Somebody should have said something. That sentence comes quickly when a leader’s private damage finally becomes public, and it rests on a quiet assumption: that someone was close enough to say it. Often no one was. Many leaders, and many of the rest of us, are surrounded by people who admire us, depend on us, or text that they are praying for us. Very few people have both the closeness to notice and the permission to speak. So who is checking on the shepherd, or on you? Only the people who have been let close enough to see clearly and to tell the truth without being pushed away. For most of us, that is a short list. Sometimes it is empty.
The work here is about that short list. Its subject is not someone else’s pastor. It is your own habits of excusing and staying quiet, and whether you have even one friendship deep enough to correct you and be corrected by you. You can work through it alone in two or three sittings with a notebook, or with a group in about an hour. If you are leading a group, set one rule at the start. Nobody names or drags a leader who is not in the room. Each person talks about their own posture, their own silence and their own friendships. Say out loud that no one has to tell a story to take part. If someone discloses abuse by a leader or by anyone else, pause the study and care for that person. Abuse is a matter for trusted outside help and, where a crime is involved, the authorities. It is not a discussion exercise. Anyone being harmed by a partner or someone in their home can reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
Start with the easiest assumption to hold, which is that silence is always somebody else’s failure.
Lisa Fields, founder and host of Jude 3 Project, describes a moment from her work on several boards. A situation needed handling. She contacted another leader and asked whether he had seen it. He had, and he and others were discussing it in a group chat. Her reply was simple: “are we gonna do something else?” In the end, she was the one who made the call. She has met many men, she says, who are vocal online about handling things, “where they’ll talk about it in the group chat, but won’t actually address the issue.”
That story is worth reading slowly, because almost everyone in it knew. The problem was not a lack of information. Knowledge circulated, opinions formed, and concern was expressed, all at a safe distance from the person who needed to hear it. A group chat lets you feel informed and involved without taking any risk. That may be the most common form of Christian silence today. It looks nothing like a cover-up. It looks like conversation.
Dr. Maliek Blade, a therapist and author who works with many pastors and leaders, names the reflex that turns knowing into defending. When someone raises a leader’s misbehavior, people rush to protect the leader and attack the one who spoke. He asks the question each of us should ask in that moment: “Why am I getting angry at this person for calling out some misbehavior of leadership when the Bible says that the leader doing that is wrong. So whose side am I on?” He also describes how quickly it happens: “We react, we get offended, we defend, we shut down.”
Fields adds a quieter reason for silence. She recalls someone who would not confront a person who had been generous to them financially. “So they kinda overlooked the damage because of the help.” Few of us think of ourselves as bought. Yet loyalty usually follows benefit, whether money, opportunity, a platform, or the memory of someone showing up when nobody else did. The person you would most like to explain away is often the one who once gave you something.
The second assumption sounds humble: who am I to say anything?
Blade sees this in fathers who avoid talking with their sons about sexual discipline because they still struggle themselves. Speaking feels hypocritical, so they say nothing. He rejects that logic: “If truth is truth, it doesn’t matter who the messenger is.” He applies it to a pastor who was unfaithful years ago and now sees another pastor heading the same way. The earlier failure does not cancel the warning. In Blade’s words, “right is still right regardless of your track record with right.”
Scripture agrees, and it also changes the tone of the speaking. Paul writes, “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted” (Galatians 6:1). The verse assumes the restorer is vulnerable to the same failure. Your own weakness does not excuse you from speaking. It tells you how to speak: gently, aware of yourself, aiming at restoration rather than winning.
The story of Nathan and David belongs here too, read with care. When Nathan finally tells the king, “Thou art the man” (2 Samuel 12:7), he speaks as a prophet sent by God. The narrative records something that happened. It does not command every believer to stage a dramatic confrontation. Still, it shows what accountability needed in that moment: someone with access to a powerful man, a true word, and a willingness to say it to his face. Nathan did not post about David. He went to him.
The third assumption is the one that surprises people: I have friends.
Blade studies men’s emotional lives, and he describes friendships among preachers that run on reciprocity of platforms more than of hearts. You preach at my church, I preach at yours, and from the pulpit we call each other a best friend. He describes how men “we’ll spend time together, we’ll share space, but not share all of who we are, not share depth.” This is not only a pastors’ problem. Most of us have friends we enjoy and friends we serve. Fewer have friends who know what we are actually fighting.
