In 2019, everything fell apart for me. Ministry. Marriage. Health. There was a season where I genuinely didn’t know if I would survive it — not metaphorically. Literally. And in that place, I came face to face with something I’d been carrying for most of my life without knowing what to call it: a deep, bone-level belief that I was fundamentally broken, that pain was just the shape of my story, and that no matter what I built, something would eventually take it away.
That’s the Victim pastor’s interior world. And if you’re living there right now, I want you to know — this post is written with more compassion than any other in this series. Because this one is personal.
What Is a Victim?
In Milan and Kay Yerkovich’s framework from “How We Love,” the Victim grew up in a home where real harm happened — abuse, neglect, chaos, or ongoing fear. The child in that environment learned something devastating: I am not safe. I cannot protect myself. And the people who are supposed to be safe are not.
Unlike the Controller, who responded to danger by taking charge, the Victim learned powerlessness as his primary survival response. He survived by enduring, by staying small, by not making waves. And he carried that survival strategy right into adulthood — into his marriage, his ministry, and his own soul.
This is not weakness. This is what happens to a person when they carry more than any person should carry alone, for too long, without help.
How He Leads Himself
The Victim pastor often feels like he’s fighting a current that no one else can see. He works hard — sometimes extraordinarily hard — but there’s a quiet, nagging sense that nothing he does is ever quite enough. That success is temporary. That the other shoe is always about to drop.
He struggles with shame cycles — not just guilt over specific failures, but a diffuse, pervasive sense of being fundamentally flawed. He can preach grace for everyone else and privately believe it doesn’t fully apply to him. He may be very good at theology and very bad at receiving what that theology promises.
Self-sabotage is a real pattern. He may get close to something good — a healthy relationship, a breakthrough in ministry, a season of genuine peace — and find a way to undermine it. Not on purpose. Not consciously. But something in him doesn’t trust good things to last, so part of him would rather blow it up on his own terms than wait for it to be taken away.
How He Leads His Family
His family loves him, but they don’t always feel safe with him — and that distinction matters enormously.
His home can feel unpredictable in ways that are hard to name. Not because he’s dangerous, but because his own unresolved pain spills over into the emotional atmosphere of the household. His wife can sense when he’s spiraling, but she doesn’t always know how to reach him — and over time, she may stop trying because every attempt feels like it makes things worse.
He struggles to emotionally protect and provide for his family, not because he doesn’t want to, but because he’s barely keeping his own head above water. His kids may not feel a strong sense of stability in the home. They love their dad, but there’s an ambient anxiety they can’t quite identify. They’ve learned to read the emotional weather carefully.
He often feels like a failure as a husband and father, which feeds the shame cycle, which makes it harder to show up well, which confirms the failure narrative. It’s a loop that runs on its own fuel — and it’s exhausting.
“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” — Psalm 147:3
The Victim pastor knows this verse. He’s probably preached it. But there’s a version of him that privately wonders if God meant it for someone else — someone less broken, less complicated, someone whose wounds are more fixable. He needs to hear it again, from someone who means it: that verse was written for men exactly like him.
How He Leads His Church
His ministry is often deeply compassionate — because he genuinely understands suffering. The Victim pastor can sit with hurting people in ways that other love styles cannot, because he’s lived in that same dark room. People feel seen by him. That’s a genuine gift.
But the instability in his interior life eventually surfaces in his leadership. He can be reactive — quick to interpret criticism as attack, quick to feel betrayed by people who are simply pushing back. He may have a difficult time holding authority, either grasping at it in moments of insecurity or abdicating it when things get hard.
He’s vulnerable to manipulation by people who sense the wound. A strong personality in his elder board can run him. A charismatic person with a strong opinion can redirect the whole church’s momentum because he doesn’t have a stable enough internal foundation to hold the line.
And people — the sensitive ones, the perceptive ones — can sense the instability, even if they can’t name it. The church that could be a place of tremendous healing under his care sometimes never quite settles into the groundedness it needs to thrive.
The Compassionate Reframe: He’s Not Weak
I want to be very direct about something: the Victim pastor is not weak. He is a man who has survived things that would have broken others — and he’s still standing, still serving, still trying to give what he was never fully given.
That takes a kind of strength that doesn’t get enough credit.
But surviving and thriving are not the same thing. And carrying wounds alone — stoically, quietly, without letting anyone in — isn’t strength. It’s isolation dressed up as endurance. The bravest thing a Victim pastor can do isn’t push through. It’s reach out. It’s let someone see what’s actually happening behind the prepared face he presents on Sunday morning.
Healing is not for people who have it together. Healing is for people who have been broken and are honest enough to admit it. That honesty is the first and hardest step — and the Victim pastor, who has spent a lifetime feeling like his brokenness disqualifies him, needs to hear that it is actually his credential for the work of healing.
“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” — 2 Corinthians 12:9
Paul didn’t say weakness was comfortable. He said it was the location where Christ’s power shows up. The Victim pastor who has been hiding his weakness to protect what’s left of his reputation — God is not more present in the polished version. He’s present in the broken one.
What This Is Costing Him
Over time, the Victim pastor pays a price that accumulates slowly and then suddenly. His marriage — already strained by the emotional unpredictability — may reach a breaking point when his wife simply runs out of capacity to absorb what he hasn’t been willing to address. His kids grow up and carry their own version of the wound, because wounds travel through families until someone has the courage to stop them.
In ministry, the pattern tends toward burnout or a slow diminishment — not a dramatic collapse, but a fading. The church that could have been, never quite becomes. The relationships that could have been life-giving never quite reach depth. He ends up doing ministry at a distance from the very people he’s called to be among.
And privately, he keeps the ledger of his failures close. It’s thick by now. He doesn’t always remember the wins. He can usually recite the losses by heart.
Does This Sound Like You?
These aren’t trick questions. They’re invitations.
Do you struggle to receive care, compliments, or grace — even when they’re genuinely offered? Is there a quiet voice in you that says things like “you’ll mess this up eventually” or “they’ll figure out who you really are”? Does your family feel emotionally safe in your home, or do they love you at arm’s length?
When something hard happens in the church — a conflict, a criticism, a failed initiative — does it feel personal in a way that’s hard to shake? Do you find yourself carrying shame about things that happened years ago as though they happened yesterday?
And the hardest one: have you ever let anyone truly see the weight you’re carrying? Or have you been doing this alone for so long that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to be known?
Before You Close This Tab
You are not too broken for this work. That’s the lie the wound tells — that what happened to you is too much, too complicated, too far gone. It’s not true. I have watched men who carried decades of this kind of pain step into healing that changed their marriages, their relationship with their kids, and the entire tone of their ministries.
But it doesn’t happen by pushing harder. It happens by letting someone in.
Ready to Go Deeper?
If you recognized yourself in this post, you’re not alone — and you don’t have to stay stuck. I work with pastors one-on-one to help them understand their attachment patterns, heal what’s beneath the surface, and lead from a place of wholeness instead of wounds.
Schedule a Free 15-Minute Call
You don’t have to figure this out alone. That’s what I’m here for.
Tags: #VictimPastor #PastorTrauma #PastorHealing #AttachmentTheory #HowWeLove #SoulCare #PastorCare #YourCaringCoach #MinistryHealth #PastorCoach
