Rules of Family Dynamics: (2) Loss and Replacement

To the extent a family rushes to replace loss, its pain will be lessened, but so will the potential for change that the loss made possible (Friedman, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue [New York: Guildford Press, 1985], 42).

Perhaps we shouldn't be, but we usually are surprised when people quickly replace a loss. Now we are not talking about a physical loss like a car that gets totaled. Obviously, most of us would replace such a loss very quickly. But what of emotional loss? Your long-time pet dies this week. You have a puppy in the house by next week. Still seems innocent enough, doesn't it?

But what of the man whose wife dies this week but he is remarried by the end of the month? I know you have seen this happen. I have.

Another example might be the end of a long engagement where either party is dating someone new immediately after the breakup. Sometimes the new couple is even married shortly thereafter. We should not minimize how strong our need to replace loss is.

The Bible records some interesting loss replacement stories. Take Isaac as an example. Isaac, being the special only child of Sarah, was especially close to his mother. Note the language of replacement in the following text:

Isaac brought [Rebekah] into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death. (Genesis 24:67 NIV)

Many wives would confess that they feel a bit like a mother to the man they marry. This was especially true of Isaac who did not marry Rebekah until his mother died and even brought her to his mother's tent. Creepy or special? You decide.

Loss and replacement can be seen in the Joseph narrative. After Jacob believes Joseph is dead, Rachel's second son, Benjamin become the favorite of the family. 

When the children of Israel find themselves at the foot of Mount Sinai and they have not seen or heard from Moses for many days, they will seek to replace God (and God's leader) with Aaron and the Golden Calf. The people sought a quick replacement for what they thought they had lost.

However, when God really wants to train us, he allows us to undergo longer periods of loss. For instance, the story of the exodus is about losing the Promised Land as is the story of the Exile. During the latter, the Israelites were away from country, home, and temple. Yet during this time of loss, God purified Israel.

Churches also have this replacement reflex. They can be very quick in replacing a minister. When a minister leaves unexpectedly, it is not unusual for a church to make a quick hire. Usually the thinking goes something like this, "We don't want to be long without a minister because if we do, we may lose members." Often a preacher will leave an emotional void in addition to the administrative one which no one wants to take on. So the solution: Hire a minister now!

I once served in interim role for a church in Canada whose very esteemed minister of over twenty years decided to return to mission work. He had been communicating with the elders that he longed to return to India, but neither he nor his elders moved very far. Then one day it happened, the minister was really going to make the move.

The church became anxious at the impending loss, the elders grew concerned. I asked them to consider a different approach. I agreed to serve as an interim for a one year period, to work closely with the transition (traditionally search) team in preparing the congregation for their next minister.

Over the next year, we formed the team composed of representatives from every subgroup in the congregation, we did a complete self-study of the congregation, we came up with non-negotiable criteria for the new minister, and we conducted the search and call process.

This interim ministry reduced the anxiety at the sudden loss of a key ministerial leader and kept the church from jumping on the next train that came through town.

The self-study was immensely helpful for bringing everyone together. For the older members, it was an opportunity to share the congregational stories with the younger members of the group. For the younger members, it became an opportunity to understand the older members of the congregation. This was important because the church was a very different group of people than when the minister of twenty plus years had been called.

The first round of the search produced a candidate that looked like a good fit but he would not be available for another year yet since he and his wife were missionaries in China. Consequently, this first search did not surface an available candidate. The following year, the associate minister, who had no desire for the senior position, took the lead chair and I rolled out of the interim role but remained a consultant and participant in the second round of the search process. Finally, the candidate in China was ready to make the move but because of process had to resubmit his application. I'm happy to say that the two-year wait (time of loss) was well worth it and I believe this congregation and her minister would agree.

The point that Friedman is underscoring with his second rule is that times of loss, if seized upon, can be time of tremendous growth. So the next time you realize that you have lost something, slow down, and let God do the good work in you he desires.

Let me know if you desire more information on ministerial transition, interim ministry, or living with loss.

Rules of Family Dynamics: (1) Emotional Distance

When family members use physical distance to solve problems of emotional interdependency, the result is always temporary, or includes a transference of the problem to another relationship system (Friedman, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue [New York: Guildford Press, 1985], 41).

