Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Church. Renewal Podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:04

I'm Matt. I'm Jeremy.

Speaker 1: 0:06

Churches, like families, are systems that seek stability, for better or worse. So when equilibrium is built around dysfunction, churches instinctively resist change, even healthy spirit-led transformation. In this episode, we explore why congregations gravitate back to the status quo. We'll unpack key systems, theory concepts like homeostasis and the identified patient, and consider why leaders must emphasize process over content if they want to guide their people toward gospel-centered renewal.

Speaker 2: 0:38

In this episode we're going to talk a lot about sort of the technical side of family systems theory and I wanted to start with some definitions because, because we're still trying to, this is still foundational. I think we talked about in the first episode the foundation of theologically understanding church dysfunction. We talked in the second episode about the theology of the church as a family and that entire model in theory. So now let's dig a little bit deeper into family systems as a theory and understand what it's saying from a definitional point of view. So let's start here. Cybernetics, matt go.

Speaker 3: 1:13

That is not where I thought you were going to start. No, I know we can talk about Neuralink another time.

Speaker 2: 1:21

What's interesting is that the field of family systems theory started back in the early 1900s as, not in therapy but in production, it started with understanding how machines work together. If you're familiar with the Taylor method, taylor was very involved in the foundational theories about how systems work together, with inputs and outputs and transitions and all these different things closed systems, open systems, all these things which were then used because the picture, that same understanding, grafted well onto what was actually going on in organizations. And this is where Friedman, jumping off the work that had been done before him, started looking and saying you know, it's not, Friedman was a rabbi, he was a psychologist, he was a consultant to the military.

Speaker 2: 2:18

He was a consultant to business leaders and everywhere he went the reason that he wrote was because everywhere he goes he's seen the same things happening. He saw systems everywhere he went. The reason that he wrote was because everywhere he goes he's seen the same things happening. He saw systems everywhere he went and that could be because he was autistic, but there are a lot of other people who saw similarly, and that's what we want to talk about today.

Speaker 2: 2:35

So matt, I'm. You've got my paper in front of you, sure, listener? I'm blind, so that's why my voice sounds so good, because I'm actually actually very handsome, I've been told. If you listened to last week's episode I gave myself, that identity.

Speaker 3: 2:47

You actually got to hear Hannah's voice on some of the promos for season three and a half. I think that's right. Maybe we'll get her to do some of the voiceovers for this Absolutely Might be AI Hannah, but who knows?

Speaker 2: 2:58

So let's start with some definitions.

Speaker 3: 3:05

What are some of the ones that we have that we really need to understand as key as we move forward? So I think that let's just talk about the nature of a system first. So a system is a set of interconnected parts.

Speaker 3: 3:11

Okay, so your phone is a system, right, your car is a system, but also a family is a system. So family systems theory right, it's a set of interconnected people. A church is a system, both organization but also organism, and we're more on the organism side in this particular. We spend a lot of time as flourish talking about organizational kinds of stuff, and although that's good and I'm a fan of it, but here we're more on the organism side, right, so we're trying to think of, you know how, what's the nature of people working together?

Speaker 3: 3:52

In one place I was recently, uh, on a trip with my wife and we were snorkeling and I had the opportunity to. This was in the bahamas. I was snorkeling over near some rocks and I found myself in the midst of a giant school of small fish. I don't know if they were bait fish or if they were juveniles of particular fish species. I couldn't identify what fish they were. There were just literally a school as a system, an interconnected group of individuals but all acting together. And if I was really calm and really slow, I quite literally was surrounded above, below and around by these little fish, which is fascinating to me because my background is marine science by these little fish, which is fascinating to me because my background is marine science. However, a school of fish is a good way to think about a system of a group of people, because if I twitched while I was snorkeling, everyone all of the fish reacted to me, they twitched with me, reacted to me, they twitched with me. And, um, when we look at congregations, they act um, to some degree, um, like that, like a school of fish, like a flock of birds. They're what the term that's in family systems theory is that they're. They're reacting to anxiety, they're reacting to what's perceived as threat, right?

