Lessons Learned From a Wolf Attack

Some of the most painful lessons of ministry are learned when a wolf in sheep’s clothing infiltrates your church. We had a wolf once, a local man I’ll call Ahab*, and it has taken me years to know how to write about it. The things we learned from exposing him, trying to counter him, and then responding to the carnage he caused have been forever branded on my soul. Wolf attacks leave scars, along with tragic losses among the true sheep. Pray that you never have to fight off a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but if you do, may these lessons we learned from dealing with Ahab help you to spot and deal with your own wolves with both wisdom and courage.

Wolves make excellent first impressions

The first time Ahab and his family visited our new church plant, we were thrilled. Here was a local believing husband and wife who also had believing teenage children – a true rarity in our corner of Central Asia. They were veteran believers, having come to faith nine years previous at a house church I had attended with Adam*, and later were members of another church when they’d lived in a different city. Ahab presented as a humble, happy, and wise middle-aged man from a more traditional background. But the most encouraging thing of all was how well he knew his Bible. To this day I’m not sure I’ve met another local man as well-versed in the scriptures as Ahab is. In spiritual conversation, Ahab demonstrated a deep knowledge of the Word. He had a thoughtful, serious personality, but he was also very fatherly, especially with small children. Our kids adored him with his affectionate greetings and gifts of cookies and pomegranate flowers.

Ahab’s sheep costume was (almost) flawless. Wolves will indeed show up wearing very convincing disguises (Matt 7:15).

Wolves come with mixed reputations

As soon as another missionary heard that Ahab and his family were attending our group, he warned us about him, telling us that Ahab and his wife had in previous years recanted their faith and returned to Islam, in order to receive financial gain. Apparently, there were pictures of them embracing a Qur’an next a smiling Islamic leader that proved this. This missionary also said that the family’s relationship with the Christians in their previous city had broken down completely and they had deceived and burned lots of people. The problem with this intel was that that generation of local believers was positively shot through with division and broken relationships and we also didn’t trust this missionary’s theological discernment. He had recently written off male-female roles in ministry as something that didn’t really matter, among other theological and ministry positions that felt so, well, “evangellyfish.” And we were newly partnering with another missionary who seemed to have more of a theological spine. He had been recently investing in Ahab’s family – and claiming to see evidence of true repentance and growth.

Our mistake here was assuming that a lack of theological likemindedness meant a lack of character discernment on the part of this other missionary – and that better alignment with our new partner meant he was correctly discerning Ahab’s character. These assumptions were dead wrong.

A wolf’s character cannot be hidden indefinitely. Their predatory heart will periodically emerge in predatory actions (Matt 7:16). This means that, like Ahab, wolves will tend to have a controversial past.

Wolves get deeply involved in the ministry and show great potential

We confronted Ahab about these claims of past apostasy and you couldn’t ask for a more (seemingly) humble and genuinely repentant response than the one he gave us. He admitted that the apostasy was true, but short-lived, and claimed to have already repented to everyone of this dark season in their life, and that he was willing to do whatever it took to demonstrate that repentance to us. Given our biases about the missionaries involved, we took Ahab at his word and pressed forward, encouraged.

Ahab soon became deeply invested in our house church. His family were the most faithful and some of the most engaged attendees. They introduced Frank and Patty to our group and even led them to faith. We were so encouraged to finally have some local believers who were committed to gathering weekly with the saints. Ahab soon offered his own home for our house church services and we quickly took him up on his offer. Our team leader was on furlough and pushing us to get the church meetings out of our own homes and into locals’ as soon as possible. This was viewed as one key toward reproducibility. So, all parties involved were thrilled when we moved the weekly service into Ahab’s home. It didn’t take long for Ahab to begin helping us with leading the prayer time and for us to invite him to join our weekly sermon-prep study with Harry*, the other local brother showing leadership potential. This was a weekly gathering that served as a place to invest in men who could be future leaders of the church.

Wolves tend to have a solid season of deep investment in the local church. This is how they build trust and gain influence.

