Leadership That Does Not Punish
The Paradox of Leadership, Love, and Fear
Many leaders confuse accountability with punishment, correction with retribution, and discipline with fear-based control. It may be unintentional and a default mechanism for some. Yet, the biblical vision of leadership, grounded in love, calls for a different way. Healthy leadership
motivates through trust, restoration, and courage, rather than fear. It's leadership in the way of love.
As I reflect on my own leadership and the leaders and pastors I have worked with over the past 30 years in church ministry, it is a rare thing to find a leader who truly leads from a place of genuine love and care for others. Like most of you reading this article, I have personally experienced more fear-based leadership in the church than I thought was possible.
The Apostle John writes a revolutionary statement that we need to take heed to: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment” (1 John 4:18). For leaders, this is a radical claim: love and punishment are mutually exclusive.
Leadership can correct and challenge, but once it becomes punitive, it ceases to be love. Fear may produce compliance, but only love produces connection and transformation.
Healthy, loving leadership should always be void of punishment and retribution.
In this article, I want to provide a way forward for leading in a way marked by love and, when necessary, accountability, improvement, and growth, with practical ways to embody this kind of
leadership.
PRACTICAL ACTION STEP: Do a self-audit check on your recent team meetings, assessing how much of your decisions or facilitation processes were rooted in fear and control versus love and trust.
Leadership Grounded in Restoration, Not Retribution
From Genesis onward, God models leadership that is restorative rather than retributive. In Eden, when Adam and Eve hid in shame, God’s first words were questions of invitation and compassion, not condemnation: “Where are you? Who told you? Have you eaten?” These are the questions of a restorative leader, one who guides people back into awareness and relationship.
Throughout Scripture, God’s discipline is parental, not punitive. “As a father disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you” (Deut. 8:5). The prophets describe God’s correction as love’s pursuit: “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely” (Hosea 14:4).
In Christ, the pattern is completed and seen in its most potent form. The Cross is not the wrath of God unleashed but the love of God poured out. Jesus leads by absorbing the violence of the world and transforming it into forgiveness. This is the model of non-punitive leadership: guiding others not through fear of failure but through the safety and conditions of love.
PRACTICAL ACTION STEP: When addressing mistakes or failures with team members, begin with questions like, “Why do we believe this happened?” or “What can we learn from this experience?” Always begin by affirming the courage behind the steps taken, even though they did not work out. Validate the efforts involved.
Love’s Leadership Ethic
Paul’s vision of love in 1 Corinthians 13 provides a framework and a pathway for leadership:
- Love is patient, not reactive—it waits, but it still attends to and serves the people, like a
restaurant waiter. - Love is kind, not harsh—it’s compassionate, yet still allowing for conviction.
- Love keeps no record of wrongs, unlike punitive bookkeeping.
- Love always protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres.
Leaders formed by love build cultures of trust, not terror. Jesus led His followers this way: “I did not come to condemn the world, but to save it” (John 3:17). Even in the midst of betrayal and pain, His words were ones of forgiveness, not vengeance: “Father, forgive them.” Such leadership is the antidote to cultures driven by fear and shame.
There have been seasons when I felt surveilled by a leader who closely monitored every decision and step I took, and when there was a misstep or mistake, down came the leadership gauntlet of correction. It felt like a moral verdict was being declared. All I can say is that many pastors keep therapists and counselors in business.
PRACTICAL ACTION STEP: As you reflect on the upcoming meetings you have with staff, what are the characteristics of love that you need to embody based on 1 Corinthians 13? In what ways can your loving, non-anxious presence and calm be exercised to help co-regulate safety and trust for team members in your meetings?
The Psychology of Fear and the Practice of Love
Both modern psychology and neurology confirm what Scripture reveals: fear-based leadership corrodes and inhibits growth. According to research done by the NIH Clinical Center, fear triggers the body’s stress response—flooding the brain with cortisol and shutting down the higher functions needed for empathy, creativity, and problem-solving. Punishment may yield short-term results, but it fosters long-term mistrust and shame. It’s about the long game of loving leadership. Love is the “most excellent way,” and it therefore wins when giving time and effort.
Love-based leadership, by contrast, creates psychological safety. When leaders model empathy and curiosity, they calm the threat systems of those they lead. Safety allows people to take risks, admit mistakes, and grow. Neuroscience reveals that repeated experiences of trust actually rewire the brain; love literally reshapes neural pathways, teaching the body that correction does not equate to condemnation.
When John says “perfect love casts out fear,” he’s describing both a spiritual and neurological truth: love activates the best parts of who we are. Fear constricts; love expands. Fear fractures; love integrates. Love and fear/punishment cannot meaningfully co-exist. Development, learning, growth, autonomy, ownership, motivation, and emotional regulation flourish in love but are undermined by fear.
PRACTICAL ACTION STEP: What are ways that you could model vulnerability and honesty that shape the mood of your meeting? Share how you have learned from your own mistakes and failures, and that you are still learning. It’s about humanizing the conversation.
Discipline, Yes, But Without Punishment
Healthy leadership mirrors God’s form of discipline—training, not condemnation. Hebrews 12 compares divine discipline to a coach shaping an athlete or a parent teaching a child. In leadership, the same holds true: accountability is essential, but punishment is not.
Correction in love restores dignity rather than destroying it. It says, “You are worth the effort of guidance because you are worth loving.” This is the discipline that heals rather than harms, that builds capacity rather than control. A guiding phrase here is, “let’s always connect before we correct.”
PRACTICAL ACTION STEP: Correction is important. When providing coaching and training, ensure the process is straightforward. Is there a clear timeline? Do all understand the process of development and evaluation? Are steps and outcomes/expectations clearly delineated and agreed upon?
A Vision of Fearless Leadership
Imagine organizations and churches where leaders restore rather than retaliate, where accountability dignifies rather than shames, where correction heals rather than wounds. This is not naïve idealism—it is the way of Jesus, who led without fear and transformed through love. It’s courageous leadership.
Perfect leadership love is not permissive, but it is never punitive. It tells the truth without terror, holds people accountable without humiliation, and leads people toward wholeness rather than compliance.
For in the end, “the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Gal. 5:6). Such love-centered leadership casts out fear—setting people free to grow, serve, and flourish.
PRACTICAL ACTION STEP: Regularly ask yourself, “What does love require of me in this
moment?”
At Chemistry Staffing, our church staffing firm is committed to helping find and coach leaders marked by love who serve the church well, so that congregations flourish in loving relationships with one another and with the world around them. If we can serve your team or church in any way to accomplish that end, please reach out to me and let’s talk.