Speaker 3: 5:33

So think about the human body for a second. Human body is a system, right? And so how do you know if a human is healthy when you look at their temperature, their temperature is supposed to be somewhere in the range of. You know if a human is healthy when you look at their temperature? Their temperature is supposed to be somewhere in the range of 98.6. Is the gold standard. I run a little cold, so I'm more like 97.6. But if you get consistently above 100, you've got a temperature your body has designed by God. It has a very minuscule temperature range that it's supposed to operate in, right. You get below 97, and now you're in hypothermia, you get above 100 and you're in a fever. As an adult, you get above 103 and a half or 104 and you're dead yeah right.

Speaker 3: 6:16

So we're supposed to sit in this range and the word that's given to that, in the human body at least, is homeostasis, right, right. So stasis is the set point of a system, right? So the set point for the human system, the human body, is 98.6 regarding temperature and it's out of homeostasis if you're down below 97 or you're above 100. You're out of that homeostasis. Systems tend towards homeostasis, towards staying the same. Barring an infection or a drop in your immune system, your body stays within that temperature range.

Speaker 3: 7:04

If you take that over into something like the bodies, we would think about the family of God. There's also a stasis there. There's a set point, a way that we do things around here, a way that we live together, a way that we are the things that we value, the way that we roll our philosophy of ministry. So there's a way that we are as a group. So there's a way that we do as a group. Remember your doing always flows from your being.

Speaker 3: 7:36

So when you think about the body as a system, if it's healthy, if you're in that healthy range for a human 97 to 100, it's okay, it's great. But what happens when your human body gets below 97? We say you're, you know you're too cold and you've been too cold too long. Right, you get above 100 consistently and we say you've got a fever, there's something wrong with you. Get some chicken soup. Exactly so we know in the human body, when is the stasis in the wrong spot? Right? A lot of what Flourish works with with churches is that we're looking at churches whose stasis is in the wrong spot.

Speaker 2: 8:23

So you're saying that a system is designed to resist change. Yeah, and where this can go badly wrong is if you're in a place that you need to change from. You may not recognize that as anything but home, and so any change to that will be resisted.

Speaker 3: 8:44

Right. Right, we return back to whatever the perceived set point is. But if your perceived set point, your stasis, is, according to God, in a wrong spot, right, then you've got a problem. But let me sort of draw back the picture and then we'll focus back in. Think about the whole New Testament, though, from Romans 1 until the beginning of Revelation 4. That whole huge chunk of the New Testament, is Jesus looking down at his churches and going I have an ideal for you, I have a set point for you. That would be healthy, it would be shalom, it would be goodness. This individual church, it's not experiencing that, but I want that for them. I want them to be different than they are now, because where they are now is not healthy. They're not in a good set point, their set point's wrong, they're not a good stasis. They need to change, and so Jesus loves his churches enough to give them letters and leaders and persecution and opportunity. And so changes from Jesus' perspective, change in churches is expected.

Speaker 3: 10:01

One of our other founders, paul Hahn, has been on this podcast some before he took to calling, in terms of thinking about church renewal, that, just like individuals are undergoing sanctification, groups of individuals collected in churches are undergoing group sanctification. Hopefully that's easier to swallow. In terms of church change, it's pretty easy for people to swallow that I still need to be sanctified. I'm not perfect. Jesus is still working on me, so hopefully that makes it a little bit easier to swallow that when you put a collection of people together who find a church attractive for whatever reason enough to stay there, at least that perhaps, just like as individuals, they need sanctification that their stasis is in the wrong place, that a church as a collection of people, that their stasis might be in the wrong place that's at least Jesus' perspective is that collections of people gathered into churches need to change. Right, right, the problem is we resist change. Why? Because that's the problem is we resist change? Because that's why do we resist change?

Speaker 3: 11:10

all change is glorious no, all change is lost. Oh, okay, which is a good time for us to mention again more slowly. Both jare and I are indebted to jack shatama, who we hope in this season we'll be able to get a chance to interview and introduce him to you. If you're not familiar with him, he has a quite marvelous book, at least two marvelous books. He first wrote Anxious Church, anxious People, and even if I got that title wrong, we'll correct it in the show notes.