Wolves are unpredictably harsh and judgmental

Every once in a while, Ahab would lash out in harsh and judgmental language when speaking of other local believers, pastors, or missionaries. These statements seemed inconsistent with his measured, wise speech that we typically observed. The tone of these outbursts seemed like it didn’t match the level of the offense nor the grace of the gospel that Ahab professed to be walking in. We took note of this, but viewed it as a discipleship issue that we’d need to help him with over time. In hindsight, it was evidence of secret sin brewing.

Like Judas lashing out at the woman’s gift of pure nard (John 12:5), wolves will sometimes let their true character show via harsh and surprisingly judgmental takes on other believers. This is evidence that there are some very bad things going on in their hearts.

Wolves are followed by lots of smoke, but expertly hide the fire

Ahab and his family’s mixed reputation seemed to follow them like a cloud of gnats they could never quite get rid of. Regularly, we’d hear serious concerns expressed by other missionaries or local believers that just didn’t seem to match what we were seeing with our own eyes. Ahab was one of our promising leaders in training, and nothing that we had witnessed ourselves gave us any solid evidence for the claims being regularly made by those outside of our church plant. But the claims just kept on coming. Surely, Ahab couldn’t be deceiving us so effectively. It must be the other missionaries and believers from other local groups. After all, they were unclear and squishy when it came to the gospel, true conversion, and healthy church, so they must have been confused about Ahab also.

As the wisdom of our forbears says, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Wolves can’t hide all the smoke they generate, but for a time they can expertly conceal the fire from those that they are focused on deceiving. Wise gospel laborers will keep an eye on men whose lives generate an unusual amount of proverbial smoke.

Wolves secretly divide the flock and the leadership for personal gain

“Is Ahab a good man?”

“Yes, he is a faithful member of our church. Why do you ask this?”

“Well, he approached me this week and told me to keep my distance from all you foreigners. He told me not to trust you, but to trust him. Listen, I left Islam to get away from this kind of petty division. If Christianity is no different, then I don’t think I want to be involved with you all.”

This conversation over dinner with a new believer was a turning point for me and my wife. We had been hearing of a lot of smoke, but here at last was something solid, and very concerning. Ahab had allegedly approached a promising new believer in secret and sought to sow division in the church. This new believer didn’t seem to have any advantage in mentioning this to us, but rather to be honestly asking about something that concerned him. Soon other evidence emerged that Ahab was secretly building personal loyalty with other new believers in the church, creating a faction of sorts. He seemed to be doing this by telling the new believers that we foreigners (and me in particular) were receiving fabulous amounts of money for baptisms and that we were withholding funds that were sent for local believers. He was making promises to the other locals that he knew how to get them access to ministry salaries, Christian conferences, and visas to Western countries.

As I looked into things, I learned that Ahab was also involved in slandering me to the other two missionaries who formed our three man church plant leadership until we could raise up local elders. To my great alarm, Ahab’s whispers that I was secretly out for power and control were being somewhat entertained by my gospel colaborers. Ahab’s desire in all of this was to be eventually in charge of the church so that he could receive a good ministry salary from groups in the West, along with funds he could use to set up a patronage network within the church.

When wolves feel secure in their position, they will begin to sow division among the saints and even among the leadership. They are very good at sniffing out existing tensions and then exploiting these (Titus 3:9-11). Their end goal in all these things is their own personal gain.

Wolves are gifted at twisting reality

There were several times that seemingly concrete charges were brought against Ahab. But whenever we would bring up these concerns, Ahab was able to expertly sow doubt in the informant, in the data itself, or even in our own experiences. After this season, I would learn that this kind of behavior has come to be called gaslighting in the West. A gaslighter is able to make you doubt that something really happened, and even able to make you doubt your own senses. We would go into face-to-face meetings with Ahab with clarity and conviction and come away feeling like we weren’t sure anymore what was really true or real. After Ahab had later been exposed, one local brother called him “an artist of lies.” In a culture given to lots of pervasive deception, this was quite the title. After upending reality, Ahab was then able to insert his own narratives into the confusion, with great effect. I remember meeting with my team leader and Harry, desperately trying to unravel the narrative Ahab was pushing on them about me. These two godly men knew me much better than they knew Ahab, and yet he was almost effective in convincing them that in the end, I was the real problem in this whole situation – and the true manipulator. It was terrifying.

