How do you protect your congregation from toxic behavior without losing compassion?
Almost every leader feels that tension, and almost no one says it out loud. You want to encourage a healthy environment. But you also don't want to shut out the very people who need help—often, the ones being most problematic. So it starts to feel like a choice: protect the culture, or stay open to everyone. Pick one.
Here's what I've come to believe after years of sitting with people in pain: this choice is a false dichotomy. Protecting your community and staying open to everyone don't come from two different places. They come from the same one—a leader who is grounded and secure on the inside.
Three things make that possible.
1. Ground yourself first.
You cannot lead people to a steadiness you don't have. When someone walks in carrying resentment, blame, or a mean-spirited agenda, you become one of two things: a circuit-breaker or a conduit. A grounded leader absorbs the jolt and doesn't pass the panic down the line. A reactive one spreads it. The difference isn't personality type or willpower. It's whether your sense of worth is anchored somewhere deeper than this room. A secure leader can see a situation clearly—neither swept up in trying to change someone who is not ready to change nor coldly removed from their humanity.
2. Protect your community as an act of love — not fear.
Guarding the flock is part of what a shepherd is for. Jesus saved his sharpest words for those who caused the vulnerable to stumble—protecting the tender ones was never optional to him. Setting a boundary around harmful behavior isn't cold. It's love with a backbone. Its purpose is never to punish; it's to be crystal clear about what's allowed and what isn't. The key is where the boundary comes from: not vigilance, anger, or fear—but wisdom. You're not building a wall to keep someone out. You're tending a garden—and sometimes tending a garden means keeping one plant from crowding out all the others.
3. Keep your heart open to the difficult person.
Here's the part that takes real security: a firm boundary and a tender heart can live in the same body. You can say, "This behavior won’t be permitted here," and still believe God isn't finished with the person in front of you. That's the whole spirit of Matthew 18—you go privately first, you aim at restoration rather than exposure, you protect the wounded without shaming the one who wounded them. And remember, a boundary held from a grounded place is for the difficult person too. It's an invitation to growth, not a door slammed shut. Practically, that might mean offering resources or a referral, or naming the concrete steps you'd need to see before welcoming them back into the garden.
Notice what makes all three possible. It's not a technique. It's that a secure leader isn't leading to be liked, and isn't measuring their worth by whether they can fix the person in front of them. That kind of steadiness has to be cultivated within before it can be given to others—which is exactly why I wrote The Secure Soul. We can only offer the people we lead the security we've first found in ourselves.