Tactics of Manipulative Members, Part 5

The Projector

The next kind of manipulative church member is what I’d call the projector.

Projection is when someone takes their own sin, guilt, or twisted motives and slaps them on someone else. Instead of looking in the mirror, they point fingers. In church life, it can sound like this:

• The gossip who warns you about “divisive people.”

• The rage monster who says others are “too emotional.”

• The person hiding secret sin who throws around words like “legalistic” or “judgmental.”

They’re not interested in honest self-reflection. They want a scapegoat. And while projection isn’t always intentional, sometimes it’s just good old-fashioned self-deception, it still warps reality and muddies the waters of accountability.

Now, projection shares a family resemblance to gaslighting, but they’re not the same thing.

Gaslighting is premeditated. It’s psychological sabotage. The gaslighter deliberately distorts reality to make you question your memory, judgment, even your sanity. It’s quiet control. And in a church setting, it sounds like this:

• “You’re imagining things,” when you bring up something hurtful they said.

• “I never said that,” even though five people heard them say it.

• Constantly rewriting the past so you come off as unstable and they come off squeaky clean.

Gaslighting is calculated. It’s about keeping power by making you doubt yourself.

Projection, on the other hand, often comes from someone who’s not lying to you; they’re lying to themselves. Their inner life is so cluttered with unresolved sin that they start to see it on everyone else’s face. And while the motive may not be malicious, the damage is still real. Both projection and gaslighting undermine trust, distort truth, and make healthy correction nearly impossible. Worst of all, both can dress up in church clothes and use spiritual language to justify themselves.

Sometimes self-deception and deception ride together like horsemen. Paul nailed it in 2 Timothy 3:13, “Evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” The job of the church isn’t to grow paranoid. It’s to grow discerning. Wisdom sees through the smoke without breathing it in.

So how can you spot projection?

Often, it shows up as accusations that have no real tether to your life. Not that you’re sinless, but what they’re throwing at you just doesn’t match reality. When that happens, ask yourself, is this coming from nowhere? And more importantly, do they see this sin everywhere, in everyone?

Because usually, the thief thinks everyone steals.

Here’s the kicker. When you try to confront a projector, they’ll sometimes flip the table and accuse you of gaslighting them. Suddenly you’re in a therapist’s office trying to untangle whose feelings are more valid.

That’s why, as a pastor, you have to slow the moment down and ask simple questions. Where’s the evidence? What do you actually see that makes you say that?

Projectors rarely deal in hard evidence. They run on gut, on hunches, on feelings they can’t quite explain. Truth feels like a threat to their emotional narrative. And that’s why it often takes a kind of intervention, a gracious but firm disruption, for them to realize they’ve been treating their assumptions like facts.

Which is also why Matthew 18 starts small, just one person going to another. But if that doesn’t work, it builds. Because sometimes, to confront the sin clearly, you need more eyes in the room. You need to bring truth into the light where it can’t be so easily bent or blurred.