Like the serpent in Genesis 3, wolves are able to create doubts about things that once seemed so simple and so clear, about reality itself.

Wolves turn good faith exhortations against those who make them

I remember meeting with Ahab and pleading with him from my heart to turn away from his divisiveness, that the church might not survive what he was doing. I poured out my heart to this man I thought was a brother, sharing very personal things with him and even areas where I had failed or could have done better. I was pulling out all of the stops to try to pull him back from the brink. While his response to me in person was good, he immediately took many of the things I had told him and weaponized them with others. Sometimes this happened even on the same day. I would gave him pearls, truths from God’s word and things from my heart, but he not only despised these, but then used them to attack. As each leader and local believer began to realize what Ahab was up to, he’d proceed to do this with them as well. We had trusted him with our hearts and he was now adeptly using all of this as ammunition to undermine us.

Wolves can be like the swine that Jesus describes in Matthew 7:6, who take precious truths and good-faith exhortations and instead of repenting, use them against you.

When exposed, wolves go on the attack

Humble men respond gently and reasonably when accusations are made against them. Wolves, when accused – or even as soon as they sense someone is beginning to suspect them – go on the attack. This stage is dangerous, but helpful. At last, the true nature of the wolf is being revealed to the broader community. In our church plant, Ahab started by attacking me. My grasp of the local language was stronger, so that meant I was spotting things sooner than my fellow leaders. Ahab picked up on the change in my posture toward him and did what he could to turn the others against me. There was a period where even the other leaders sided with him, but one by one their honest questions and desire to pursue things with fairness meant that Ahab turned on them as well. When this happened, it was like a spell was broken. All of the cobwebs of deceit that had been sewn were suddenly dissolved as the sheep turned on its erstwhile friends – and revealed its fangs.

When wolves in sheep’s clothing are recognized for what they are, they will not run. They will attack. In this attack stage, they will seek to cash in on whatever schemes of division, personal loyalty, and personal gain they have been working on.

Westerners are at a disadvantage when dealing with wolves

Ahab ran circles around us. The other missionaries and I were often caught flat-footed, unable to respond proactively to Ahab, instead reacting as he always seemed one step ahead of us. There are several reasons why I believe this to be the case. First, Westerners operate from a trustworthy-unless-proven-otherwise mindset in their relationships. We are extremely optimistic (some would say naive) in our approach to trusting others. This often works out well for us as that trust extended becomes the thing that actually inspires and creates trustworthiness in the other. But when we are dealing with a wolf, they are easily able to take advantage of this default posture of trust – and to turn it to their advantage. Because of our own cultural background, we just don’t have much experience dealing shrewdly with deceptive and manipulative people.

Second, Western missionaries will often default to trusting a local believer over a Western colleague because of the Western cultural guilt we can carry, plus the emphasis in much of missiology that the locals are always right and foreigners are unwitting contaminators and colonialists. This definitely proved true in our situation, and teammates later apologized to me for their default assumption that in cross-cultural conflict, somehow it is always the Westerner who has screwed things up. Finally, we receive little theological preparation for dealing with those the Bible calls wolves, pigs, dogs, and divisive men – even though these opponents of the gospel feature heavily in the New Testament’s description of ministry.

Wolves and other gifted deceivers are able to take advantage of individuals – and cultures – that operate from a default of extending trust. Westerners especially need to be aware of this and seek to grow in wise defense.

Wolves must be dealt with more swiftly and firmly than other types of sinners

One reason we were so stuck in our response to Ahab is that we didn’t agree on how the Bible would have us respond to someone like him. My teammates and I were at least on the same page that some form of church discipline was needed, but our missionary partner surprised us by saying that he didn’t believe that church discipline would be effective in the local culture. I learned from this experience that even among theological conservatives, it’s important to find out beforehand who is and who isn’t willing to exercise church discipline when the Bible calls for it. If, like we did, you find this out in the midst of dealing with a wolf, then its too late.

