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Transcript

Dysfunction Uncovered: What’s Really Going On · The Church Renewal Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Church Renewal Podcast.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Matt.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Jeremy.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Systemic dysfunction is rarely about surface issues.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's about deeper emotional processes, power dynamics, and loyalties within the church.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Jeremy and Matt unpack the most common dysfunctions they encounter when partnering with congregations, including chronic conflict, disengagement, unofficial power brokers, and anxiety-driven reactivity.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: They explore how Freedman's Family Systems lens exposes these patterns and how gospel-centered leadership can bring clarity, reformation, and renewed mission.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: Hey man.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: Hey Jerry.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: Me too.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: I want to talk to you today about I guess your experience as a practitioner in the space of I know you hate the word consultant, so I'll try to steer away from that word.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: But a part of coach, yes.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: You've worked personally hands-on with a lot of churches, and I'm curious today to hear about your experiences, not just for the sake of some you know, weird voyeurism or something, um, but to understand what things you've seen over and over again.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: The diagnostic glasses, if you will, when you walk into a church that you intentionally put on, how do you see things?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: What are you looking for?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: What things do you see that set up question trees, if you will, in your mind to dig deeper?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: What are the most common uh dysfunctions that you've run into?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so I think that they probably fit into a couple of different categories of uh sort of common dysfunctions.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_04: Give credit where it's due.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_04: A lot of what I learned about this is because of my friendship with Dave Miles, who we've we've uh interviewed both the the this season and previous season.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_04: But I think that you end up in churches with issues because we're talking about family systems, let's talk about relational issues.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_04: I think you end up with a couple of different kinds of issues.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_04: One I was reminded of this week, we actually have a transitional pastor deployed in a church where they've changed the governance over time from congregational to Presbyterian.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so that never happens accidentally.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it doesn't happen in a vacuum, right?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that when we go into a church, you know, convictionally at least from the New Testament, plurality of elders is the the best that we can tell that Jesus wants to run his church, right?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_04: Uh wants local churches to express.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_04: And so when we go into a congregation, one of the things that we're trying to look at is how is power actually exercised here?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_04: Because power can exist.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_04: I think there can be healthy congregational churches.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_04: I think that that's more difficult, frankly.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_04: I think there can be healthy, you know, we call it a session in a Presbyterian church, but an elder uh plurality of elders, an elder board, although I don't particularly like that word board, but an eldership that resides the power, and and sometimes uh pastors are the ones that have the power.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_04: So power tends to be in one of those three places uh in a congregation, and we're trying to see where is the power and is it exercised in healthy ways?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_04: So is the power exercised for the king, for his mission, for what he wants to get done in people's lives, or is the power exercised for other reasons?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_04: And many times power is exercised for other reasons, sadly.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, that's I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you if you can break that down into simple categories, and that's so what I'm understanding you say is when power is kind of the key thing here that you're looking at in this discussion.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yep, where is it and how is it being used?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, absolutely.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: So when you talk about the different ways it can be used, power can be used to accomplish a vision, right?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: Power can be used to gain more power, power can be used to exploit others, yep, power can be used to protect, and maybe that's the same as you know, gain more power.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: But what are the what are the ways that you see power being used that you look and say, ah, these are some common types?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_04: So I think you've isolated some good ones.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_04: I think that we've got another episode in the season where we talk about this difference between um individuality and community, that's individuals in community, right?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_04: Another episode we talk about that.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that part of the way that power is meant to be exercised in the church is towards the development of individuals in community.