A simpler version might be: when we use distance to alleviate our emotional enmeshment with other people, we will either find that the strategy brings only temporary relief or we will become emotionally enmeshed with someone else.

Our logic is normally something like this: that person is causing me pain, if I get away from that person, the pain will lessen. However, that logic fails with emotional enmeshment. Family System Theory (FST) would locate the problem in the refusal of each person involved to be a "self." Enmeshed relationships (called codependency in other models) are characterized by people being confused over where they end and the other person begins. Or, it is like having two toys trying to run on one battery. There just does not seem to be enough juice in the battery for two whole toys to function independently.

Humans, it appears, have two contradictory needs: the need to be a "self" (me) and the need to be connected with another (we). Thus, all relationships are about "managing" the space between theses two needs. We often use physical distance to manage the space between me and we. We are, in this way of thinking, a bit like porcupines trying to stay warm without poking each other. We want to be close to others, but sometimes this hurts, especially, when we feel the other person overwhelming our sense of self. We even call this experience suffocation.

In Friedman's first rule, he deals with how we use physical distance to regulate the anxiety we experience as we move between me and we. However sometimes the we experience is a bit too much. On the less extreme end, we will avoid people who make us uncomfortable, on the other end, we divorce them, move far away from them, or worse, remove them.

An extreme form of separation is called an emotional cutoff. Counter intuitively, people who use emotional cutoffs to solve issues of emotional interdependency (enmeshment) are actually very connected to the person they are trying to leave and they will replicate their need in another relationship.

This explains the person who divorces a spouse only to marry someone very much like the person they left. Or, think of the abused spouse who seems to find only another abuser. Another example of an emotional cutoff might be the son who runs away from his Dad to become his own man, only to find that he finds himself in the same kind of stifling relationship but now with, say, an uncle or boss.

There are a couple of biblical stories that illustrate this well. The story of Jacob and Esau (Genesis 27) comes to mind. The story is very involved when you think about it. Isaac is fused to Esau; Rebekah to Jacob. Isaac and Rebekah are in a conflictual relationship that they project on their children. The children, with the help of Rebekah, will resolve the conflict between the boys by having Jacob run away to his uncle. Soon he will find that his unfinished business (the cheating of his brother and father) will continue in his relationship with his uncle Laban. In fact, in time, Jacob will find his new situation twice as bad as what he left. Distance only amplified family process.

Another example of this might be David and his son Absalom's relationship. The Bible records,

Then Joab went to Geshur and brought Absalom back to Jerusalem. But the king said, “He must go to his own house; he must not see my face.” So Absalom went to his own house and did not see the face of the king … Absalom lived two years in Jerusalem without seeing the king’s face. (2 Samuel 14:23–28 NIV; see text for larger story)

Again, physical distance (or time, as in the case of this story) could not resolve the emotional conflict that existed between father and son.

While both Abraham and David's families provide many examples illustrating the validity of FST, there are also plenty of examples arising from congregational life.

Any time in congregation life when we avoid another, we are using distance to manage an enmeshed or poorly defined relationship. Members who come to worship or meetings late, an elder avoiding members "who get to them," meetings that never get around to dealing with the elephant in the room are all examples of how people use distance to manage difficult or uncomfortable relationships.

Some of the more memorable examples in my ministry to date include the couple who would arrive late for worship each week and then when something would happen in the service they did not like, they would leave. What seems odd, when you think about it, is that the couple attended at all. But that is the way of enmeshed relationships: they form loops that get played out over and over again—and will until someone has the courage to call the game.

Church leaders who find themselves using emotional distance to resolves issues have an opportunity to do something different. They can dare to stand where it is uncomfortable. They can choose to reconnect to the person seemingly causing them pain. They can choose to confront what their guts (and the Spirit of God) tells them is the right thing to do.

Or they can choose leave well enough alone—but then they will have to deal with the issue over and over again. The key to managing emotional distance is to take a stand while staying connected to the other. Distance will solve nothing.

Rules of Family Dynamics: Intro

I have previously credited Edwin H. Friedman (Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue [NY: Guildford Press, 1985]) with helping me to understand congregational families and how they function. In previous posts I explored Friedman's conceptual ideas:

• Homeostasis 
• Extended Family Field 
• Identified Patient 
• Differentiation of Self 
• Emotional Triangles 

The two most important terms are homeostasis and differentiation of self. Family will seek to maintain equilibrium and will do what it is necessary to recover whatever previous balance has been lost. Families will often inflict more damage on themselves and others attempting to regain homeostasis and what is often lost by those observing this process, is that the attempt to regain is largely unconscious and automatic. When someone within the system can gain the vantage point to see what is going on in a family and then choose to act differently, this individual is differentiating himself from the system.

