Latest / The Church Renewal Podcast / Triangles & Traps: Staying Out of the Middle

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Triangles & Traps: Staying Out of the Middle · The Church Renewal Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Church.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Renewal Podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 3: I'm Matt.
• 0:07
  Speaker 3: I'm Jeremy.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Triangulation is one of the most common relational patterns in families and churches, often forming unconsciously as a way of managing anxiety or tension.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: This episode explores how triangles form, why they are so stable and how leaders can identify and resist unhealthy triangles without losing emotional presence.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Drawing from Friedman scripture and pastoral experience, the conversation examines both the traps triangles create and practical strategies for responding with clarity and compassion.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Welcome back.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: We are here again, this time to discuss our colors and shapes.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: Oh, blue.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: Blue is a phenomenal color that should make one feel calm and even creative.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: That's why marketers use it.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: That's correct.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Red Ooh, meh, meh Meh.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: Stop, stop sign Anger.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: That's why the red guy in Inside Out is, is that's why the guy's right, that's correct.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: And pink, oh joyful, everything's good.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there was sparkly and fun there were, um, there were prisons that actually painted the interior of the prisons pink because it was correlated to a peacefulness, a ceasing of conflict.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: Now, many of these kind of studies have later turned out to have been poorly executed or non-replicatable.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: So, before you jump on to google and find out that this is both true and completely preposterous because google will give you both those answers just know this we're not actually talking about colors, we're talking about shapes, triangles, triangles.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: This show has been brought to you by triangles and the number three.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: We have already discussed triangles to some extent, but I want to jump off from this point here.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: In the last episode, in talking about doing family of origin work, you talked about some of the hangups that you've dealt with from your own background, and one of the things you described was that we find ways of managing or coping with the baggage that we're carrying Right.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: Triangulation, whether it's between two people and another person or two people and an activity, is one of the ways that we deal with tension.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: A triangle is very stable.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Right, the most stable.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Bowdoin Friedman would say it's the most stable form.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: That's correct, and that's why stools often have three legs.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: One of the things about triangles is when we're talking about churches that I think is hugely important.
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: That we haven't really touched on yet is that triangles, when they're being used dysfunctionally, unintentionallyally, unconsciously, oftentimes are being done so as to maintain the status quo, and one of the things that Friedman points out is that a system, a community, will in fact we talked about I use the term regression to the mean it was tongue-in-cheek because of the statistics anyway.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: A community system will focus the majority of its energy to protect its weakest parts and it will do so at the expense of its strongest parts.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: The other way to say that is an unhealthy organization will get rid of its strongest assets, its best leaders, in order to protect its weakest members.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: Now, that may sound counterintuitive, but as I've looked at the literature and as I've looked at real life, I've seen that happen over and over and over again, and it's often done through triangulation.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: I want you to be different.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: I'm not happy with the way you are, I'm not comfortable with the way things are, and rather than owning that and coming to you and saying, hey, could we figure out another way to do this?
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: I instead go to brother Billy or sister Sally and say can you believe what Matt's doing?
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Did you see how he did that?
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: There's a big mirror in front of me, just to be clear.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: Because this is what I do and this is something that God has pointed out.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to let him uproot this.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: We talked about doing family of origin work.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: This is David saying Lord, search me and know me and see if there is any unclean.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: God doesn't need to do that.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: David wasn't asking God to do that by the Holy Spirit, so that God was like, oh, look what I found that was for David.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: So David could hear God say here's what's wrong, here's where I'm working.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: So this is what I'm doing and I'm I'm the kind of person who, unfortunately, does avoid conflict, deal with conflict by triangulation, and God's trying to does avoid conflict, deal with conflict by triangulation, and God's trying to bring my attention to that and answer the soul issues S-O-U-L that are in me, about my identity and about my acceptance, so that I can, knowing who I am, step boldly and bravely and confidently into a situation for the good of others, not just out of self-protection.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: Okay, big setup Triangles are traps, right.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: That doesn't mean that a triad of people is a problem.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: I've got.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Necessarily.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: Necessarily.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not a definition thing.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: I've got my best friend, um, very good friends with both he and his wife and we're all copacetic.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: We trust each other.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: We know that we love each other and he has spoken to me about problems he's having with his wife.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: His wife has spoken to me about problems she's having with his wife.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: His wife has spoken to me about problems she's having with her husband.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: They've talked to each other about problems they're having with me.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: We love each other, we trust each other.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: We know we want what's good and we come back and we work it out and we don't.