• 4:50
  unknown: Okay.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_04: And so where power is used to take away individuality, to not allow people to express their gifts and use them, I think that that's a bad use of power.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_04: So we'll get uh sometimes in our circles, we'll get complementarian churches where the gifts of women are basically unused at all.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_04: And so complementary doesn't say that the gifts of women can't be used, it just says that there are certain roles and functions that women are not to take up and use in terms of final authority and teaching, you know, in the Sunday service.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_04: But sometimes in those churches, the way that power is exercised is that women's gifts are not used uh when God gave them.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_04: And actually he commands those women to use their gifts.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_04: And if the power structure is not allowing that, that's a problem.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I think that when we look at dysfunction in terms of power, we're trying to see from our viewpoint is that uh it the power is invested in a healthy elder board that is there together leading towards uh a gospel vision and the maturing of people in Christ.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_04: And that's a healthy exercise of power.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_03: Lay those things out again, you because that's fast, but those seem pretty crucial.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so so it's a plurality, right?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um, of elders.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_04: It's not one person doing it.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, we talk about in our circles coming out of reformational thinking that the the role of the pastor within an eldership is we call it first among equals.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and that can get distorted too.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_04: So I'll tell you what the distortions are, right?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_04: So there's um, so there's uh first among equals, right?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, which is a pastor-dominated church.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yep, right.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_04: There's first among equals, which is uh pastor-led plural eldership, which is the the middle um that is to be shot for.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_04: And then there's there's first uh among equals, right?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_04: Because he leans towards the microphone and gets louder.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_04: Sometimes you will get that third reaction because a church has been abused previously by a pastor and they've swung the pendulum and said, never again will we be abused.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_04: Sometimes the attitude is that if particularly if a church has a uh a habit of cycling pastors, that the the elders are the ones who are there long term, and so they're the ones that actually have the power and they don't want to be led, which is unhelpful.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um, because there's a reason that we send men to seminary and we expect that they've got different gifts, and elders ought to be looking to the pastor, even if he's younger than them, uh, for growth and help and leadership.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and so that middle is what we're looking for.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_04: Do we have a first among equals, not uh an eldership that's uh overpowering a pastor or a congregation, not a pastor is overpowering an eldership or a congregation, but uh an eldership that's led by a pastor that is leading a congregation in a in a gospel vision to reach new people uh and apprentice them to Jesus.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_04: So that's that's one place where we see the systemic issues is in power.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_03: Let's turn that just a little bit because one of the things that I know you've seen, and then you could talk about, is where the power, as you call it, the paper leaders, the organizational chart, the power does not actually reside there.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_04: So in our church health assessment, a question that we ask commonly, but the reason we ask it is we want to know the answer and then we want to try and understand what it is, is we have a question in our church health assessment are there unofficial leaders that have outsized power in your church?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_04: And in small churches, it's pretty common that there's a matriarch or a patriarch.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_04: There's somebody that all ideas need to go through.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_04: Smaller churches tend more towards, uh, particularly in America, towards some kind of pure democracy.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_04: And there's good reasons, you know, to sort of understand that sociologically in American culture, the democratization of American Christianity, uh, which is a book.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but I think what do we look at?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_04: Dysfunction, things can be dysfunctional for a lot of different reasons.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um, that matriarch-patriarch thing in smaller churches can cause dysfunction, it can be for good, but it can cause dysfunction and inability to be uh reflective and thoughtful, to be able to step back and to say, well, it's not really what I think as the matriarch or the patriarch.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_04: This is actually Jesus' church.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_04: And what does Jesus think about our church?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um recognize that the New Testament, by and large, from Romans 1 until Revelation 4, is Jesus saying to his local congregations, I have a vision for what a healthy church looks like.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_04: Y'all ain't it yet.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_04: And in the particular ways that you need, I'm gonna teach you the gospel again so that if you understand and can apply this gospel, these particular features of your own dysfunction uh will diminish in time.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_04: And that that is I I think one of the most helpful ways to look at the bulk of the New Testament, actually, is that Jesus has this ideal for churches in flourish speak, we call that biblical cultural dynamics, BCDs.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_04: And so that's what we're looking at.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_04: And where those are messed up in churches, um, that's the things that we're that's that sort of systemic dysfunction that we're trying to uproot.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: Can you can you unpack those BCDs first?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: So when you're looking, is there like an inventory of BCDs that you look at?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: So we have nine of them.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_04: So we have nine of them that we uh take churches through.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_04: I can put up my computer and I can walk through what those are.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_04: But I think that uh when a church is dominated by a person or two or a family or something like that, it commonly it's their viewpoint, it's their particularities, it's the particular things that they want that comes to the forefront.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_04: And in our minds, that's not particularly helpful because it really shouldn't be what they think.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_04: It should be what Jesus thinks.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: And it's always clear when you get to that point of inflection where if if I can say it's what Jesus thinks because it's his church, but if he decides this way I'm leaving, um, then it's not really Jesus' church in my mind.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_04: Right, exactly.