For example, husbands and wives often find themselves in the same argument over and over again. One spouse may say something, the other spouse understands the comment to be demeaning, an argument ensues over "semantics," Next one spouse shuts down and becomes sullen, the other spouse pursues, now trying to open the other up. The stalemate sets in. Some time goes by and the cycle starts over again and can go on for some time. The parts are predictable and we are usually willing to play our parts.

Husband: Where did you hide my socks?
Wife: I did not hide them anywhere. Have you looked in your sock drawer?
Husband: I wouldn't be asking you if I had not looked?
Wife: Why are you accusing me of hiding your socks?
Husband: I can't find them (but implying, "so you must have hid them").

Maybe you had this conversation this morning and it usually goes the same way. There are a couple of ways to get out of this cycle but it requires presence of mind. First, the husband who is really just looking for a pair of socks could asks ask, "Do you know if I have any clean socks? Do you know where I should look for them?" That alone, could end the cycle before it begins.

However, we usually don't know that we have said something that someone else could take wrong until they respond. So the wife could derail the normal cycle of what sounds accusatory to her with humor. "Yes, dear, I hid them in the clothes basket by the dryer."

The other three concepts involve realities that either challenge or support family homeostasis. The extended family field creates the larger context in which homeostasis is maintained. All families, including congregational ones, exist is in a larger world of other interconnected relationships. Thus, changes in the extended family field can have an impact on the balance of the various families that are connected to it. Thus, insights into what is going on in the extended family field can explain what might be happening in a particular family within that field.

Families will often create identified patients (black sheep, scapegoats, the one with the problem) to help maintain family balance and lessen the pressure on the other members of the family. At one end, a mother may project her anxiety on a child until the child begins to "act out" the mother's concern. This move can "stabilize" her relationship with her husband so for the time being they don't have to notice the deterioration of their relationship. When churches create identified patients, it is often so the congregation can reduce its sense of responsibility when something has gone wrong.

In each of the examples just given, we have emotional triangles at work. We form triangles in our attempt to stabilize the family or congregation under consideration. Triangles easily create the odd man out and so are places where "false" alliances can form between two people with a common enemy or who have allied together to solves a common problem (usually another person).

I have recapped these concepts to remind us that these concepts are interrelated and will be at work in any given family at all times. During times of anxiety these become more readily visible, but they are always operative.

Friedman goes beyond his original concepts by offering ten "rules" of how families work. These "rules" were not intended to be laws that were immutable but rather points at which one could observe how families work. What I would like to do in the next several posts is repeat Freidman's rules, which are often wordy, and then translate it through my experience of working with families and churches. I hope the church leaders among my readers will find that these ring true with their experience as leaders.

How Family Really Works (2)

In my last blog, I dealt with two of Friedman's Family Systems concepts: Homeostasis, or balance, and extended family field. In part two, I will deal with the remaining concepts: identified patient, differentiation of self, and emotional triangles.

The Identified Patient (IP) is the symptomatic person. In a family (or church) crisis, the member of the family that seems to be having the problem is the identified patient. However, in Family Systems Theory (FST), the identified patient is more accurately the symptom-bearer (or even the scapegoat) of the family's anxieties. Often, in a family, this will be the person with either the greatest responsibility or greatest vulnerability.

A couple of illustrations might help. Johnny is the youngest of three children. He recently starting acting out by hitting other children at school and his grades are suffering. Johnny easily becomes the IP in the family. The family begins to mobilize to "fix" Johnny who clearly has the problem. Oddly, the family counsellor wants to focus on what is going on between Johnny's parents. They are stressed because Dad can't get enough work to keep the family financially stable. Johnny has become concerned that his parents may be on the edge of a divorce. In response to financial stress Mom begins to focus on (project her anxieties on?) Johnny. Within a few weeks, Dad lands a sufficient job, the stress in the family decreases, and Johnny's symptoms disappear.