Speaker 3: 11:40

We'll link it to the right book in the show notes. And once he wrote that book, which is marvelous, people came to him and said hey, can you write a primer on family systems from a Christian perspective? And so he did, and that book is called. If you Met my Family, you'd Understand and you can pick that up in print and audio. If you go to thenonanxiousleadercom, we'll link to the right thing. I thinkcom. Uh, we'll link to the right thing. Um, jack actually reads the book early in his podcast, like, uh, about the end of year one, going into year two, like episode in the fifties, into the sixties. He reads the book. So you can get the audio book just by listening to 10 podcasts in a row. Um, so we're we're indebted to Jack and multiple, multiple very accessible highly we talk about Edwin Friedman and failure of nerve.

Speaker 3: 12:26

That's the first book I read in this more than a decade ago, but that's like it's entirely worth it. But it's like graduate school for this kind of stuff. Again, entirely worth it. But, um, I say that Friedman's failure of nerve is like graduate school and I was trying to get back to kindergarten. And no shame on Jack, he put the cookies on the bottom shelf, which I needed. But Jack puts the cookies on the bottom shelf and we'll give you the basics of family systems theory. Roberta Gilbert as well has a basic book that we can link to that gives you kind of the eight basic concepts of Bowen family systems theory, and so we can go back to the basics there.

Speaker 3: 13:02

All right, so in Bowen theory, systems are resistant to change because they always land at a place of homeostasis. As leaders, as church leaders, we're trying to look at churches and go hmm, we see Jesus ideal in the scriptures. Our body does not yet reflect that ideal, and so as leaders, we want to help our churches become different than they are, and that ends up being a rather difficult endeavor because systems resist change. Think about it like a rubber band. My dad built the house that I grew up in, and so we grew up doing woodworking and things like that, and so my dad I'm not quite sure why he did this. I think he thought that we wouldn't shoot each other's eyes out but he made my brother and I rubber band guns, and so we had these wooden guns that you could stretch rubber band over and then shoot at each other. It was less harmful than other things. However, what happens when you could stretch rubber band over and then shoot it at each other? It was less harmful than other things. However, what happens when you shoot a rubber band off a rubber band gun? Rubber band returns. It returns to its stasis point, which is what it was when you took it out of the package.

Speaker 3: 14:28

And that is an easy analogy for why change is difficult for systems, for human systems, because they have a stasis, and any disruption to that, because it's change, is experienced as loss. Yes, and this is a whole chapter, and if you met my family, you'd understand. And this is really important, I think, for leaders who are newer to settings and I made this mistake as a pastor for sure is that a leader comes into a setting and they're like, oh, this needs to be really different than it is and they're not as vested in the system as it is as the people who've been there. So they come in, new leaders come into a situation like, oh, this needs to be all different, and so they go about changing it, sometimes in ways that are not very compassionate or understanding or terribly helpful, and sometimes those leaders end up out on the curb because they didn't think about the fact that good change to them is still experienced. Even good change that Jesus wants for a church is experienced as loss by people in the system, and when people experience loss they're put into grief. And people react to grief in various ways Sometimes anger, sometimes distancing, sometimes resistance.

Speaker 3: 15:47

Yes, which in Bowman theory, resistance, which is a whole interesting topic you can read if you're somebody who is a Christian leader and you are trying to influence others. Peter Block on resistance and flawless consulting has two chapters. It's a $64 book that's entirely worth those two chapters just to read about the nature of resistance. Pastors should read it too, because anybody who's trying to influence others, influence the system to change, is going to run into resistance. And Block gets it Highly practical, highly practical, very, very helpful. A whole chapter on describing resistance and another chapter on how to overcome resistance and Block's basic point. It fits well with Bowen, which is that resistance is not a reaction to the goodness of ideas. This is where I think us pastors who are Bible-based which I'm a fan of, obviously that we misunderstand what's going on. We're thinking it's about the content of Bible teaching, when it's not. It's about the emotional process that people are going through. Okay, that's another major concept, right? Two, yeah, two. So, jer, why don't you describe that difference between process and content?