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's mine, it's my church.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_04: So for us, and we can link to this handout, but in in the show notes, but uh our biblical cultural dynamics, and these are not mysterious, but just so you you kind of know what we look at.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_04: Great commission, love of God, greatest commandment, um, love of neighbor, greatest commandment.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so we break those into two.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um, gospel centrality.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_04: Does the church keep the gospel front and center?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_04: So that's what we see in the Apostle Paul.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_04: Always his answer to a church in dysfunction is to repreach the gospel to them.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_04: He wants the gospel front and center.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_04: The gospel, churches that have problems have gospel problems, and so they need gospel solutions.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_04: Means of grace.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_04: Do the people uh privately and publicly do they do they gain uh their growth through the means of grace, uh, word, prayer, and sacraments, biblical church membership, uh, biblical church leadership and transformation and reformation.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_04: That last one I think is important because one of the systemic dysfunctions that we see in churches is churches start in a certain decade with certain convictions, and many times the reason by the time we're getting to a church that's really struggling to help them is that they thought that whatever their preference was when they started the church is what should always be about the church.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_04: And that in our mind is a systemic dysfunction because it says that preference is the priority.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_04: Where we started is what we should always stick with.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_04: When scripturally we're all undergoing is individual sanctification.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_04: So when we look at church renewal, when we look at these systemic dysfunctions, we're saying this is this is a church undergoing sanctification.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_04: That's it.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_04: It's not more than that, it's not less than that.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_04: But that means that we need to be open to change.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_04: And we need to be open to change because we're not finished, but also because the priority is the mission.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_04: The priority is not our preference, priority is not what decade this church started in and what the musical choices were at the time, or anything like that.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_04: That is not the thing.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_04: But many times these systemic dysfunctions happen in churches because they've let something that is not the Great Commission expressed locally be the thing.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_04: They've put something else as the thing.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_04: And so for practitioners, you know, we call those golden calves, golden cows that need to be slain, right?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_04: But sometimes when you try and touch a golden calf in a church system, you end up in conflict.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_04: There's a church that we're just engaging with now, and they try to change something about the way that they do public worship.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_04: Nothing unorthodox, um, but it was change.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_04: And our listeners would know that something that I say with some frequency is that comfort is the hidden idol of Americans.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_04: And so all the same, very comfortable for me.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_04: This is what I want.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_04: And that actually doesn't match up with Jesus, doesn't match up with the word.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_04: Jesus said, Pick up your cross and follow me daily, and that that does not sound like comfort.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_04: He said, never move the pulpit.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: That's what he said, right?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_04: Right, yeah, never move the pulpit, never change the color of the carpet, never change the music.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um, in this particular case, it was, you know, readers of the Bible can only be the pastor.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_04: And um, I just don't that's very, very hard to say that that is the exclusive position that the New Testament permits.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_03: It also makes my personal quiet time very difficult because I always do that first thing in the morning in my bed, and I don't necessarily sleep with pajamas, so he's gonna come over to read that to me.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, exactly.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_04: That's that could be really bad.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_04: Both of them.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, exactly.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that one of the things when we come into a church and we we're trying to help them with what what ails them, their systemic dysfunction, these are the those biblical culture dynamics are the things that we're looking at.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_04: But if I think of a church that we're working with right now, one of the issues that they've got is conflict, they've got chronic conflict in the church.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, um, that's a systemic issue, and we can talk about that in a second.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_04: Churches also, and this is more pronounced in the post-pandemic era, people are engaged less than they were before the pandemic.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, much, much less.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_04: And so when I first started as a believer in in the church in the early 90s, the first church that I went to, the only time you didn't go to your home church every Sunday was if you were deathly ill.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_04: If you had a cold, you sat in the back row, but if you were you were deathly ill or you're on vacation out of town.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_04: And so your common church member, your leader, your elder, your deacon, you know, would be at their home church, you know, 48 Sundays a year.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_04: Right now, uh it's pretty common to even have your most committed people only be at your Sunday service two out of four times a month.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_04: The unusual person is there three Sundays out of four a month.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_04: It's absurd for most people to think about actually being at their local church for Sundays a month.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's not uncommon for even your most committed people to be as low as one Sunday a month.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, which is which is bizarre.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_04: It's a contradiction of terms.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_04: And so it it I think that it's uh it shows us how much we need to work on our discipleship, right?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_04: That this is a place I've got a guy that I'm coaching.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_04: I'm actually just just about to finish coaching him, who's planting a church and um it's going well.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but it's this the second time he's planted a church, the last time was maybe a dozen years ago, and he says the game's completely different, right?