During intense times, families (and again churches) will create identified patients. One of the roles that the IP serves is  to reduce responsibility in the other members of the family. When a family is fixated on fixing one of their members, you can be sure that other members of the family are not accepting their full responsibility for the current state of things. Furthermore, families can perpetuate the myth that if we can fix another, we will somehow come to paradise. However, this is elusive and just as one IP is solved, another seems to pop up in his or her place.

Biblically, this is the old blame game. When paradise is disrupted it happens around creating IPs. The serpent blames God for the woman's lack of perfection; later the man blames God for giving him the woman in the first place. Every character in this story seeks to make another responsible for their plight.

In church life, ministers are particularly prone to becoming IPs. After all they are the most responsible members of the community as they will certainly receive blame if things don't go well. They are also the most vulnerable members as no one else will have to move if things don't go well. Ministers, therefore, need a strong sense of calling to weather these times. They also need strong resolve to be self-differentiated (next concept).

Let me see if I can illustrate this. Ted was a well-educated, seasoned minister. He had helped his congregation through a particularly difficult time and now things should have been getting better. Yet, he found himself not as engaged in the life of the church. He was tired and a bit listless. The stressful years had left the church more polarized than ever before. One of the polarized factions pressed on the elder board to remove Ted because he just wasn't getting it done as he had earlier. The truth was that entire church systems had not found a new homeostasis after the crisis and this left everyone a bit uneasy. The faction had turned Ted into the IP and the only way to fix it was for the scapegoat to go into the wilderness.

IPs always function so as to absolve communal guilt (responsibility?). One of the best questions to ask when you recognize that someone has become the IP is "Who is not taking responsibility for his role in this situation?"

Differentiation of Self. Friedman considers this concept to be the key to survival within any family system. Differentiation is not a sense of cool detachment; to be self-differentiated is to remain a self (yourself) in the midst of all of our families. Perhaps a good way to get to this idea is to deal with its reverse. Have you ever met a couple who finished each other’s statements, corrected the other, but you were certain that they were running on one battery. It was as if there was not enough "self" there to run both of them. Sometimes these marriages are touted for their harmony and the fact that they never ever argue. Of course, they don't; someone had to become brain dead for both of them to function in the relationship.

 A side note here: when God declared that a husband and wife should become one one, he did not mean either one should be absorbed in the other, but that the two make a new “oneness.” So when a husband and wife becomes one, they should enhance each other and not require the other to become less of a self.

Groupthink would be the opposite of being self-differentiated. A self-differentiated individual can hold to her believes regardless of the fact that everyone else in the room thinks the same thing except her. Being self-differentiated means that you are comfortable where you are though you know that others are in different places. That is, when you state your opinion, and someone states their opinion, you don't change your mind just to agree with them. Being self-differentiated will allow you to change your mind, if so persuaded, but not simply to keep peace at all cost.

Within a crisis, a self-differentiated person will be affected by the anxiety of others but not infected.

This is a difficult concept because it is paradoxical. A self-differentiated person will both take a stand and remain connected to those creating or generating the anxiety. As Friedman would remind us, no one is perfectly self-differentiated: we are always both an individual and a member of families. As humans, we have simultaneous needs to be "me" and "we," that is, the need to be separate and together at the same time.

Emotional Triangles are actually commonplace in human relationships. Our most satisfying relationships are those involving us and one other person; these relationships can be quite intense. However, they also have the tendency to  be quite unstable. When a relationship begins to destabilize, we will reinforce it by bringing in a third person or issue. We create issues to refocus the relationship so that the relationship is not so uncomfortable; we bring in a third person either as an ally to fix the other person and thus reduce the discomfort of the relationship. Triangles are fluid and shift rapidly within and between relationships. Triangles both serve to stabilize anxious one-on-one relationships as well as creating an ally should the one-on-one relationship fall apart or become imbalanced. Triangles are the social device we commonly use to restore homeostasis.

Here is an illustration I use often to illustrate triangles. A mother and daughter are interlocked in conflict since the daughter has taken up smoking. The mother had given up smoking years ago and so she has experience with the addictive side of smoking. However, the more she prevails upon her daughter to quit, the more the teen seems to smoke and the more public her smoking becomes. The mother has pleaded, warned, cajoled, and even belittled the daughter to get her to quit. Little does the mother know that her daughter's smoking is not the "problem.” In Family System thinking, there is really only one argument: "You don't look like me and I insist that you do."Smoking becomes a red herring here. What is really awry here is that the mother and daughter's relationship has deteriorated to the point that all they can now talk about is the daughter's smoking. So now every time they are together, the subject always comes up.

