becomes a weapon; questioning or leaving the group can trigger an intense fear of judgment, shunning, and loss of the carefully constructed community. Healthy churches overflow freely with genuine love and community without manipulative tactics or guilt-based control. Unhealthy groups use emotional highs and lows as deliberate tools to control and bind members' loyalty.

Toxic Volunteerism: Exhausting Demands for Service

With emotional control tactics in place, the demand for member service often escalates. Serving and volunteering in a church should be a joyful expression of love from and for God. But in unhealthy groups, the demand for service becomes excessive and draining, functioning as another form of control and obligation.

Members are pressured to dedicate increasing amounts of time and energy to church activities, often to the point of burnout and personal neglect. Saying "no" or needing a break becomes almost impossible, met with guilt trips or subtle disapproval, often with “this is for the Lord” remarks dismissive of your other pursuits or peoccupations.

Joyful service becomes a relentless obligation and a key measure of commitment, serving the group's (always labeled as “family”) needs more than individual spiritual growth or well-being.

Healthy churches value and appreciate volunteers but respect personal boundaries and encourage a balanced life. Unhealthy groups exploit members' willingness to serve, turning the church into a demanding service machine that drains its members.

Give to Get: Materialistic "Blessings"

As control tightens, cult leaders turn their focus on finances, promoting a materialistic and transactional view of giving. While all churches need financial support, unhealthy groups usually shift the message to being obsessed about money and material possessions.

They push a "give to get" prosperity gospel – give generously to the church (especially to pet projects), and God will "bless" you materially with wealth, health, and worldly success. Giving becomes less about biblical generosity and more about a calculated transaction to unlock divine rewards. Leaders would showcase their affluence as proof of God's favor, implicitly and explicitly linking their wealth to member giving and reinforcing the transactional mindset.

Healthy churches teach generosity as an aspect of kingdom living, trust, and stewardship but DO NOT link giving to guaranteed earthly rewards or make financial prosperity a central focus. Unhealthy groups openly teach that monetary contributions are key to spiritual and material blessings, breeding a transactional and materialistic theology.

Press Release: Narrative Control & Dismissing Disagreement

Control becomes all-encompassing in unhealthy groups, extending to the information itself and the allowed "story" or press release about the church. Cult leaders are intensely focused on controlling the narrative – the official explanation of events, beliefs, and the group's place in the world. They promote a rigid, simplified "us vs. the world" storyline and actively deny any alternative viewpoints or facts that challenge their established narrative. Any expression of differing views or questioning of the group's story is swiftly shut down.

Leaders tightly manage all communication, limit access to outside information, and immediately discredit any perspectives that deviate from their approved spiel. Those who dare to question the narrative may face public correction, shaming, or accusations of disloyalty, negativity, or spiritual weakness. This stirs up a climate of intellectual and spiritual conformity where critical thinking is stifled and members become hesitant to voice doubts or explore alternative perspectives.

Healthy churches value truth-seeking, encourage open dialogue, and recognize that truth can withstand scrutiny and diverse viewpoints. Unhealthy groups demand narrative obedience and crush 'true' voices to maintain absolute control over members' understanding and beliefs.

Promoting Isolation: Fortress Mindset

As narrative control tightens, isolation from the outside world deepens. Unhealthy churches actively promote isolation, building a fortress mentality. The "us vs. them" view intensifies; they preach that their group is uniquely chosen, uniquely enlightened, the sole possessor of fresh, creative revelations, and that some parts of the body are deeply flawed, deceived, or even evil. Members are strongly discouraged – or outright forbidden – from engaging with outside relationships, ideas, media, or other churches. Fear and distrust of the "outside world" are built in the process.

This isolation is not accidental; it's a deliberate tactic to cut members off from outside influences, making them entirely dependent on the leaders for their social, emotional, and spiritual needs.

Healthy churches foster healthy boundaries but remain connected to the body and recognize the value of diverse perspectives. Unhealthy groups intentionally isolate members to strengthen their control and create co-dependency.

Trapped by "Love" & Fear: Hard to Leave Even When You Know You Should

All these tactics combine to forge a demonic sense of entrapment. Leaving an unhealthy church becomes incredibly difficult even when red flags are glaringly obvious. This is because these groups become masters at emotional manipulation forming a carefully constructed web of dependency and fear. Through their tactics, members become deeply enmeshed in the group's identity and community. They are made to feel intensely needed and uniquely significant within the church while simultaneously being instilled with fear of the world and the dire consequences of leaving. The intense social bonds within the group, combined with the fear of judgment, shunning and spiritual repercussions outside it, build a formidable barrier. Even when intellectually recognized as necessary for well-being, leaving feels emotionally and socially almost impossible.

Healthy churches recognize that they are not the entire body, but rather a part of it. They understand that local churches have their own unique expressions. They do not claim ownership over any individual; if someone wishes to attend a different church, they send them on their way with grace and blessings.

Unhealthy groups, however, construct a powerful trap of emotional and social dependency reinforced by fear, making exiting feel unthinkable and terrifying, even when the need to leave becomes clear.

By Their Fruit You Will Recognize Them

Seeing any of these nine signs in a church doesn't automatically mean it's a full-blown cult. But they are warnings. They are reasons to be careful, to pay attention and to ask questions. Jesus himself gave us a way to think about this. He said, "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them." (Matthew 7:15-20, NIV)

Jesus said, "You will know them by their fruit." He said it twice in this short passage! He's telling us to look at the results, the outcomes, the "fruit" of a group or a leader's actions. Healthy things produce healthy fruit. Unhealthy things, over time, produce unhealthy fruit.

And remember, Jesus says to watch out for early warning signs. "When its fruit is produced, immediately he puts in the sickle because the harvest has come." (Mark 4:29, NKJV). Even when the "fruit" is just starting to appear, even if it seems small, don't ignore it. Don't dismiss those little nudges in your spirit that something isn't right. Minor signs can be early indicators of major problems growing beneath the surface.

So, what should you do if you see several of these potential "bad fruits" in your church?

Pray: Seriously. Ask God for wisdom and protection. Discernment starts with prayer.
Read the Bible: Make sure what you are taught aligns with Scripture. Don't just rely on what the leaders say; study the Bible and ask the Holy Spirit to guide you into all truth.
Talk to the Leaders: You are not judging the character, only the action or event. Sit down with your leaders and discuss your observations humbly.
Seek Godly Counsel: Share your concerns with people you trust who are spiritually mature. Sometimes it's hard to see things clearly when you are too close to the situation.
Use Common Sense: If any of the preaching, teaching, activities, or other expressions are not biblical, they are wrong. Don't ignore or justify those alarms. Start praying.

There is no perfect church, but that is not an excuse to tolerate toxic leadership, doctrinal errors and unbiblical practices. It's always wise to be aware, discerning, and to seek God in all situations. Being informed about potential warning signs—about potential "bad fruit"—can help you and others stay rooted in genuinely healthy church communities.