ANXIOUS CONGREGATIONS

Leadership in

FAMILY SYSTEMS

Reaction

Response

Anxiety

FAMILY SYSTEMS

Reaction

Response

Anxiety

History

FamilyLoss

Differences

Non-reflective

ANXIETY

Chronic anxiety is habitual. We can’t put anxiety to rest. Even the slightest change or trivial annoyance incites reactive behavior.

Chronically anxious church families may have small groups splinter off periodically. Or the family stays intact but is submissive to a small but manipulative power group.

Steinke, p20

ANXIETY

When we begin to feel anxious, one of the first questions we usually ask is whose fault it is.” p 91 Creating a Healthier Church

DIFFERENTIATION

Undifferentiated Differentiation

Emotional / InstinctiveReactiveInfectiousDefensiveThoughtless / Herding

Undifferentiation (instinctive, reactive, defensive, thoughtless behavior) 1. Accommodates, pleases, or acts to take care of the others’ pain To maintain a relationship, the leaders “gives in” and “gives up” self; is anxious about losing the approval of others. 2. Focuses outside of self To stay close to others, the leaders pays attention to the actions and feelings of others, not his own. How someone else will react is more important than how he can take a position.

ANXIETY AND DIFFERENTIATION

Principle-CenteredthoughtfulDefining SelfRegulate SelfReflective / SolitudeResponsible

Differentiation is the ability of people to guide their own functioning by • thinking clearly • acting on principle • defining self by taking a position • coming to know more about their own instinctive reactions to others • learning to regulate those reactions • staying in contact with others • choosing a responsible course of action

Emotional / InstinctiveReactiveInfectiousDefensiveThoughtless / Herding

Undifferentiated Differentiation

ANXIETY AND DIFFERENTIATION

Edwin Friedman, author of Generation to Generation and a student of Murray Bowen, has

claimed: “Actually religious institutions are the worst offenders of encouraging immaturity and irresponsibility. In church after church some member is passive-aggressively holding the whole system hostage, and no one wants to fire him or force her to leave because it wouldn’t be ‘the Christian thing to do.’ It has nothing to do with Christianity. Synagogues also tolerate abusers because it wouldn’t be ‘the Christian thing to do.’’’3 Indecisiveness is reactivity. It’s a defense against a split in the house.

Immaturity Maturity

You will have to contend with some members ready for new ways of seeing and doing things and some riveted to the old.

1. Will your relationship with either side affect your thinking?

2. Will emotional bonds determine your decision, or will your own values and beliefs guide your actions?

DIFFERENTIATION

Differentiation is a process in which a person moves toward a more intentional

and thoughtful way of life (and a less automatic way of functioning).

DIFFERENTIATION

“Leaders who keep on working on their own self-differentiation,”...automatically challenge their followers to do the same and, thus, maximize the process of self-differentiation throughout the entire family. (p. 233)

WHAT IS OUR MISSION

Providing a focus is the work of leadership. If the congregation is not focused on its mission, it will focus on something—perhaps the budget, the past glory days, or the pastor’s performance.

What is our mission?

DIFFERENTIATION

What is our mission?Is it Christian?

We like Steve’s Preaching, Teaching and Mission/outreach focus, but…

We don’t know him very wellMy friends are not here and we don’t know whyI was upset and he didn’t take care of meEtc.

DEALING WITH ANXIETY

If the leader adapts his functioning to the weakest members, he enables their dependency, encourages their happy ignorance, and reinforces their helplessness. To protect a congregation from bad news or upsetting changes is to admit that the system is weak and fragile, too brittle to be challenged. The congregation’s threshold for pain is low and its opportunity for changing is negligible. But distress is not always an obstacle to learning.

DEALING WITH ANXIETY

If the leader does not have some degree of toleration of pain, it’s doubtful that others will be able to tolerate pain and use it for growth. As a result, Friedman asserted, the weakest, most dependent, and most emotionally driven people will control the congregation. They will influence the emotional field, not you.

DEALING WITH ANXIETY

Whatever the trigger of anxiety might be, whatever the anxious behaviors, the healthier way for leaders to function to affect this emotional field in pain would be to • recognize resistance as a normal reaction to leadership rather than taking it personally; • know that relationships are reciprocal and interactive and that our own calm, reflective functioning influences the congregation positively;

DEALING WITH ANXIETY

• exercise patience because anxiety’s effect on an emotional field is immediate, whereas our well-composed functioning influences the emotional system in the longer term; • consider their goals for the congregation to avoid giving in to the pressure of the moment, such as by quickly fixing problems and taking care of people’s anxiety; • learn to tolerate anxious times in order to use them as opportunities for creative responses; • manage their own anxiety.

