Diotrephes and Difficult Leaders

Today's Scripture

The shortest letter in the New Testament names a church leader gone wrong — by name.

3 John 9-10 — "I have written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority. So if I come, I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us. And not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers, and also stops those who want to and puts them out of the church."

Acts 20:29-30 — "I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them."

John 10:11 — "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep."

The Big Idea

Some church conflicts are not between equals in the pews. They are with the people who hold the keys — and Scripture is not naive about leaders who misuse power. The Bible names the problem, builds protections for both leaders and the wounded, and sets every shepherd under a chief Shepherd who used his power to die for the sheep.

Reflection

The oldest leadership scandal on record

Think of the group project where one kid seizes the poster board, assigns everyone their jobs, and takes the credit. Now imagine that kid grown up, holding a church's keys, its microphone, and its membership list. Scripture met him a long time ago.

3 John is twelve verses, written by the elderly apostle John to a believer named Gaius. In it John names Diotrephes — a local church leader who rejects apostolic authority, spreads "wicked nonsense" about the apostles, refuses to welcome traveling Christians, and throws out anyone who does welcome them (3 John 9-10). John's diagnosis sits in a single Greek word, philoprōteuōn: "he likes to put himself first." A lover of first place. The office was Christ's; the throne, in his heart, was his own.

This problem did not start in the New Testament. God had already indicted Israel's leaders through Ezekiel: Ezekiel 34:2-4 — "Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?... The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed... and with force and harshness you have ruled them." Feeding on the flock instead of feeding it. Force and harshness instead of care. Scripture saw the abusive shepherd coming three thousand years ago and put the indictment in writing.

So if you have been hurt by a church leader, hear this first: the Bible is not embarrassed by your story. It predicted it. You are not crazy, and you are not the first.

Wolves wear name tags

Paul's farewell to the elders of Ephesus is one of the most sobering passages in Acts. He does not warn them about Rome. He warns them about themselves: "from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things" (Acts 20:30). Wolves with name tags. Wolves with offices.

Why does this happen so reliably? The historian Lord Acton — writing, as it happens, about church leaders — gave the famous answer:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." — Lord Acton, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton (1887)

But the Bible goes deeper than power. The root is pride, and C.S. Lewis explains why pride in a leader is so lethal:

"For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Cancer is the right word, because it grows quietly in healthy tissue. Few abusive leaders set out to be Diotrephes. They set out to build something — and slowly the something became theirs instead of Christ's. Richard Baxter, a pastor writing to pastors in the 1600s, named the danger from inside:

"Take heed to yourselves, lest your example contradict your doctrine... lest you unsay with your lives what you say with your tongues." — Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

You can preach grace and live philoprōteuōn. The lives unsay the sermons every time. One of the most reliable early symptoms, Bonhoeffer observed, is a leader who talks and never listens:

"The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

A shepherd who cannot be questioned, corrected, or even interrupted has already stopped serving the sheep, whatever his sermons say.

What Scripture actually tells the church to do

The New Testament does not respond to bad leaders with either of our two favorite mistakes — covering it up to "protect the ministry," or burning everything down on a single accusation. It builds a careful, two-sided process.

Side one: protection against false accusation. 1 Timothy 5:19 — "Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses." Visible leaders attract enemies, and some accusations are false or mistaken. This verse does not silence victims; it tells the church to take accusations seriously enough to investigate properly — to ask whether others have seen what one person reports. Where the harm is real, others almost always have.

Side two: protection against cover-up. 1 Timothy 5:20 — "As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear." Public sin by a leader gets public correction. A church that quietly moves a failed leader along, telling no one, has not protected the institution. It has reproduced the conditions for the next wound — and told the wounded that their pain matters less than the brand.

Hold those two side by side and you get something rare: a community that is hard to slander and hard to hide in. Drop the first verse and every leader lives one rumor away from ruin. Drop the second and every wounded member learns that the institution outranks the truth. Scripture refuses both failures.

The path still starts the way Jesus said conflict should: "go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone" (Matthew 18:15), then with witnesses (Matthew 18:16), then to the body — applied to elders within the safeguards of 1 Timothy 5. Use the channels if they work. If you have used them in good faith and been stonewalled or punished for it, you may go wider: a denomination, a network, and — where there may be a crime — the civil authorities, without hesitation. No verse anywhere requires a Christian to absorb ongoing abuse because the abuser holds an office.

One more honesty check belongs here, gently. Not every leader who disagrees with you is Diotrephes. Sometimes "I have a Diotrephes problem" is really "I have a being-led problem." The difference shows up in the questions: Has he actually violated Scripture's standards — sin, false teaching, domineering, dishonest gain — or just your preferences? Do mature believers outside your circle of frustration see what you see? Augustine, who carried a bishop's authority for decades, shows what a right-sized leader sounds like:

"For you I am a bishop; with you I am a Christian. The former is a title of duty, the latter one of grace; the former a danger, the latter salvation." — Augustine, Sermon 340

A leader who knows his office is a danger to his own soul is usually safe to follow. A leader who has forgotten that is the one to watch.

The Shepherd who never feeds on the sheep

Now set every failed shepherd you have ever known next to this. Mark 10:42-45 — "You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them... But it shall not be so among you... For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Every other king in history taxed his people to fund his throne. This King liquidated his throne to ransom his people. John 10:11 — "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." Diotrephes consumed the flock to feed his ego. Jesus let the wolves consume him so the flock could live. That is not just a rebuke to bad leaders. It is the healing for their victims — because the Shepherd you actually belong to is not the one who hurt you.

Peter knew this Shepherd personally. He had been the disciple arguing about who was greatest; he had failed Jesus publicly and been restored by him personally, over breakfast, with the threefold charge to "feed my sheep." So when an old Peter finally writes to church leaders, he passes on the standard he learned the hard way: "shepherd the flock of God that is among you... not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock" (1 Peter 5:2-3), all under "the chief Shepherd" (1 Peter 5:4). Calvin states the principle that disqualifies every empire-builder in a pulpit:

"We are not our own: let not our reason nor our will, therefore, sway our plans and deeds... Conversely, we are God's: let us therefore live for him and die for him." — John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

Not our own — and neither is the church. And only the gospel produces leaders like that, because only the gospel kills the need for first place. Tim Keller:

"The essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less." — Tim Keller, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness

A person stunned by grace has nothing left to prove from a platform. That is the kind of shepherd to pray for, to be patient with, and — if God ever hands you keys of any size — to become.

Going Deeper

John ends the letter by pointing past Diotrephes to a quiet man: "Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone, and from the truth itself" (3 John 12). Bad leaders are never the whole story; the same church holds Demetriuses. Today, find one — a faithful, unflashy servant in your church or your past — and tell them, in a text or face to face, one specific thing their steadiness has meant to you. If you are carrying a leader-shaped wound, this is not a fix. But it retrains the eyes to see the flock, not only the wolf.