A Systems Approach to Leadership, pt 6: Focus on Process, Not Content

Churches are filled with arguments.  And often, these arguments center on some crucial "issue."  Issues like Divine sovereignty, the role of women in the church, worship style, homosexuality, etc. are often emotionally charged issues that can cause a great deal of strife and pain in a congregation (or denomination). Often when these issues arise, the primary, if not total, emphasis is on the content of the arguments surrounding the issue.  But there are always emotional processes percolating underneath the surface that never get addressed. 

How leaders approach these issues is a crucial part of leadership.  Peter Steinke recommends that leaders focus on process rather than content when addressing these issues:

If I pay attention to their "content" and rust to save them or act like an expert, I’m as anxious as they are.  I reinforce their helplessness and dependency.  By focusing on process, I take my time and stay goal-directed.  I know that eventually we can discuss "content," but not until the reptilian regression recedes and the panic softens.

A Systems Approach to Leadership, pt 5: Focus on Strength, Not Weakness

Steinke asserts that the major function of a leader is to help people to grow.  This isn’t altogether that different then the vision of Ephesians 4, where different sorts of leaders help equip the body of Christ so that they can minister together and grow in maturity.  When we focus on weaknesses in people, we foster anti-growth.  By telling people of their limitations, rather than their possibilites for greater health and service, we keep them from growing.  Anxious leaders tend to focus on the ways in which those around them fail.  And anxious groups tend to focus on what they don’t want rather than what they do want.  Leaders not only help cast a positive vision (though not necessarily exclusively positive), but they help folks around them to see how their gifts and strengths give them possibilities to play a part in that vision. 

By the way, while the word "leader" most easily applies to those folks who are clearly identifiable as leaders within churches, I think all of this could easily apply to anyone who is functioning in a leadership capacity. The word is fluid and flexible.

A Systems Approach to Leadership, pt 4: Focus on Self, Not Others

How can being self-focused help someone be a healthy leader?  Doesn’t this contradict the call to be so-called "servant leaders?"  According to Steinke:

A self who stays focused on one’s own beliefs and acts on them lives to the max and is attractive to many.  A nonself focuses on others: what they will think, how they will react, what they will expect.  Action is based on others’ reaction, not one’s own definition and truth.  But how can anyone function effectively as a leader if his or her anxiety is a the same level as those being led?  Focus on self, not others. 

A healthy leader has the strength of character and conviction to not be ruled by the anxiety of others.  Rather than being reactionary or being controlling, s/he offers him/herself as a gift to the Body of Christ.  They enter into anxiety and help to bring authentic peace.  At the same time, they also enter into apathy and raise discomfort enough for people to seek authentic peace.

A Systems Approach to Leadership, pt 3

So how can a leader help bring healthy systemic change without reinforcing his/her role as congregational burden bearer?

First we need to define the role of leadership within a congregation…what is the function of leadership within a church? I direct your attention to a previous post I wrote (which you can find here on Organicchurch.net); it gives a basic outline of somewhat fluid view of church leadership. 

Peter Steinke uses family sytem theory to understand the dynamics of the church as an emotional system.  In his book, How Your Church Family Works, he likens the function of leadership to the function of the immune responses in the human body (he gets this idea primarily from Friedman).  The immune systems differentiates native DNA with foreign materials…when something exists within the body that lacks this DNA (or isn’t an appropriate building block for cells) it expells it.  Leaders, then, help the Body stay true to its DNA…and to keep non healthy things out of the Body. 

To Steinke, leaders need to be responsive to dishealth on the one hand, without being destructively protective on the other. Steinke lists seven health-influencing responses that a healthy leader can give to promote systemic health: 

1. Focus on self, not others
2. Focus on strength, not weakness
3. Focus on process, not content
4. Focus on challenge, not comfort
5. Focus on integrity, not unity
6. Focus on system, not symptom
7. Focus on direction, not condition

These seven responses offer the core of Steinke’s understanding of leadership within a church system.  Tomorrow, I’ll begin to examine these 7 responses.  After that, I’ll begin to offer my observations about the nature of church leadership, including my take on what role the leadership should play in promoting church health, and what role those who aren’t involved in leadership should play.  As most of you know, I don’t believe their is a real distinction between clergy and laity, so I’ll try to offer an understanding of healthy leadership that takes that into account.  As a foretaste, let me just say that the move some have taken to destroy the notion of "clergy" is misguided.  It may seem like mere semantics, but I believe that we ought to destroy the notion of "laity" instead.

A Systems Approach to Leadership, pt 2

There are several key ideas behind family systems theory:

• Every member of the system effects the system, and therefore influences other members. In other words, everyone is mutually influenced.
• The whole organizes the parts. 
• Within the system, there are two distinct forces at play: the need to be close or connected, and the need to be distinct or seperate.
• The more self-differentiated the individual, the more healthy the individual within the system.  Self differentiation is an important compontent of emotional health.
• When anxiety exists within a system, TRIANGLES form.  A triangle happens when person A has conflict with person B, then one of them will bring in person C to reduce tensions between A and B.

I was going to talk about self-differentiation today, but since Gregg brought up triangles in a response to my last post, I’ll talk about triangling.

As I’ve said, a triangle
happens when person A has conflict with person B, then one of them will
bring in person C to reduce tensions between A and B. Triangling is all
about shifting burden and blame.  Usually, one person ends up the
scapegoat and receives all of the burden. 