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_04: You just don't it it's more even more difficult to get the sort of volunteerism when people are twice a month and that's your most committed people.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_04: It's just it's very, very odd.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_04: And it shows us I I think it shows us our discipleship need, right?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_03: You've mentioned discipleship a couple times, and you the last two terms you used there, I believe, were transformation and reformation.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: I understood transformation to be essentially discipleship.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: Is that right, right?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so but in system speak, when we talk about transformation, if we talk about the church as a part of a process, the home of a process, the shell of a process, where people come in, non-believers, believers, they're the input, and there's a transformation that goes on called discipleship, gospel change, right, gospel conformity, sanctification, being made like Christ, yep.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: And the output is believers who know who they are, know who they're called to be, and love God and love people.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: And then you said reformation, and and and reformation in our speak doesn't just mean the uh 500 years ago the door.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: This means in process speak the feedback loop.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: Ongoing feedback, which is where you get to it's no longer 1969.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yep, my upright piano may not be the only thing that I can use for for worship.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, yes.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'm listening to these things and I'm saying, okay, what what is God doing today?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: How is he speaking to us today?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: Which is we talked about this in other episodes.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going and I'm listening, it's an ongoing relationship and conversation between the leadership, the congregation, and God.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: And this is who I've called you to be right now.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that when we're going into churches, many times when we try and press on what I would call press them, push them towards the um the myssiological lens being the primary lens.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_04: So let me sort of explain that.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_04: So so churches all sort of have a primary lens that they look through things at.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_04: Many times in the churches that that we tend to look at that the doctrinal lens tends to be the one that's most primary.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_04: And it's it, I think it's because it it's easier, we we feel like it's uh a good opportunity to feel right, which makes us feel good about ourselves, and we're right, they're wrong, right?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_04: So that I think that that is an easy um, it's an easy lens to grab a hold of.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_04: But the mythological lens, best that I can tell, is I read the New Testament, is the one that Jesus is most animated about.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_04: That our theology is important, but it's in service of something.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's tools in a tool belt, it's not the thing.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_04: I've written an article about this uh this year.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we don't mistake the tools for the project, right?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_04: Our theology is important, but there it's meant to be in service of something that's meant to be in service of new people hearing the gospel.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_04: So reformation is us trying to help churches get back to that's what's primary.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_04: When we do that, it typically uncovers some of this systemic dysfunction.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it actually causes conflict.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_04: It uncovers those idols, it uncovers them, right?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_04: And so church conflict typically um is actually not about primary, secondary, doctrinal kinds of things.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_04: If your church doesn't agree with your where you are doctrinally primary and primary secondary issues, um, you're likely not to be there.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_04: But church conflict happens among people who are still in the same body, um, but they're they're disagreeing.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_04: And sometimes they're disagreeing about which land should be primary.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_04: Sometimes they're disagreeing about you know what's the role of the church in the world, sometimes they're disagreeing about uh conscience issues between Christians and what it what it should look like.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_04: But churches and it I'll try and say this carefully Satan is crafty.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_04: Paul says in two different places in his writings that we know the wiles of the devil.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not sure that that it always strikes me in my Bible reading when I get to that each year and makes me stop and ponder what I what I recognize at.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that Satan loves for us to be in conflict.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_04: Why?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_04: Because it makes us focus on ourselves and not the lost.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_04: And so we're trying to help churches move through conflict and get back to a focus on loving each other, being unified in Christ, and reaching out with the gospel.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_04: And so we uncover these systemic dysfunctions in churches so that we can help them get back uh centered on the gospel, growing in Christ and reaching out uh with the gospel.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_03: So pulling, you know, zooming out for a minute, uh-huh.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: When we talk about family systems theory, right, there are identifiable roles that a system needs in order to function properly, and where there's dysfunction, there are names that are given to some of these roles, which is where we get concepts of exploitation and loyalty, but then we also get to things like scapegoating.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_04: Blame shifting.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: As you're as you're looking in and evaluating uh churches, how does how does that framework come into your evaluation?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that we're one of the things that I love about the way that Jack Shaitama talks about some of this stuff is that he talks about um that you can only be responsible for yourself.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_04: That when you are defining other people, that's when we get into issues.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_04: And many, many of the challenges that we run into churches are particularly along this line.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_04: If only Jair would stop.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, so there I am.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm in a conflict with Jair in the local church setting because I feel like it is my duty to define him.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_04: Not my duty to take responsibility for myself.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_04: And there's a whole lot of church issues that uh I don't mean to be simplistic, but really come down to that kind of thing.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: You can break it out, right?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_03: Once that happens, I'm now going to start the prayer chain, some gossip chain.