BOUNDARIES

When boundaries are inappropriately crossed and people are harmed, no one wants to name the violation. It’s as if the disturbance of the group’s serenity is a greater offense than the viral-like behavior. Boundary violators go unattended and suffer no consequences.

BOUNDARIES

Although going the “second mile” (Matt. 5:41) with offenders is commendable, to go the third, fourth, and fifth mile is indefensible. The lack of attention only enables the repetition of the invasive behavior.

BOUNDARIES

In congregations, typical boundary offenses include one person or a group of people that• accuse someone without reasonable cause or without initially talking to the accused; • find “living tissue” in which to grow their rumors or careless talk; • disregard guidelines, policies, and procedures; • consistently break appointments and miss meetings; • humiliate people, publicly or privately; • use verbal pressure to intimidate; • hold others hostage by threats or demands;

BOUNDARIES

• enlist others to attend secret meetings, distribute petitions for signature to discredit others, or send unauthorized messages containing disparaging information about someone; • ignore or neglect others, as if they don’t exist, for no other reason than the others hold different views; • hide their real agenda by appearing harmless, maybe even beneficial: “We’re only concerned for the good of everybody”; • break an agreement not to talk publicly about a matter until a later date;

BOUNDARIES

• withhold affection, approval, and appreciation to demean another; • label others with emotionally-packed words; • discontinue giving the money they pledged; • speak on behalf of others, as if they know what the other is thinking; • tell different accounts or share different information, depending on the hearers; • attach fear to any issue in order to control others.

EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY CHURCH

Leaders supply for the community what the immune system provides for the body.

a healthy struggle around such questions as: How are we going to function as a community? What is our defining and unique mission? What are the norms to which we hold each other accountable? What are the expectations of each member with regard to the whole?

EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY CHURCH

I would add that, just as bodies need immunity to be healthy, bodies politic do poorly without immunity. People in our communities who lack the ability to regulate self will invade, intrude, trespass, attack, and rudely interfere—making a mess of things. Silence and avoidance on the part of the leader only enable the “disease” process .

MaturityInfant

Adult

Child

Adolescent

“The church will never mature

beyond the leadership.”

Peter Scazzero

EMOTIONAL INFANTS • Look for others to take care of them • Have great difficulty entering into the world of others • Are driven by need for instant gratification • Use others as objects to meet their needs

EMOTIONAL CHILDREN • Are content and happy as long as they receive what they want • Unravel quickly from stress, disappointments, trials • Interpret disagreements as personal offenses • Are easily hurt • Complain, withdraw, manipulate, take revenge, become sarcastic when they don’t get their way • Have great difficulty calmly discussing their needs and wants in a mature, loving way

EMOTIONAL ADOLESCENTS • Tend to often be defensive • Are threatened and alarmed by criticism • Keep score of what they give so they can ask for something later in return • Deal with conflict poorly, often blaming, appeasing, going to a third party, pouting, or ignoring the issue entirely • Become preoccupied with themselves • Have great difficulty truly listening to another person’s pain, disappointments, or needs • Are critical and judgmental

EMOTIONAL ADULTS • Are able to ask for what they need, want, or prefer—clearly, directly, honestly • Recognize, manage, and take responsibility for their own thoughts and feelings • Can, when under stress, state their own beliefs and values without becoming adversarial • Respect others without having to change them • Give people room to make mistakes and not be perfect • Appreciate people for who they are—the good, bad, and ugly—not for what they give back • Accurately assess their own limits, strengths, and weaknesses and are able to freely discuss them with others • Are deeply in tune with their own emotional world and able to enter into the feelings, needs, and concerns of others without losing themselves • Have the capacity to resolve conflict maturely and negotiate solutions that consider the perspectives of others”― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It's Impossible to Be Spiritually Mature, While Remaining Emotionally Immature

AnxietyHerding

Reactivity

Blaming

Quick FixReactive, Repressive,

Infectous

An emotionally regressive family will tend to adopt an

appeasement strategy with disruptive members in order

to be ‘inclusive’, while sabotaging those who would

stand up to them. It will bend over backwards to

accommodate people who are focused on their rights,

rather than responsibilities, and attack the person who

seeks to take an unaccommodating and self-defined

position, presenting them as cruel, selfish, or insensitive.