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: We don't try to get the other person to do something.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: We talk to say I'm struggling, I don't know what to do.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: Can you offer me any insight?
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: Can you help me Because I'm struggling?
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: That's not a triangle.
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: That's leaning on friendship, in trust, because, frankly, we know that we're doing this and we trust each other's hearts for each other.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: Let's move to the darker side.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: The darker side is fear, guilt, pride, pushing me to a place where I want to draw you into my orbit because I need control.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: I'm feeling scared and I don't know that this happens in churches more than it happens anywhere else, but I'll say confidently it happens in churches a lot, it happens in families a lot where people bring the dynamic they have in their family to church with them.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: There it goes, yeah, there it goes.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: And a lot of times if you're a leader in the church, the way that it happens is if I'm, uh, pastor bob, and there's a elder joe and there, congregant Sally.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: I said something in the sermon that was provocative and Congregant Sally was provoked by something I said that was provocative and the scriptural direction that she would have is, if she's got something with me, that she should come to me.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: But Congregant Sally feels uncomfortable in our relationship, for whatever reason.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Maybe I help produce that that's possible and worth reflecting on.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Do I make it difficult for people to come to me?
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Am I defensive when people come to me?
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Am I?
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: I'm not.
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: I wish you'd stop saying that about me?
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: um, you know, uh, am I hard to for people to come to and have me listen with an empathetic ear and really hear them out and try and understand them?
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Have I made it difficult for someone to come to me?
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Very worth examining, right?
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: But, Congregant Sally, scriptural admission is for her to come to me if she's got something with me.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Wait, where is that in scripture?
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: What's that?
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Where is that in scripture?
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Luke 17 is at least one place.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: Matthew 5 is that in Scripture?
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: What's that?
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Where is that in Scripture?
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Luke 17 is at least one place.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Matthew 5 is another.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Right, when you combine Luke 17 and Matthew 5, two people that have an issue with each other.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: My way of putting it is they meet each other on the road Because if I know I've got something, I'm responsible to go to somebody.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: If somebody else has something against me that I'm unaware of, they're supposed to come to me.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: And so the idea is that, because we both have an obligation, we meet on the road between our two houses because we're both trying to fulfill the scriptural admonition to go to each other.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Okay, so Congregant Sally, for whatever reason, could be me, could be her.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: She feels some degree of tension in the relationship that she can't come directly to me.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: So what does she do?
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: She goes to Elder Joe.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Now, Elder Joe gives her a listening ear and Elder Joe says I will take care of this for you.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: And Elder Joe doesn't do what a good friend should do.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: If somebody comes to you and they have a particular concern with somebody else, a good friend can say I'll hear you out.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: How can I help you?
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Go and talk to Pastor Matt.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: You're looking to the maturity of the person who's trying to triangulate you.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Eventually, when you look at Matthew 18 in church discipline, if you do go to somebody directly and they're not responsive, that's when you're supposed to involve somebody else in the scenario and that's not a triangle.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: But now you've upped the ante.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Typical triangle is Congregant Sally goes to Elder Joe and elder Joe says oh, that's so terrible.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'll talk to pastor Matt about that.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: And it's congregant Sally steps out of the situation and elder Joe picks up congregant Sally's concern and brings it to pastor Matt.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: That's a triangle in action.
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: So, as a parent, I have young kids still and I listened to my kids squabble and fight.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: Parent, I have young kids still and I listened to my kids squabble and fight, and I give a reasonable amount of time for my kids to put into operation the tools that we have given them to be able to work through sibling conflict.
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: Intrasibling conflict is what I would call this if I were writing a stupid paper.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: I listened long enough to know whether or not they've done it and I ask myself do I need to step in?
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: When I step in, I can step in either in a triangulation mode or in a non-anxious presence mode.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: A non-anxious presence mode is simply called parenting.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: I step in, ask the authority and say, hey, what's going on here?
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: You know, you both know what I expect of you.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: I know that you have the tools to do this.
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: I know that you know what the standard is that I'm going to hold you responsible to.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: Did you do it?
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: I don't remember who I was.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: I was listening to a different podcast, completely the 10, the 10 minute Bible hour and and the host there was talking about his parents and when he would get into a squabble with his brother, the question that his dad asked him over and over again is were you doing out of love what you were doing?