• 23:41
  unknown: Right.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna start triangulating.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to pray for me.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_04: I'm in this conflict with Jared, and he's such an idiot, and I don't know how to get to talk to him because he's just wrong.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not even sure he's a believer.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, you hear it.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_04: It's terrible, but you're right.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: We look for those lovers of power.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: We withdraw from relationship.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_03: We triangulate others in.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_03: And what what else do you see?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that um triangulation is one of the things that is one of the more common sort of observations of family systems theory that we see in churches.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_04: So just to remind the listener, here's existing uh Dan Worthman in the interview that we've had with him this season does a really good job of distinguishing between the fact that triangles exist and they just are an R and being triangled.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_04: So congregant comes to me, I'm the pastor, it says I'm having trouble with Joe.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_04: There's a triangle because there's three of us talking in the situation.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_04: But I'm triangulated, I let myself be triangulated if I go talk to Joe instead of pushing Susie towards him.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I don't get triangulated if I help Susie go talk to Joe.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so triangles are just a fact of life.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_04: It's whether we're whether we're seeing them, whether we're pushing people towards each other in relationship, despite the the anxiety of that.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um anxiety, I think, is one of those um systemic dysfunctions that we do run into churches.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_04: So if you I try and help um elder boards think about themselves really as shepherds with their arms on the fence of a pen and looking in a pen of sheep who are anxious and trying to help them think through how could we lower the anxiety of the sheep that are in the pen?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_04: And many times that's one of the systemic dysfunctions that we run into is, and this is gonna sound trite, but I don't mean it this way because if you're a congregant and you've experienced this, you know it's not trite, is poor communication on the part of the elder board.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_04: And it leaves congregants anxious.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_04: It's very hard for them to be led if they're anxious because they don't know if they can trust the voice of their shepherds.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to throw this in there just for because I think this is such a crucial foundational concept.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_03: Triangles exist because they are the most stable form of relationship.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: And triangles exist in this in these systems in order to bear the pressures that cause anxiety.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: The problem comes in when we are dysfunctionally triangulating because we're either taking on anxiety that's not ours, or we're projecting anxiety onto someone else and we're trying to solve a problem instead of walking together in relationship, in community and in communication.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: You can see the same kind of triangle happening, not just when I don't push you to go talk to brother Bob or whatever, but when I do, in fact, push you to go talk to Brother Bob about something that was actually my responsibility.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_04: I don't care about that was a decision of the Xboard.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I think that one of the things that when we think about how to apply family systems and the insights of it into helping us understand where churches are are are dysfunctional and really how to how to help them is that one of the things that we see is a system that's dysfunctional needs to be able to be willing to step back and take an honest look to really ask what would Jesus say if you were here.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_04: That can become complex, almost seemingly impossible, actually, if the church is not centered on the gospel.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_04: And so this is this is one of those challenges where it's kind of like chicken and the egg, right?
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_04: Like I can tell you you're in chronic conflict as a church, but you're just like, no, we I can't admit that about ourselves.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_04: No, it just always hurts when I do this.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_04: And um, and I think that that's one of the areas where we're trying to help churches say, it's okay to not be perfect.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_04: Jesus is not expecting perfection, he's expecting a new direction.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um and can we can we agree that just like I'm not perfect as an individual, we're not perfect as a church, we need that reformation and transformation.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_04: We're willing to step back and take a real look at the systemic dysfunction and have it be different.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_04: There's not more than that going on with all of those New Testament churches, the churches Jesus addressed in Revelation.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_04: That is exactly what they're doing.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_04: Uh dear listener.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_04: So family systems is a description of humans and community.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that that's another point that Dan Worth makes really helpfully in his interview uh with us.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: We haven't talked about it specifically with these terms, but we have danced around it.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: There's a statement that we read in the literature over and over again that says anxiety is contagious.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, but also relief of anxiety is also contagious.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_03: And it's and Friedman talks about this.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_03: We talked about this when talking about being a circuit breaker, being a transformer, being a transducer.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_03: The responsibility of the leader in any uh triangle, because there will always be a leader who has a primary responsibility to for the care of the others in the relationships.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: The role of that person is to deal with their anxiety in such a way that the rest of the system is able to be less anxious.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: Now, the ultimate triangle here is we're in a relationship with Christ.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_03: And Christ has been really explicit with what we are to do with our anxiety.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: He says, Cast your anxieties on me.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: Because I care for you.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_04: Instead of what immature leaders do, which is they cast their anxieties upon other people and they make this a lot of things.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_03: Or I try to take your your anxiety and try to hold it for you and be like, Right, right, right.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_04: Which is which is not uh obviously not helpful.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um Uh at all.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_04: You see, one more thing in the movie we'll wrap this particular episode up.