Quick posting: Here are my notes for our Get-Together at the November '05 Presbytery meeting. We'll be talking about family systems - how they operate within the church, and then, at the next meeting, how they operate specifically within the pastor's family. We'll be referring to books by Ronald Richardson. It's good stuff, and I'm hoping to share it with as many of y'all as possible.

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When the Church is (too much) like Family

Resource:

Creating a Healthier Church: Family Systems Theory, Leadership, and Congregational Life by Ronald W. Richardson

View the church as a system, rather than as a collection of isolated individuals.

Think of a mobile. Each element is connected to the others, so that the motion of one element affects all the others. The affects can be subtle or drastic, depending on the “weight” and “position” of each element.

Thinking systemically does not come naturally.

It’s like learning to look at yourself in a full-length mirror: the hat is adorable, the sweater is your favorite color, and the skirt fits like a glove. But how do the pieces work together? Do those cowboy boots really complement the outfit? Thinking systemically means seeing how the separate elements function in the bigger picture.

Or think of several soloists trying to sing together as a choir. As individuals, their voices are wonderful. But when they try to blend together, they each need to adjust to the others. If the tenor sings at full voice, the alto and soprano will need to increase their volume to be heard, and soon the baritone has to shout in order to be noticed at all. If the ensemble is ever going to blend, they need to recognize the effect each of their voices has on the others. That’s the difference between thinking individually and systemically.

Thinking individually tends to evoke “me vs. them” reactions to stress. Because the person’s point of reference group is “me,” the isolated individual needs to collect credit and avoid blame, protecting the self.

Positive Circumstances / Negative Circumstances

“I accomplished it myself / I didn’t do it”

“I should get the credit / It’s not my fault”

“I’ll pull their strings / They’re out to get me”

Isolated thinking tends to get caught up in defensive emotional processes that prevent effective cooperative action in the congregation, committee, or group.

Thinking systemically helps promote “we’re in this together” responses. When the individual feels part of a community, it is less necessary to put up defenses.

Positive Circumstances / Negative Circumstances

“We accomplished it together / We have a problem”

“We did a good job / What do we do now?”

“We’re in this together / We’ll work this out

Community thinking tends to buffer each person from emotional blaming and shaming, spreading the credit or responsibility over the group. The group is the point of reference, not the individual.

The path to trouble: making assumptions and then acting as though assumptions are true.

Isolated individual thinking tends to assume that the behavior of others’ relates to one’s self. In Richardson’s words, “We tend to personalize other people’s behaviors. We think the behavior is about us. We think someone is reacting to us, when in fact . . . he or she isn’t thinking about us at all.” P.38.

For example, Bill is chair of the finance committee. Betty, a member of the committee, suddenly becomes unusually quiet, sitting with her head down and frowning. Bill assumes that Betty is angry with him for making a mistake in the annual report, and that she is punishing him by refusing to respond to his remarks.

Actually, Betty has just realized that she forgot to pick up cough syrup at the drug store, and is worried the store would be closed by the time the committee meeting is over. It will be her fault if her husband’s cold turns into pneumonia!

We can see that Bill’s thinking is like child’s, believing everything focuses around himself. His immature thinking leads to faulty assumptions. When he acts on those assumptions, by being rude to Betty, or by becoming self-conscious and making further mistakes on the budget, he creates still more stress for himself and creates problems in the church.

What would be a more mature response to Betty’s behavior? Bill could have called a short break, then privately asked Betty if she were ill, or had a problem. Perhaps he had an extra bottle of cough syrup to lend her. Their relationship would be strengthened instead of wounded by assumptions.

To Hug or Not To Hug: Closing In / Distancing

The Porcupine story: A group of porcupines had to endure a particularly cold winter. They discovered that when they huddled together, they were warmer. If the moved too close, they were pricked by each other’s quills. Eventually they established a distance that allowed them to benefit from each other’s warmth, without jabbing each other. This distance was called “right and proper,” or, in the case of Presbyterian porcupines, “decent and in order.” (Robert’s Rules for Porcupines.” P. 66.

Each congregation, and sometimes each group within the congregation, will have their own comfort levels of closeness / distance. A person who gets too close in a physical sense can be perceived as threatening, one who is physically distant might be perceived as cold or stuck up.

Think of the discomfort during the Sunday morning Passing the Peace when a visitor happens into a “huggy” congregation; or when a “hugger” descends upon a “polite handshake” crowd.

Emotional closing in and distancing can be even trickier to manage. Suppose Bill gives Betty a hug and offers to bring cough syrup over to her home after the committee meeting. Then the next morning, he phones to find out how Betty’s husband is doing. Betty might feel smothered by Bill’s concerns, and distance herself by responding cool politeness. If she happens to miss the next committee meeting, Bill might feel uncomfortable, because by his standards, Betty is not responding with appropriate Christian warmth.

Closing in / Distancing can be very tricky when church members try to find the right and proper relationship with the pastor. Suppose Betty goes to her pastor with concerns about her husband’s health. How much affection should the pastor show? Will Betty be comforted with a hug, or offended?

Let’s suppose another member, Sally, is experiencing depression and feels emotionally abandoned by her husband. When she visits the pastor, she initiates the hugging, sits very close to the pastor on the couch, and insists on another little talk together the very next day. How can the pastor distance himself from inappropriate emotional clinging without seeming to reject Sally’s needs?

Don’t Pass It On: Anxiety

Chapter 3: “One way people differ from one another lies in how much sense of threat they carry around with them, versus how safe they feel in the world.”

Threat can be described as anxiety. In family systems theory, anxiety is a feeling of loss of control, feeling vulnerability or threat of loss of self. Often anxiety is worse than fear.

For example, a person who discovers an abdominal lump will experience great anxiety waiting for test results. The diagnosis, even a bad diagnosis, can come as a relief, because the person knows what they are facing.

“Churches, like individuals, differ in the level of chronic anxiety they experience. A few churches have such a high level of anxiety that they verge on being paranoid. They see everything as threatening. Some churches feel completely safe in the world and do not see anything as a serious threat. Most churches experience some threats and vary in how anxious they feel or how safe they feel in the world.

“The churches that function the best have leaders who experience less threat around the normal [problems] that occur (acute anxiety) and feel safer in the midst of the erratic movement of the mobile, while staying in touch with all parts of the mobile. The closer to the top of the mobile these calmer leaders are, the greater the calming effect they will have on the whole congregation. The more threatened and unsafe the leaders feel generally (chronic anxiety), the more the whole congregation can be disrupted.” p. 43:

Extreme example: Jim Jones; both chronic and acute anxiety

Calm: perhaps Martin Luther King Jr. / fictional: Gil Grissom, C.S.I.

If we manage to cover these points, we really will have accomplished something. Yet we’ll only have scratched the surface of systems theory. At our next Get-Together (January 06!) we’ll look at Richardson’s book that targets family systems in clergy families.