This is so predictable that being called such names is

usually a sign that you are moving in the right direction.

Quick Fix

the regressive society exhibits a herding tendency. It will

tend to ‘reverse the direction of adaption toward

strength, and it winds up organizing its existence around

the least mature, the most dependent, or the most

dysfunctional members of the “colony”’ (67).

Herding

As long as there is blaming, it is nearly impossible to institute change. Blaming is a sign that people are

stuck in the instinctive nature.Steinke, p54

Blaming

When anxiety ushers in its relatives—anger, anguish, and grief—the temptation to scapegoat is strong. Scapegoating is an attempt to pinpoint a culprit or to find fault with someone. The blame throwers at first will hurl charges indiscriminately at any target. Most likely, however, anxiety will be projected onto people in the most responsible or the most vulnerablepositions in the congregation.

Blaming

“When there is something to blame,there is nothing to work on.”

T. Cooper

Blaming

Herding

Reactivity

Blaming

Quick Fix

‘raising our own threshold for the pain another is experiencing can

often motivate the other to take more responsibility for his or her

life’ (85)

Anxiety

AnxietyHerding

Reactivity

Quick FixPoorly defined leadership

Low threshold

of pain, peace

mongering,

PASTORAL CARE

Pastoral care and leadership, then, are not about helping people relieve their anxiety through the offering of palliative comfort, but rather helping people to engage the powers that have hold of their life so as to leave what is old for what is new.

People have a strong tendency to deny troubles—as if the difficulties should not be present, as if “Don’t disturb” signs are hung on every door.

OVERFUNCTIONING

Overfunctioning happens when one person takes increasing amounts of responsibility for the functioning of one or more other people. As the underfunctioner does less in on or more of these three areas, the overfunctioner does more.

OVERFUNCTIONING

A common misunderstanding of good “pastoral” care is that when someone is having a personal difficulty in the church, it our job to ‘make them feel better.” This is, however, a type of overfunctioning.

OVERFUNCTIONING

The pastor had to work hard to clarify what was and was not his responsibility and to develop a new way of relating to and caring for people who had difficulties. He worked at not taking on other people’s jobs or doing things for committees that they could do for themselves. (p141)

NEXT STEPS

Leadership Re-Alignment

Behavioral Covenant

Staff Parish Training

Closely related to denial is oversimplification. Congregations simplify by using comments like, “That just happens” or “Things were worse before.”

(this kind of thing happens in every church…That’s just the way they are….)

When facing anxious times, a high percentage of congregations freeze. Since action might trigger opposition, leaders delay and delay.

No one wants to upset or offend others. Immobility can put off the inevitable, but only momentarily. As long as the congregation is stuck, it remains knee-deep in anxiety.

To work on your capacity to regulate your own anxiety and reactivity—to be a nonanxious presence—think about these things:

1. Knowing your limits and the limits of others a. A clear understanding of where “I” end and

someone else begins b. A respect for the rights of others to be the way they

are, yet refusing to allow others to violate or intrude upon your own rights

c. A readiness to define who you are from within, rather than adapting to please others or defining yourself over against others

2. Having a clarity about what you believe a. Having a set of convictions, values, and beliefs b. Knowing what you would “die for” and what’s

important c. Recognizing about what you are certain and about

what you are not certain

3. Taking stands with courage a. Defining where you stand and what you believe in

the face of disapproval b. Refusing to give in for the sake of harmony when it

is a matter of principle c. Standing firm in the face of strong reactions (such

as, “You can’t think, act, or feel that way and be part of this community!”) ultimatums

4. Staying on course a. Resolving to follow through, in spite of reactive

opposition or sabotage b. b. Exercising emotional and spiritual stamina to

follow a vision, not allowing reactive forces to change your course.

5. Staying connected to others, despite it all a. Maintaining a nonreactive presence with people

who are reacting to you (by verbally attacking you, avoiding your presence, minimizing your viewpoint)

b. Resisting your own impulse to attack or cut off from those reacting to you, or to appease them to dispel their anger or frustration

c. Managing your own anxiety, not others’ anxiety