Imagine now, given what you know about the mother and daughter, that the daughter happens into a new relationship with a boy. The chances are great that the mother will not like the boyfriend, no matter how noble he is. Since the "real" issue is what is happening between the mother and daughter, nothing the daughter does will be appropriate to the mother. However, the conversation might shift from smoking to how much time she is spending with the boyfriend. If mother harangues on about the boyfriend, there is a greater than even chance that daughter will run off with the boyfriend.

The previous scenarios have used "issues" as the third point of the triangle. People are also triangled into unstable relationships. Just a guess, but I would bet the hypothetical mom above is in conflict with her mother and that the daughter gets along wonderfully with her grandmother.

If a church is in crisis, then triangles will be present and morphing throughout the congregation. Typical triangles you find in the church would be, say, leading members of the congregation not on the board against the board of elders with the minister mediating between the two. Another example might be an elder's wife against the minister with her husband as the go-between. 

For a good biblical example of triangles, remember Isaac and Rebekkah and their two sons. Isaac favored Esau against Rebekkah/Isaac while Rebekkah favored Isaac against Isaac/Esau. There are many more triangles at work in the children of Abraham and Sarah.

Summary. This blog and the previous covered the most important concept for understanding how families really work. These five concepts give you tools to begin to see congregational and family life in a new light.

In the next several posts, I will be exploring Friedman's ten "rules" of family process which I have found immensely helpful in understanding congregational dynamics.

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Speical Thanks to Heath Vogel from Mandleville Christian Church for proofing this piece. All mistakes remaining are his! Just kidding. Thanks Heath.

How Family Really Works (1)

Previously we have noted that we are social (or more precisely familial) beings as opposed to autonomous, isolated individuals. What is common to all humans is that we come from mothers. Yes, I know, a rather obvious observation. However, what is not so obvious, is that, given this fact, there may be something so basic to human existence that most of us miss it until someone points it out. I hope I'm helping with making the "obvious" visible.

We are born into families and we grow up in the context of family. So it should follow that what we learn in our family, how we function in that family, and who we believe ourselves to be in the context of the family will presage who and what we do in the context of our church family. If it is true that each of us came from a mother, it may also be true that there are some common behaviors of families that can inform us about life in the church as well.

Friedman (Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue) identified five of these commonalities. 

• Homeostasis
• Extended Family Field
• Identified Patient
• Differentiation of Self
• Emotional Triangles

Far from being just intellectual notions, these realities will impinge on every challenge a minister or church leader will face in the lived reality of church life. In what follows, I seek to give a brief description of each concept and also to give some examples of how it bears on church leadership.

Homeostasis. This technical-looking word just means "balance." All families seek to maintain balance. Watching families maintain balance is a bit like watching a husband and wife secretly battle over the thermostat. The wife wants the house cooler so she sets the thermostat to 68º. Later the husband, who is now too cold, moves the thermostat up to 75º. This can go on for weeks without the husband and wife having a confrontation. The balance is maintained by each spouse playing his or her part. Then one day, one of them sees the other moving the thermostat and begins to question why the other must have their favorite temperature. After the ensuing argument, the couple will resume the game.

What must be understood is that families will make whatever move is necessary to maintain their sense of balance. Furthermore, if a family's balance is dysfunctional to begin with it, the family will seek to maintain that awkward balance regardless of how outsiders try to help them. This phenomenon is a bit like watching a one-legged person get use to using a prosthetic leg. While the person may long to use the new limb, the one-legged situation feels more natural. In some cases, such a person may decide that the effort in getting accustom to the new leg is just not worth it.

Since churches are family of families, it again follows that what is true of families in general would also be true of church family. Here is a good example of how homeostasis plays out in church life.

A minister of two years has been successful in reshaping the Sunday evening service. Instead of a traditional repeat of the Sunday morning service, the minister has led the church into a more interactive time together. The church now sings a few devotional songs, there might be a brief presentation and the rest of the evening is spent in small group conversation. Everyone seems to like the new format. However, the minister suddenly resigns. The very first Sunday the minister is gone the congregation reverts to the Sunday evening format that was in place before the minister changed it.