He also points to a specific discomfort. Many leaders are comfortable caring for others, but “they become uncomfortable in reciprocal relationships because there’s that give and take of, I may come to you with my brokenness, but you can come to me as well.” Fields describes the same pattern as a warning sign. Some people do fine with mentors above them and mentees below them, she notes, but “They don’t deal well with peer relationships that are up close.” Her conclusion applies far beyond ministry: “The depth of your peer relationships will really determine the longevity of your ministry.”
Here is the distinction that matters most for the original question. A person who only gives care cannot be checked on. A mentor sees you occasionally and from above. A mentee will rarely risk correcting you. Admirers can see only what you show them. The person who can notice when things go wrong, and say so, is usually a peer who has seen your weakness because you let them see it. That kind of friend must be made on purpose, and it costs you something.
Proverbs describes the cost honestly. “Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful” (Proverbs 27:5-6). In another place, “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend” (Proverbs 27:17). These are proverbs, wise patterns rather than guarantees. Not every rebuke is faithful, and not every friend who wounds you is right. But the pattern is clear. Love that never risks hurting you is not the safest kind. It may be the kind that lets you drift.
Blade gives a small, concrete picture of this kind of sharpening. He once interviewed his own brother, a pastor, and pressed him on the hardest questions skeptics raise. A listener later told him she would not have guessed they were brothers, or that Blade was a Christian, because he grilled him so hard. His reasoning: “I shouldn’t just give him a softball interview because I believe in the same guy he does.” Shared faith was the reason to ask hard questions, not a reason to avoid them. Speaking of iron sharpening iron, he says, “It genuinely means us working through the hard things too.”
Hebrews adds a matter of timing: “But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13). The verse assumes hardening happens gradually and that a person cannot fully see it in themselves. The remedy is ordinary and frequent. It is not a crisis meeting after the damage. It is a friendship close enough that truth-telling is already normal before anything goes badly wrong.
Questions worth answering honestly
Work through these slowly. In a group, let people pass. A thoughtful silence is better than a polished answer.
Think of a time you knew something was wrong with a person in authority and said nothing, or said it only to others. What were you protecting: the person, the institution, your standing, or your own comfort?
Whose failure would you be most tempted to explain away? What has that person given you, and does the gift make the harm look smaller to you?
When someone near you has raised a concern about a leader, how did you first react? Blade’s question was whose side he was on. What would an honest answer have been for you?
Is there a hard truth you have held back from someone because you have failed in the same area? Reading Galatians 6:1, what would speaking in meekness look like, as opposed to speaking from superiority or not speaking at all?
List the people in your life by role: who mentors you, who looks to you, who is a peer. Which peer has seen your weakness, and when did you last let them?
If a close friend told you something hard about yourself this month, would you hear it or simply put up with it? What evidence from your past would support your answer?
A practice for the next two weeks
Begin with a proximity map. On one page, write the names of everyone who could plausibly tell you a hard truth about your life. Next to each name, note two things: whether they have ever done it, and whether you have ever done it for them. Be honest if most of the lines stay blank. The blank spaces are the finding, and you do not have to fix all of them.
Then choose one name, a peer rather than a mentor or someone who depends on you. This week, contact that person by phone or in person, not by text. Tell them what you are doing and ask for a mutual permission: that either of you can tell the other something hard and the friendship will hold. Then go first. Share one true thing about where you are struggling, small enough to say and real enough to matter. James ties healing to this kind of openness: “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed” (James 5:16).
Next week, revisit the first question above. If a current situation came to mind, one where you know something and have only talked about it at a distance, decide in writing what a direct, gentle next step would be and who you would bring with you. If the situation involves abuse, that next step belongs with trusted outside help, not a private confrontation. If it involves an ordinary fault between believers, the step may be as simple as one honest conversation.
If you are working through this as a group, spend your next meeting reporting back only on whether you made the call, not on what was said. The privacy of those conversations is part of what makes them possible.
The sentence from the beginning still holds: somebody should have said something. These two weeks are meant to make that somebody a real person in your life, someone you have allowed close enough to say it to you, and for whom you would be willing to do the same.
Go deeper in the Jude 3 library
- How Do You Heal From Church Hurt (Article)
- How Do You Heal From Church Hurt (Study guide)
- When Is It Okay to Leave a Church (Article)
- When Is It Okay to Leave a Church (Study guide)
This study guide draws on a Jude 3 Project conversation with Lisa Fields and Dr. Maliek Blade. Hear it in full on the Watch page.