Pastors are the great burden-bearers of their congregation.  The pastor is usually involved in all sorts of triangles.  In part, this is because the congregation looks to the pastor as Mr. (or Mrs.) Fixit.  Pastors are also willing to enter into triangles because they like helping and they like to alleviate conflict. 

In a situation of clergy infidelity, a triangle may be formed between the pastor (A), the spouse (B), and the congregation (C).  Usually, all of the anxiety centers on the pastor.  Or as Gregg pointed out in his response to my last post, a triangle can be formed between the pastor (A), the congregation (B), and the infidelity (C)–and as everyone’s anxiety centers on the act of infidelity, deeper systemic issues are ignored.  Instead of using it as an opportunity to explore systemic health and to bring healing to all those involved, often the pastor is scapegoated and as he is ousted, the congregation assumes that all of the problems have left with him.  The congregation never examines the deeper systemic problems within the church that may be fostering dishealth.

Pastors often end the scapegoat in congregations–they become the primary burden-bearer.  This tension usually builds until they burn out or leave.  Even in the healthiest churches, it is the pastor who is usually responsible for alleviating the problems of the church.  If a pastor is particular popular or powerful, s/he is able to find an alternative scapegoat to take the burdens of the congregation–the church treasurer, a powerful board member, etc. 

Because of this triangling tendency, more effort is spent finding fault and casting blame as a means to restore peace (defined as the absense of conflict) than in building healthy relationship and fostering authenticity as a means to establishing peace (defined as wholeness and health).

Tomorrow, I’ll delve into self-differentiation and the ways in which church leaders can help foster healthy systems without being the burden-bearer.

A Systems Approach to Leadership, pt 1

I’ve been interested in Family Systems Theory for the past couple years.  It has been very influential in the Marriage and Family Therapy program at Bethel Seminary, where I am a student.  Although I haven’t had the priviledge of taking a course in that program, I have a number of friends who have turned me on to the theory.  As a result, I’ve studied it in my spare time, believing it to have some helpful insights into healthy church systems.  A systems approach to family was developed primarily by Murray Bowen.  Later, Edwin Friedman applied the theory to church systems.  Later, folks like Peter Steinke developed things further. 

Why should you care? Well, if we want to move away from commodified, individualistic, programmatic approaches to Church, then we need to have a communal approach to church health.  Since oikos (household or family) is a key New Testament metaphor for understanding church, insights into healthy family systems could help us move towards healthier churches. 

Instead of delving into all the nuances of systems theory as it applies to church, I’m going to limit my exploration to church leadership.  Many of the problems in our churches are rooted, in part, to our church leadership.  The clergy/laity distinction creates a "double theft" in which congregants are robbed of their calling as ministers while "clergy" are robbed of the freedom to be human. 

This can be seen most clearly in examples of infidelity.  When a pastor commits infidelity, usually it is seen as his problem (allow me to stick with a masculine example, though it could apply to a woman as well)–one that has nothing, if anything, to do with the church as a system.  That same pastor could go into a therapist with his wife and be told by the therapist that the infidelity is THEIR problem–not just HIS problem.  Often, there are relational dynamics at play that go beyond simply blaming the husband for his infidelity. For example, they both may have contributed to a long process of emotional alienation.  After years of marriage, the wife may have stopped seeking emotional intimacy with her husband and begun to find it in her group of friends.  The pastor may no longer find his marriage warm and comfortaning.  Furthermore, at church he is expected to live up to a high standard.  As the spiritual leader, he may find himself unable to meaningfully connect with others–since churches rarely treat pastors as piers.  Disconnected emotionally from his wife and unable to find healing relationships at church, the pastor succumbs to temptation–a woman at his church gives him the friendship and intimacy he has been craving. 

Usually when this happens, the pastor is required to repent before the congregation.  He is then either asked to step down or commit to a lengthy restoration process.  When a pastor commits infidelity, and begins the process of restoration, how often is the church brought through a process of healing?  Churches that have had pastors "fall" into infidelity sometimes have a history of pastors falling into infidelity–this indicates that these churches have unhealthy patterns which foster infidelity: emotional alienation for their leadership, high expectations, etc.  Do churches ever ask themselves the role they played in the infidelity? 

Seminaries are increasing their efforts at character development among clergy–since moral failure and burnout are seen as a more pressing issue than faulty theology.  Perhaps we should start looking elsewhere–at the very systems that foster moral failure and burnout.

More on leadership in church systems tomorrow…

Emergent Movement as Protest

Scot McKnight’s blog is probably on my top five favorite blogs.  Reading it is always a treat. Recently, he posted 10 ways in which the Emergent Movement is a Protest Movement:

1. It protests too much tom-fakery in traditional
   churches.
2. It denounces the divisions
   in the Church.
3. It sees cock-sure certainty as a cancer.
4. It refuses to separate action from articulation.
5. It wants individualism absorbed into incorporation.
6. The Emerging Movement?s mindset is against marketing the gospel.
7. The Emerging Movement despises the idea that Church is what takes place on Sunday Morning.
8. The Emerging Movement rejects the hierarchy and pyramid structure
   of many churches.
9. The social gospel cannot be separated from the spiritual gospel.
10. The Emerging Movement wants to be Worldly.

For the most part, I resonate with every point (except 10–at least as McKnight articulates it). I find myself struggling with being associated with the emergent movement…but not because I disagree with the ideals of the movement, but because I feel that institutional expressions like Emergent–which is the face of the movement–seems to counteract some of the driving protests of the movement.  I’d love to hear your thoughs about these 10 protests, as well as how well you think the Emergent is doing in incarnating these protests.

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