I'm Warren Smith, and today you'll be listening in on my conversation with author, speaker,

and the president of Reformed Theological Seminary's Charlotte campus, Dr. Michael Krueger.

His new book is Bully Pulpin, confronting the problem of spiritual abuse in the church.

Spiritual abusive leaders are leaders who are authoritarian and domineering over those

in their charge, and spiritual abuse is when a leader like that is in a position of spiritual

authority over somebody. Dr. Michael Krueger is not at first glance,

an obvious choice to write about spiritual abuse, which has become one of the hot mutton issues

in the Evangelical Church today. In fact, he's best known as a New Testament scholar and a

seminary president, but it is precisely at the intersection of these two vocational passions

that he found a third calling. After all, what better place is there to talk about spiritual abuse

than at an institution that trains future church leaders? My Krueger believes that we need strong

leaders who are also gentle shepherds. He warns against the lure of celebrity that has led many

pastors to ruin, and he says, first and foremost, churches should prize character as much as we

prize giftedness when we look for pastors to lead our churches. Dr. Michael Krueger was the

president of the Evangelical Theological Society in 2019, and he's the author of previous books,

including Christianity at the Crossroads, how the second century shaped the future of the church.

You can listen in on our conversation in just a moment.

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Dr. Michael Krueger, welcome to the program. My first question for you is this. Why did you write

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