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: Cause that's what the question comes down to, and for my that's the question that comes down to.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: It's not just were you being kind, because kindness is a virtue, but god hasn't called us to kindness, god has called us to love.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: Is what you were doing loving?
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: Now I can merely kindness, yeah, I can ask this in a way that just dumps the shame bucket right.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: Were you being loving after God has been loving to you, after Jesus died for your sins?
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: Were?
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: you loving to him.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: How's that work for you?
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: Didn't work well on me.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: Has proven to not be very useful from my hand.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: But it can be good, in a healthy way, to help your kids have a better conversation than they're having themselves.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: You can help them grow up by helping them, not solve it for them.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: Help them have a better conversation than they're having We've seen parents do this that one, you know, parents will be privy to a squabble and the parent will walk in, start yelling at one of the kids and the other kid, who was actually involved in the thing, will just quietly sneak out of the room.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: And then there's the parent reading the one kid the riot act, having totally taken up the issue, or the other child not having done the prerequisite investigation, listening, understanding what's going on, but comes in, you know, says I'm basically God, I've got omniscience here and I definitely have omnipotence in this moment.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: So watch out, that's triangulation, that is not good parenting and it's not been an unanxious presence and it's an example of over-functioning.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Your kids might need help learning how to solve a problem over-functioning.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Your kids might need help learning how to solve a problem, but the way to help them grow is to learn how to solve the problem.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: You might need to be there to make for a good conversation, but the goal is that they have the maturity that they can do that.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: Pastors do this in churches.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: That's what I was going to say that's what Elder Joe was doing.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: Elder Joe was stepping in and Sister Sally just snuck out of the room and now we have a mess.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Now we've got a mess.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: The better dynamic there.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Obviously.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: If Elder Joe says to Sally, well, it does definitely sound like a problem.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: Do you need help thinking about how to go to talk to Pastor Matt?
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: That's the right solution.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: When someone else is enlisted, triangles happen.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: When you get enlisted, they naturally occur, but you willingly submit to being a part of them and it's just sort of like you know, fall into your lap one day.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: You agree at some point to be a part of it, and so part of this for church leaders is to sit back and go huh, how have I been triangulated?
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: And one of my reflections when I first came to this in 2014, one of my reflections about my own leadership, related to the fact that I had been triangled and I'd allowed myself to, I'd become a willing accomplice and I had avoided addressing some situations that should have been addressed kindly but for the maturity of the body and it actually had hurt the body because I hadn't addressed them and it hurt us in some pretty significant ways.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: And I came to realize that and I was like my line for several years was I stopped being a weenie Because this particular leader that I'd allowed to influence me and triangle me difficult situation.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: I'd talk about it with this person.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: They convinced me not to address it and I wouldn't.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: And I participated in it.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: And when I stopped doing that, yeah, it definitely produced some problems when I differentiated myself from that triangle, in the sense that the body was better, but the person that I'd allowed myself to be triangled by was not pleased.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: They actually ended up leaving.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: There was a strong push for togetherness.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and extricating yourself from a triangle is an act of differentiation.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: You're saying I'm not going to participate in this any longer.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: I have a different goal and value.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: I'm going to let you be you.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: But I'm going to let me be me, and unfortunately that phrase has gotten picked up in different ways in the culture.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: But I think that there's something really important about that.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: I don't have to let you influence me to be something or to do something.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: I can know and come to realize my own goals and values and then live in light of them.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: And that's the art, the challenge of differentiation Because a triangle again, it's the most stable form is what we fall into.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: You'll see lots of this is one of those things that once you see them, you can't unsee them, and churches tend to be groups of interlocking triangles.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: So this can be a little bit overwhelming when you first look at it and you're like what are all the triangles that are there?
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: And you'll be like, holy crap, there's a lot of them.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: And there are Because it's the most stable form, Because people feel this side of heaven still broken, still among broken people, still in a broken place, lots of sin, mistake and fault, limitedness of creatures.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of discomfort in relationships, and the way that people deal with the discomfort in relationships is they enlist somebody else to as Jared put it several episodes ago, spread out the burden, and that's why it's the most stable form spread out the burden, and that's why it's the most stable form.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: But maturity is to not enlist other people in your causes or allow yourself to be enlisted by others in their causes, but simply to relate person to person.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: That's maturity what are some of the telltale openers that you might hear if you're being triangulated within a family?
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: did you hear?