In church life, we can all probably think of things that "almost everyone" believes need to be fix, yet nothing ever seems to change. One of the reasons for this inertia is that families desire homeostasis, sometimes disguised as "peace." 

Extended Family Field refers to the fact that families have families. As mentioned in a previous post, our extended families form a field around its members. Families are a bit like amoebae. They are enormously flexible. They have boundaries that can keep out foreign invaders while maintaining enough integrity to hold the system together. But like an amoeba, a family can stretch far enough to keep everyone in the loop.

In terms of family and church life, a change anywhere in the extended family field can create disturbances in any of the other families connected to the field. A death in California can immobilize an elder in Oklahoma then permeates his anxiety throughout the congregation he leads. When I lived in Canada, I could be sure that a major event in the life of the church in Regina where I lived would be reported in Vancouver, Yellowknife, and Winnipeg that same day. That is how tight the extended family field was among the Canadian churches I knew.

In church life, then, this extended family field accounts for the peer pressure churches feel when they want to experiment with some practice out of the norm but don't because they are afraid of the reaction among their sister churches.

I'm interested in watching how extended family field changes as churches give less attention to traditional boundary markers, such as distinct practices, denominational loyalties, and brand name. These are all signs that the extended family field within churches is changing.

In the next blog, I will deal with the last three items in Friedman's list.

Getting Family Right

Before I get us too deep in Family Systems stuff, I think it is important to state that church is primarily a theological enterprise. What I mean by "theological" is that it deals with encountering and connecting with God. Church should be about finding the meaning of God and the implication of that meaning for our lives. By the way after this series on the church family, I would like to give some focussed attention on the church's theological quest.

Right now though, I want to help the ministers, elders, and church leaders who are in the thick of it discover a very important set of tools for their leadership tool kit. As important as studying the Bible is, leaders soon discover they wish they had the missing manual for leading in the midst of real, lived church life. There are many practical matters to which church leaders must give attention that are not mentioned at all in the Bible. Church leaders soon discover that their time can become consumed with things other than for what they thought they were signing up.

I think Family Systems Theory (FST) can serve as the missing manual to church leadership. However, because we are dealing with real families, I can't give you ten simple rules that will always work in every and all circumstances. What FST can do though is give you a way of thinking about family that will help you think more clearly how your next step will play out and will affect that family. As your vision sharpens you will begin to see that the "random" things that happen in church life are not so random after all. So the place to begin is to try to understand how families really work (which is only one step removed for learning how church really work relationally).

The idea of being an "individual" is over-rated. While, we can speak of individuals in concept, the truth is closer to the fact that we don't really exist as individuals but as interconnected units. Individualism is both a fairly new concept and a not very useful one for understanding how we live together in groups. We are born into families and from the beginning are in a communal relationship with our parents, and especially our mothers. Our earliest experience is that of being connected to another who had life-and-death power over us. We learn early that our fortunes depending on these others' well-being. In our families, we learn the "rules" for getting what we want.

So from the beginning of our lives, we are "interconnected" beings and do not exist as lonely individuals, (though that is not to say that we don't feel lonely sometimes). Those most important to us usually make up our nuclear family, which for our purposes include those with whom we grew up. They were the people who were part of our formative years. However, not far removed from any of these people are those extended family members who were important to the various members of your nuclear family. This is good to keep in mind because changes in our extended family often reverberates in our nuclear family and changes in our nuclear family can affect people far removed.

Keeping these two families in mind can help you understand what is going in the life of the church. For example, you are in a leadership meeting and one of the members explodes over the issue of the expense involved in getting the teens to an event. The explosion was unexpected and the level of emotionality far exceeded the seriousness of the issue. (You have probably seen similar behaviors in other church meetings dealing with other issues). You may find out later that the "real" issue was the fact that the member's aunt—the one that "practically raised the member"—has recently died and the member did not have the funds to attend the service—but yet the church had funds to get the teens a fun event. By the way, when anyone explodes beyond the seriousness of an issue, you might want to find out what is going on in his or her nuclear or extended family.

While these two families are usually the most important to us, we also belong to other "families." We have work families—amazing how folks who work in offices take on family roles in that work setting. We also have church families, and we may have other surrogate families in the other groups to which we belong. Changes in any of our families can show up in any of our other families. More therapeutically, changes in any of our families can produce symptoms in any of the other families to which we are connected.