I’ve heard it said that some reformed churches have broken church discipline down into an extended process with dozens of steps, often stretched out over months or years. This can be a faithful application of passages like Matthew 18, where the sin is private and interpersonal. But there are other church discipline passages in the New Testament that call for much quicker action. These cases would involve situations such as public scandalous sin (1 Cor 5) and that of the man who sows division (Titus 3:9-11). Because of the danger of great harm to the church, these situations need firm and quick responses from the church’s leadership and members. Someone sowing division and slander in the body needs a quick, united, and firm rebuke. If they don’t repent and change after a first and second warning, then they need a quick excommunication. The danger to the body is simply too great as wolves are able to use extra time to turn the sheep and undershepherds against one another.

When division, deception, or manipulation is exposed in the body, these call for united and quick action. If these things indicate the presence of a wolf, then this swift and firm action is even more crucial.

Wolves cause tragic damage to the flock

We eventually learned that Ahab had begun receiving a secret ministry salary from another evangelical group in our region for having a church in his house. “The workman is worthy of his wages” was the justification for the deceptive claims he’d made to this group that he was the pastor of a separate church. When this emerged, we finally had unity among us leaders to move the church out of his house. When we announced this move at the end of a service (and still in such a way to try to help Ahab save face), Ahab publicly responded by announcing the formation of a new church. Several of the new believers then indicated that they’d already agreed to join Ahab in this breakaway group. They had been seduced by his promises of salaries, conferences, and visas.

Of these local believers, many then proceeded to fall away and to this day are still not gathering with any church, nor growing in their faith. The local brother who first shared with me about Ahab’s secret division is one of these. He washed his hands of us, and to this day is an isolated baby believer. The house church had grown to the point where 20-30 locals were gathering with us on a weekly basis. After this implosion, only 6 continued to gather with us as we changed our location and extracted ourselves from the wolf’s house. Our partnership with the other conservative missionary didn’t survive this season either. Amazingly, even though his eyes were now opened he decided to keep working with Ahab’s family – until he too was irreparably burned by him a couple of years later.

Wolves will seek to devour the flock (Acts 20:29). And the damage they cause can last for generations.

Wolves are inevitable as the gospel advances

Our natural impulse after everything imploded was to use the benefit of hindsight to blame ourselves. There were so many places where we should have, could have, would have done things differently could we go back in time. But one of the truths that comforted me in the wake of the Ahab mess was that wolves are promised as a part of faithful New Testament ministry. Even Jesus had a wolf among his closest followers. Perhaps not every local church will have to fend off a wolf, but many will. When sheep are being gathered and fed, sooner or later, wolves will come around looking to fill their stomachs. When this happens, we can fall back on the fact that we have not only been warned, but the Word of God even equips us to fight off the predators that would seek to devour the flock.

Wolves are inevitable as the gospel advances. Jesus had Judas, the believers in Ephesus had their own fierce wolves emerge after Paul was gone (Acts 20:29). Many of us will face our own “Ahabs.” Wise believers will seek to prepare for this common danger to the church – and act when the wolves are exposed.

God turns even wolf attacks for good

It took a long time to heal from what happened with Ahab. My wife and I had nightmares about the man for about two years afterward. Many of the local believers were scattered, but some eventually came back, now sobered and on the lookout for other “artists of lies” who might try to divide with promises of worldly gain. Our relationships with the other missionaries involved were largely strengthened by the horrible ordeal we’d gone through together, even though apologies needed to be said and trust cautiously built again. And we learned vital lessons that will hopefully serve us and others in many other contexts. In short, God was faithful to use for good what the enemy intended for evil. The costs were real. But so were the ways in which God’s grace and faithfulness shone throughout and after that whole season.

God can even turn wolf attacks into opportunities for the display of his power and glory (Rom 8:28, 2 Cor 8:9). I see this now in part in everything that happened with Ahab, and I look forward to seeing it more fully in the light of eternity.

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