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Well, within a family, within a family, oh, um, yeah, shatama has a good one, a sibling talking to a sibling saying I'll talk to dad once he's apologized to me, and I think that that's really, really that's very clear and succinct.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Triangles happening, unhealthy triangles happening whenever two people are talking about a third party that's not present.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Okay, in churches, I think that's actually one helpful definition of gossip.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's do the healthy and then the unhealthy.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Is that fair?
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Yep, so if I come to Jer and I say Jer, I really need to talk to my pastor.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: He said this thing in a sermon and I really think it was off base and damaging and I'm trying to figure out how to go back to him.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Can you help me think this through so I can go back to him?
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: That is a healthy, good use of Jer.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: That's not Jer.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: You go to the pastor, but you help me go to him.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Well, right, okay, what's an unhealthy?
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: An unhealthy?
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: We described earlier Sister Sally and the elder the telltale sign that you're about to be triangulated.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Did you hear what so-and-so said?
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: I can't believe that Sally did, and so it's the ungracious mention of someone else in your presence seeking to move you to action, even if the action is that you're indignant or angry or you're being recruited.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: And one of the things that I think is a really good habit for Christian leaders is to sit back and reflect on who's trying to recruit me to do their thing and this is a good journaling, it's a good, safe outsider who's not in the system kind of conversation but who's trying to recruit you to do what is super important.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Because when people do that, go back to differentiation, they're stepping over the line into your space.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: They're trying to define you and what you should do instead of defining themselves.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: Let's talk about that this wasn't in my notes, but I think it bears a little bit of unpacking here.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: I don't remember who it is, but it within family systems theory there is multiple branches.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: There's one called communication theory, and in communication theory one of the dictums is all of life is communication.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: We are always communicating, and they break down communication into two parts.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: Every communication has an explicit message and an implicit command.
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: So when you say to me, when I hear the statement, did you hear?
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: There's a command that goes with that.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: The example you gave actually, I think, is even better.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to, I'll talk to dad after he's apologized to me.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: There's an implicit command there.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: The command is you go and deliver this message to prompt that response I want from dad.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: Right, yep?
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: And this is where we have to become very shrewd.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: We have to become very good at listening and asking the question what is the implicit command that's being dropped on my lap right now?
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Is it legitimate?
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Is it?
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: illegitimate.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: And when an illegitimate command is dropped on my lap, how am I going to graciously, lovingly put that command back into the hands of the person who dropped it?
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: So two applications.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: This is very good.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Again, go back to the question what does Jesus expect of me?
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Yep, so if somebody's expecting something of you or requesting something of you, I think that that they've asked is only one data point.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: The second data point is upon reflection.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Is this something that Jesus calls you to?
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: Absolutely Yep, right, because if it's not, then you're not under obligation from Jesus to do it and you can just tell the person.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: Although this is an act of differentiation, you can just tell the person.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure that's what Jesus would have me do.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: I think you should go talk to that and express your hurt and ask him to apologize, so you can direct the person in a in a better direction.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Right, then they then they've come to you.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: I cut you off.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: No, no, that's, that's exactly where I was going.
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: So reflect on this for me, if you would.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: I come to you and I say hey, matt, I was just listening to pastor Matt Bowling preach and I'm bothered by something and honestly, I just want to vent.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: Would you mind if I just may have a rant, sir.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: Is that triangulation?
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: Not necessarily.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: I think that I think that a good friend always tells you the truth about yourself, about whether your reaction is appropriate or inappropriate, or proportionate or in proportionate orate or whatever.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: And a good friend also helps you figure out what to do with your frustration.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: That is not picking up their cause for them.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: There, it is Right.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think it's.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Is there that expectation that comes in?
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: I love because there are talks about expectations and it's probably a good time to maybe introduce this briefly.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: It's because there are talks about in his healthy relationships, course they talk about that.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: A fair expectation has four traits it's conscious, you know you have it.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: It's verbalized, you say it.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: It's doable, like the person can actually do it.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: Like if I asked Jeremy to do a paint by number, that's very small, that he's blind in one eye and he's got some sight in the other eye, but it ain't so great sometimes.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: So if I ask him to do paint by number, that's not doable by Jare, sorry, there's lots of things that are, but paint by number, is not it okay?
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: So is it doable by the person?
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: And that's not just physically but emotionally, spiritually.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: They have the time, the energy, the maturity, right, is it doable?
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: And then the last one is the critical one Is it agreed upon?