When I first heard this concept, I thought it was too fanciful to be true; but having watched families over the years, I know it is true. For example, changes in my brother-'s-in-law situation can have an immediate affect on my life because of my wife's relationship to her brother. Another implication of this concept is that simplistic explanations of what is going on are usually wrong and when right, very superficial. Simplistic explanations can prevent us from fixing something that has gone awry in church life even through we have given it serious time and effort—yet it just won't seem to go away. In fact, the more time and effort spent on it only seems to polarize people more.

We will have occasion to speak more about the interconnections between our families, but for now, I want to impress on the reader the importance that we belong to families, are defined by families, and function in families. Ministers, for example will often have five families: nuclear, extended, church staff, church congregation, and the larger denominational family to which the church belongs. Members of the congregation will often have a work family instead of a church staff.

While some of what I have written here has an element of being self-evident, that we exist in families is often the forgotten insight because we have been strongly conditioned to think of ourselves as isolated individuals—autonomous, self-directed, and independent! The deeper truth is that we are families—dependent, other-directed, and interdependent, if not co-dependent. We are very much concerned with what our families think of us.

The next time you read Genesis, note the role that family plays in the story of the patriarchs in making each person who they will be become.

How Deep is the Rabbit's Hole?

Somewhere along the way it strikes you that your ministry efforts are being neutralized. You are not sure how it happens, but every new initiative hits a wall, or runs out of steam, or become something very different than you intended. Everything seems to be much harder than you expected.

Sometimes the subversion is subtle, even imperceptible, but gradually the VBS that was designed to reach neighborhood kids only serves the church's children. At other times, the response is hostility: "Don't you know we are the _________ Church, and we don't do that." Again, sometimes, it is underhanded, "Preacher, brother Jones, our previous preacher, always visited me every Thursday." Again, it can be passive-aggressive: "When you confronted me about my wild life, you offended me." Or, it might look like this: Q: "Why are we supporting Tony though he is capable of working?" A: "We always have; that is what this church does."

There are times in the life of the church when the anxiety is palpable and you can almost hear the people repositioning to decrease the tension—which usually backfires. It is hard to keep a clear head during these times because it feels as if the very air around you is distorted. Every sounding you send out makes you even more certain you are clueless about what is really going on in the church. You can sometimes watch the chain-reaction: this family gets mad, that family leaves, that family assumes more leadership in the vacuum, that family's attendance falls off, and the list of reactions can go on. Do any of these experiences ring true with you?

Years ago I was in such an anxious church and I thought I was going to lose my mind. The congregation was at first a "very close-knit, friendly group." As I got to know them better, I began to sense the secret alliances and the corresponding secret rules of the group. And, of course, because they were secret, you did know that you had broken the unexpressed expectation until it was too late. Though the church claimed it was friendly, and did friendly things together, the truth was they were a very entangled, enmeshed family that mirrored their leaders' families.

In addition to increasing a leader's self-differentiation in the midst of such a church family, it is also important to understand how the church mimics its families. The church is, after all, a family of families and so we should not be surprised that churches themselves act and function like the families who make them up.

When I was serving the very anxious church I mentioned above, I met Edwin H. Friedman's book, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue (New York: Guildford Press, 1985). Next to the Bible, it was this book that has helped me the most in gaining a sense of location in the midst of a church family. It is a hard read. Most people will read it three times before they have the eureka moment. But Friedman is almost seer-like in his ability to help ministers, elders, and other leaders gain a "radar-screen" that allows them to weigh what they see happening in the life of the church.

In the next several blogs, I would like to lay out for you some Family System Theory that I have found "life-saving" for both me and the churches I have been blessed to serve. I learned most of it from Friedman.

So how deep is the rabbit's hole? As deep as the unfinished business of the families who make up and lead your congregation.

No Quick Fixes

When seeking to help a dysfunctional, or even a dying, church, the first and last thing to do is pray. Because, if you are the one God has called to help such a church, you will need all the power God will give you. (For sake of this conversation, I'm assuming I'm talking to the minister of a congregation; elders, and other leaders, can also benefit from the orientation and practices mentioned in this entry). Having prayed, and remaining in prayer throughout, church leaders need to understand that there will be no quick fixes in turning a church around.

