Family Systems for Clergy Families

FAMILY SYSTEMS IN CLERGY FAMILIES

Resource: Ronald W. Richardson: Family Ties that Bind

Start with idea of the MOBILE

[hmmm. . . I'm trying to insert a picture of a mobile here, but so far, the system won't let me. As soon as I figure it out, there will be a graphic!]

[Got it! Prayer, Patience, and Perseverance pay off! or should that be Prayer, providence and persistence? nevermind. . . ]

This is the basic model of the Family System

[it also applies to the church, as discussed at last Get-Together and in a previous posting, below: "When the Church Is Too Much Like Family."]

Principle to remember: each element affects every other element.

Push one part of the mobile, and everything else moves.

Add weight to another part, and every other piece goes off balance, etc.

Graph out your family tree,

remembering that it acts like a mobile.

Focus on your own family tree first. Your spouse's tree will intertwine, but that's for later.

Right now, get all your relations in their positions, including yourself and your siblings, in birth order from left to right. Include:

Gender; marital status; occupation; cause of death; mental and physical health info: diabetes/cancer/arthritis/allergies/obesity; education; church / religious practice; habits, smoking/alcoholism/drug use/etc.; place of residence

Include your parents and their siblings, then your grandparents and their siblings, providing as much information on each family as possible. This is a great excuse for contacting family members and collection information. Don't worry, nearly everyone enjoys talking about family stories, so this might be an opportunity to restore connections or even heal old wounds. Plus, you'll learn a lot.

The goal is to find patterns -- ANY patterns!

For instance, is there one smoker in every generation? Is that person consistently male? When did the family migrate to America or leave the Reservation or move from the East Coast? Perhaps all the women tend to get pregnant at a certain age. Or maybe the men tend to complete their education while the females do not. Or perhaps one child in each generation joins the military… or moves far from the family home… or there is a particular pattern of call to ministry. Or very early marriage. Or a tendency to heart disease. Or death at a certain age. In which generation did a particular illness appear?

Every family has its own unique patterns that may be familiar or completely surprising.

What can you learn from your family tree?

When you see yourself in the context of your family system, do some old puzzle pieces suddenly fall into place? Using my own family as an example (the only system of which I can speak with authority,) our genogram revealed some remarkable patterns, some trivial, others quite significant.

Three generations of women in my mother's line dropped their first names and used only their middle names: My grandmother was baptized Mary Magdalena Etta Schull, but was known as Etta. My mother, Mildred Berniece Starr, went by Bea, and my own first name is . . . . . . no way I'm exposing that embarrassment! Enough to say that Starr was originally my middle name.

Five generations (as far as we can trace) contain stutterers, and the pattern passes from uncle to nephew in the mother's line. Since my brother and son have "disfluencies," we're closely watching my daughter's son to see whether the pattern continues.

More significant: our generations move away from their families of origin. My daughter moved across the country to VA; Arizona is a pretty good distance from my Ohio home; none of my relations lived near Ohio, so I saw them rarely; and my grandparents immigrated from Italy - a pretty sizable move. The previous generations were as emotionally cut off as they were physically distant from their families, so we are intensely conscious of maintaining emotional ties with our kids.

Now, consider the role of the Church in your family history. Which family members have been professional clergy or particularly active in their faith? When did you/your family become Presbyterian? Was your marriage to a minister unique in your family? Trace the religious history of your family as far as possible, and consider the impact religion has had on each element on that mobile family tree.

And have fun!