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: When someone comes to you and attempts to triangle you, they're making what John Gottman calls a bid.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: They're asking you to do something, they're attempting to impose an expectation on you, and your job is to be sharp enough to take your time and not say yes right away, and to realize an expectation is being placed on me and it's not an unhealthy triangle.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Until you say yes, yes, I'll take up your cause, can that yes?
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: be implicit.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: Is it?
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: sufficient to not say no yes be implicit.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Is it sufficient to not say no?
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: I think it depends.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: I think it depends.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: So I talk to pastors about many times.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: Lots of things get thrown at them.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: Lots of bids and opportunities for triangles come to them and I talk to them about that.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: It's like having a baseball thrown at you, and when you have a baseball thrown at you, there are actually a number of different things that you can do.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Pastors think that the only thing they're supposed to do is catch it and do something with it, and in reality there's a lot of things you can do with the baseball that's thrown at you.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: You can duck, you don't have to catch it.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: You can just let it fly, right.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: That's what Shatama did with the woman with the Christmas Eve service.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: I can always trust you to tell me exactly how you feel.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: Did he catch the baseball?
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Did he do something with it?
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: No, he just let it fly right past it.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: There was a baseball.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: There goes a baseball.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Would you look at that?
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: You can catch a baseball and you can put it in your back pocket and you can say I'll deal with that later if it's appropriate for you to deal with.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: But that's the second question.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Is it.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: That a baseball was thrown at you does not mean that you need to do something with it.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: You can put it in your back pocket and later put it in the trash.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: You can put it in the trash right away.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: You can put it in your back pocket because it is yours to do to somebody else.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: You can catch it and you can throw it to somebody else because it's actually theirs to deal with.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: That's what we call delegation, and you can actually throw it back and you can have somebody walk away.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Another analogy for this is you can have somebody walk away with their monkey.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: So I tell pastors, use this analogy with pastors.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: People come into your office and they try and drop off their problems all the time.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: I ask pastors to imagine that people walk in their office with a live monkey and they try and hand their live monkey to the pastor, and pastors many times are foolish enough.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: This is them getting triangulated to deal with some other problem in the church that they think the pastor should deal with right, and so the people leave their monkey with the pastor and eventually the pastor's got four or five monkeys jumping around his office.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: Every time I've told this to pastors, they laugh because they know exactly what I'm talking about.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Your job as a pastor is to help people mature so that they deal with their own problems, not so that you solve their problems for them.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: So the goal is to have them walk out of your office with their monkey, because it's their monkey, not yours.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: They have a monkey.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: It does not mean that it becomes your monkey.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: There goes a monkey.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: The goal, because if you take the monkey, you've been triangulated.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they have some problem.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: That is not yours, they have some problem.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: It's over there, they bring it to you and when you receive the monkey, you agree to be a part of the triangle and now it is your responsibility and now it is yours.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: So I think that many times it's actually not your monkey and your job is to help people walk out.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: So I love Tom's got a great phrase for this.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: He says so what do you think you should do about that?
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: And I think that that's absolutely marvelous, because it's not that you don't have the conversation with the person, but you don't let them cede responsibility to you.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: You call them to be responsible themselves.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: And let's be frank about this.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: People are very good at sharing their monkeys, and pastors are very easily lured into the trap of taking on a monkey with just a little bit of butter them up.
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: Pastor, you're so wise I don't know how to deal with it.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Because they're not differentiated.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: There, it is Right, because they're not differentiated and they need that person to think well of them.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Differentiated, and they need the.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: They need that person to think well of them.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: They take their monkey and now you have two, two different things going on in family systems theory.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Right, you weren't differentiated and so you allowed yourself to be triangled.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: So there's your beginning to see some of the interrelationship of these, of these things and then you have the identity issue on top of that, where I see myself, wrongly, as being the person who's responsible to care for your soul, as opposed to the person who's responsible to say Jesus that way, yeah, point people to Jesus.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: Jesus is that way.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: Your answer is that way.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: Death is that way.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: Follow Jesus, yeah, that's good.
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: There's.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: So let's get to.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: That's good.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: So let's get practical.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: How do you we've talked about recognizing how do you recognize you're the kind of person who has been pulled into triangles?
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: In fact, even before I ask that question, let me just go back to the scenario I presented as a friend, if I recognize it, by coming to you and venting with you, you have, in fact, even though it wasn't what I wanted you to do, you have picked up that offense for me, picked up your cause.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: Yep, I now have to make a decision.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: Even though that's not my problem, you did that, even though I asked you not to.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: I now have to decide.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: Am I going to continue putting you in this position, knowing that you have this particular weakness?