I can think of several reasons why this is true. First, it has probably taken years for the church to get to where it is now and like a family with years of life together, it will not unwind overnight. Second, whatever is going on in the life of the church will be complex. While there may be only one real issue (and there always is and it is the same issue [see below]) at the heart of what is causing the church to be dis-eased, it will be layered over, like an onion, with lesser issues, concerns, and distractions. The third, and one of the most perplexing problems, is that church will have a hard time telling the truth about itself to itself. The last reason I mention now is that there will be key players in the life of the church who are rewarded by the status quo and will make counter moves to keep it so. As you will learn, sabotage is simply a part of the cloth of leadership.

Several years ago, I read Peter Wagner's The Healthy Church (Ventura, CA: Regal, 1996). Wagner made up some playful names for church pathologies found often enough in most churches today. These diseases included

1. Ethnikitis
2. Ghost-town Disease
3. People-Blindness
4. Sociological strangulation
5. Koinonitis
6. Hyper-Cooperativism
7. Arrested Development
8. St. John's Syndrome (lukewarmness)
9. Hypopneumia

Wagner was useful in calling certain experiences in the life of the church sickness. However, diagnosis is one thing, the cure another.

Having served a variety of congregations over the years, I have come to see that there is usually one major malady from which churches suffer. The lack of self-differentiation (I will define this more as we explore the nature of leadership in the life of the church) on the part of the leaders, whether the minister, the board of elders, or lay leaders. This means that leaders in sick churches have lost the ability to take clearly defined stands and they wave like a flag in the wind. To take a stand threatens to rock the boat and the sicker the church, the more it avoids rocking the boat and furthermore the more important it seems not to rock the boat. (This, of course, is just the opposite from the truth).

In this context, it is hard for any leader to be a self. If God has called you to serve in a hurting church, and you really desire to help that church, then understand that it's recovery will be closely tied to your ability to take unpopular positions without pushing people into agreeing with you but at the same time without giving ground either. My thesis, then, assuming that you are the one God has called to work within the context of a needy church, is that your success or failure will be depend on your ability to take clearly defined stands without becoming reactive. Remember, there are no quick fixes because it took a long time for the church to get here and it will take time for your "non-anxious" presence to begin to affect (hopefully, infect) those around you.

It takes a lot of courage for a church to confess it needs help, and for the record, a church will not if the leaders lack the courage to confess their own participation in the church's current situation. While a bit of an overstatement, but not much of one: a sick church will have a sick leadership (team or individual). Edwin Friedman (Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue, Guildford Press, 1985) has well stated that the health of a church (or any organization for that matter) will depend on the two or three leaders at the top. This means that if the two or three most influential members do not work hard at having an open, honest, and transparent relationships, then you are not likely to find open, honest, and transparent relationships in the church.

As a turnaround leader, your primary job will be to facilitate that open, honest, and transparent conversation the church desperately needs. You will do that best by stating clearly where you stand while remaining connected to the body.

Church Doctor: To Do No Harm

Church Doctor. Are you kidding me? How dare you be so presumptuous?

If that is your response to anyone claiming to be a church doctor, you are not alone. However, a closer look at what it means to be a "doctor" in the church might set your mind at ease—a bit. To be a "doctor" is to be a teacher. We have long since lost the association between doctor and doctrine. In that sense, then, I seek to teach in the church and to the church as needed.

My aim is to provide the best teaching for those seeking to make sense of living Jesus's way in the midst of institutional church life. Most of the ministers I know serve older, more established churches in which the minister is required by the nature of the job to be a champion of the institution. However, because of the deeper calling God has made on the live of those who pastor, ministers often feel the distance between what the institution has become vs. what they read of the church of God's dream in Scripture.

Ministers, elders, and other church leaders really do live between these two worlds. Sometimes we can go weeks having only given attention to institutional maintenance. When this happens, it is easy to become dried up, empty, resentful, and lonely. I have come to accept some of this as the way God shapes leaders. Those dry spells lay a foundation for those times when we do experience God in dramatic ways.

So as your church doctor, if you will, I will seek to do no harm to the patient but I will seek a level of honesty necessary if the church in North America can find healing and new capacity for rapidly changing territory of our mission.

So I hope you will follow this blog and comment from time to time.