A lot of you make extremely good points in this thread. As i read through the replies, i thought about the various scandles that happened in the church i attended and other churches local to us that also had major scandles both financial and sexual. The church down the road from us (Elim) had both the pastors in a 'special' relationship with each other which broke up one of their marriages and seriously damaged the others' marriage. They are both still in their positions in the same church even today but the church went from 700, pretty sizable for some parts of the UK, to 50 or so members and is struggling to grow beyond that number even now.
Both of these churches call ahead to the new church a person goes to, which is considered a loving thing to do. Mainly to help prevent a person becoming a 'spiritual butterfly' and secondly, so that the Churches In Unity can keep tabs on people who go from one church to another causing trouble or leaving with business unfinished from their last church. It's a terrible thing to have happen because the new pastor tends to believe what the last pastor is telling them, no matter what the evidence is to suggest otherwise.
I wanted to provide support for the fact that this does happen.
I can also see what's being said about priests, bishops and pastors being fallllible human beings and it's not about how perfect the leaderships Christian lives are because we're all being saved. On one hand there are the abuses and scandles that see protestants leaving their churches and i did that, i can empathise, i left after my leader left because of a major injustice done to them by the other leaders in the church. On the other hand though, there are people in congragations who seek to control their (good and decent) church leaders for no other reason than personal gain sometimes status, power or both.
I'm thinking the way that Orthodoxy is structured, this wouldn't happen in your churches?