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: Because now.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: I'm no longer being loving to you, right?
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: Even though this is something that may be legitimate, it may not be gossip.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: Though this is something that may be legitimate, it may not be gossip.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: I'm just coming to you for support, for help, or, but you're in a place where it's actually causing, it's giving you an opportunity to sin, quite honestly well and it and what it is.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: And jerry the way did jerry's just described that.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: You should pick up listener very carefully.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: He's described the over functionfunctioner under-functioner dynamic.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: A chronic under-functioner comes to a chronic over-functioner and says solve my problem for me.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: And many pastors are over-functioners and they feel really good about it because people are really happy that they take all their monkeys and catch all their race balls and solve all their problems and they can feel like they're being just like Jesus and leave their people immature, yep and not growing up to what Jesus wants for them.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: And a good over-functioner does not need an under-functioner to come with them with a problem.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: A good over-functioner will be able to find something to function in your life.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, I can go find a problem for me to solve.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: Yep, I can do that for you.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Yep, a problem for?
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: me to solve.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: Yep, I can do that for you, yep, so okay.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: So, with the last couple of minutes that we have here, uh, how do you extricate yourself?
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: How do you get out of that trap?
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: How do you, once you have been caught by the you know, the Venus fly trap, right, how do you crawl free of it?
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: And how do you do so in a way that does leave you still emotionally present and engaged?
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: So I think there's a couple of ways, and I think that you've got to reflect on this sort of from two directions.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: You may, upon listening to this and reflecting yourself on your own leadership, realize that you're actually the person that triangles others, that you're the one who has difficulty going directly to other people and that you marshal others to your cause because of the discomfort that you feel in relationship, and that means that then you Christian leader, pastor, elder business owner, school operator you're the one who actually has to grow up.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: You're the one who actually has to grow up and and grow in your identity and acceptance in christ, included in the family of god, that you go and directly deal with challenges yourself instead of triangulating others, and that may be in your family of origin, could be in your own nuclear family, in your marriage with your kids, could be in your own nuclear family, in your marriage with your kids, could be in your church or your business or your school, and so you may be the one who's actually not being triangled but triangling.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: What if you're the one who's been triangled?
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: I think that you always have the freedom to go back and say you know what?
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: I was wrong.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: I said I would help you with this, but I realized that that's not really what Jesus expects of me.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: And this is really really important.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: If someone gets pissed at you because you want to do only what Jesus expects of you, that is on them, not on you.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: And you got to be satisfied that if you've done what Jesus has expected, life's good.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: If someone gets upset at you because you only want to do what Jesus expects, that's on them.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: But I think you can go back to them and say you know what, in reflection, I think it's wrong.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: I shouldn't go talk to Elder Joe about this.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: I think you should talk to Elder Joe about this, but I'll help you get ready for it.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: So here, what have you done?
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: There?
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: You've differentiated right.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: You've said these are my goals and values.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to do that.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: That's not me, it's for you to do.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: But I'm going to stay connected to you and I'm willing to help you go do it.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: Well, that's differentiation in action, right?
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: Not fused not abandoning.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Correct, not identified with your cause, so much that I'll go take it up for you which is a big problem culturally, by the way and also, screw you, go solve your own problem, right, right, no, I'm going to stay connected to you and even offer to help you as you deal with your challenge maturely.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: But it is your challenge, not my challenge.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: As you deal with your challenge, mishurly, but it is your challenge, not my challenge.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: Isn't it interesting that our great high priest was both the sacrifice that paid the penalty for sin and he is the advocate at the right hand of the Father speaking on our behalf, ongoing, praying, amazing.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: That's our hope.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: That's our hope.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: That's our hope.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Flourish exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever God has called them.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: We believe that there's only one fully sufficient reason that, this day dawned, jesus is still gathering His people and he's using his church to do it.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: When pastors or churches feel stuck, our team of coaches refresh their hope in the gospel and help them clarify their strategy.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: If you have questions or a need, we'd love to hear from you.
• 33:57
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• 34:06
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• 34:09
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• 34:14
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• 34:21
  Speaker 1: All music for this show has been licensed and was composed and created by artists.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: The Church Renewal Podcast was directed and produced by Jeremy Seferati in association with Flourish Coaching, with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called you.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Bye for now.