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_04: One of the things that's important, that's an observation in Bone Family Systems Theory when we look at church dysfunction is we talk about the difference between process and content.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_04: And in more sort of doctrinally precise churches like we typically work in or that I'm ordained in, the PCA is fairly doctrinally precise, we can cover up a relational breakdown with people and basically use and say it's a doctrinal dispute as a way to kind of try and make it more objective and something we can get our arms around and put it in terms that we're comfortable with.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_04: But in Family Systems speak, that's the content, not the process.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_04: And one of the things that can be a mistake is to try and work at the content level instead of at the process level.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_04: It's important to realize that two people can disagree about a third or fourth or fifth level doctrinal item.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_04: But if that means that they can't have fellowship with each other, that they can't be at peace with each other, that they are in conflict with each other, that is a system relational problem, not a content problem.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_04: And that's the process, that's the emotional process that's going on.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_04: So one of the things that we try and do is try and get underneath because churches are it's easier for churches to say, well, that's really about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_04: Actually, it's not.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_04: That's a convenient excuse for the fact that we're we're anxious with each other because we're different and we don't know what to do with that.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_04: Embracing the gospel as the center uh of what we need together as a body, holding it as the center and correctly qualifying things at the level that they're supposed to be enables us to not have to divide uh over very small things and not feel anxious about that.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_04: But when we don't, then we end up it over relatively small things.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_04: We end up in that sort of um uh chronic uh conflict.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_04: Which doesn't obviously doesn't please the Lord.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_04: All I used to do is read Philippians.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_04: I reflect when I read through Philippians each year, what must it have been like when that the day that letter came in and the pastor, one of the elders in the church, you know, stood up front and read it to everybody and Yoda and Syncdic or in the congregation.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_04: But what must that have been like?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_04: They were in chronic conflict.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_04: And where God through the Apostle Paul sends them back to is is where he doesn't actually directly address the content of whatever their disagreement.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_04: We don't know what their disagreement was.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_04: But we do know is that in the emotional process of the church, what Paul appeals to them is to say, have the same humility as Christ.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: So that statement, when you walk into a social into a situation and you say, you ask the question, what's going on here?
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: You're not asking what are the facts and details of this.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: You're saying how are you communicating?
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_03: How are you relating to each other?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: How are you demonstrating care, grace, consideration?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's not just me coming and you responding to my anxiety by saying, Well, how does that make you feel, Jar?
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's more than that.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, but it's not less than that, as you like to say.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's starting there and saying, I see you, I recognize you're in a difficult place.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_03: I see this is a struggle for you, and I care about that.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_04: I care about you as an individual, yeah, and your experience of this.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_03: And there may be something here that I'm doing that's that's contributing to it, and if that's the case, I want you to know ahead of time without even getting into details.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: That is not my goal here.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, my goal instead is positively for you in a good way.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: So with that in mind, now what's going on?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: And how can I help you?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: And that and you tell me, and I say, Well, wow, that is that's a lot.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't know that I have the answer.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: So let me tell you my 15 answer.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: No, I stop and I say, uh, I need to think about this, I need to pray about this, let's pray together, and let's ask to have the mind of Christ.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: Let's go back to that Acts 15 place of saying, There's a real issue here, real legitimate concerns.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: And our response is going to be to say, Lord, it's your yoke that we put on you.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_03: You said that your yoke is easy, and you describe yourself as lowly of spirit and meek and humble.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_03: You didn't describe yourself there as being insightful, shrewd, and the one who has all the answers.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_04: Or exacting.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_03: So if I'm coming to you and I'm saying, Lord, give us all the answers, you're probably gonna say, actually, I'm the ox carrying the yoke.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: I've called you to walk with me.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_03: So just walk with me and you'll find out where we're going.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: Doesn't necessarily give me all the answers I want, but I have found in my short life that that's more often than not what God is calling me to do in all of the all the crises I have, all the relationships I have.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_03: And um, maybe that's where we leave this for today.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: We will talk to you guys next time.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for uh coming with us for this conversation.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal podcast from Flourish Coaching.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Flourish exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever God has called them.
• 36:05
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• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is still gathering his people and is using his church to do it.
• 36:12
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• 36:19
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• 36:22
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• 36:30
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• 36:34
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• 36:39
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• 36:46
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• 36:50
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• 36:53
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• 36:57
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• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Bye for now.