Speaker 2: 17:03

Yeah, so when we're talking about family systems one of the things it does and you talked about this in the last episode family system doesn't give an answer. It helps you diagnose the situation.

Speaker 3: 17:13

Yes, yes.

Speaker 2: 17:14

Okay, good description. When we're talking about process versus content, I come in and I see that there is something that needs to change. When I'm looking at the system though recognizing when I say a system here, what I'm talking about is you and I, as two individuals, have a relationship. We have a way of relating to each other. We have a normal A way we roll A way we roll the way we talk, the way we interact, the way we share expectations, the way we deliver when we mess up, how we make it up. We've worked that out. It works for us, and it might be dysfunctional in some areas, it might be holding us back in some areas, but it works for us. And then someone else comes in they say, hey, that's not working so well and it could be improved.

Speaker 2: 17:56

If you X, y or Z, and what we hear is there's something wrong with you and you're stupid. Identity acceptance I hope you caught that. That's good. That's what we feel, and we don't feel. We don't think it's not like we.

Speaker 2: 18:11

Well, this person you know Jared just said that I'm doing this wrong. He's saying I'm stupid and I am an idiot. We just feel it because we are ever since the fall, ever since the image of god in us was shattered by sin. We have a a pull towards shame because in our core john talks about this the light came into the darkness and the darkness did not receive it, could not receive it because the darkness hates the light. When the light of truth shines into our lives, because we're made in God's image, there's a part of us that will react to that and we'll say, ooh, that hurts. And if I'm not there, if I, if I, if I'm not there in terms of agreeing with that, I will react to it by saying I don't want to see that, I will cover my eyes, emotionally react, emotionally react. And so all of this you said the magic words, emotional process, in the interactions that you and I have in our family and in our church, and when my family comes to church and we've had I wrote a song, I write songs.

Speaker 2: 19:17

You guys, it doesn't matter, but I wrote this song and one of the verses in this song says um, it's like running late and the wedding's about to start with a knockdown drag out that won't stay in the car and the most you can do is barely look at her. And there they stand, with the preacher down front and he says I do, I do, and all you do is grunt and think about all the broken promises ahead of them. We've all had this experience, right. I'm married, got my spouse, I love my spouse. My spouse irritates me just like I irritate my spouse.

Speaker 2: 19:49

We're going to someplace that should be great and we're having some fight and we're not going to ever know what the content of the fight was. We do know the emotional process and we do know the emotional cost, because we get there and now we're hugging the outside corners of our chairs and we're not looking at each other and we're only speaking in snipped sentences in the midst of what should be a time that reminds us of the joy of our love for each other and instead is pinging on something else, because we have this emotional process that has been broken by a break in our relationship, and so I, as a therapist, can come in and I can say oh well, you got blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and all you. How's that work for you? No, yeah, exactly that's what you hear.

Speaker 2: 20:38

Why? Because peanuts was right. We're sitting there and we have this. We have this way of being, the way that we do things, how we work out these kind of conflicts and we're comfortable with how they work. If we weren't, we would change them. If I wasn't comfortable with the way that I go through having a fight and then reconciling with my wife, I would do it differently.

Speaker 2: 21:10

But I have the stasis in your relationship right now.

Speaker 3: 21:12

That's the stasis Right.

Speaker 2: 21:13

And so we have. We have this emotional relationship and I have this emotional process, and so I don't know what the fight was about. I don't know what the reason was about. I don't know what the reason was that we have a Christmas tree in the sanctuary. Don't have a Christmas tree in the sanctuary. Jack Shatama talks about a Christmas service that they did, where they had, I think, four people dressed in black sitting on stools and someone came in and they're like this didn't feel like christmas to me. Okay, what's going on there is this? This wasn't christmas. Is this, what is this? The message of christmas has been overshadowed, lost, misused, or is this? I have a certain way I like doing things. I have a certain way I like experiencing things. It wasn't met. Now I feel something and all I can say is, right now, I haven't looked at it, so it just feels kind of icky and it's your fault and I don't like it. As a pastor, I can look at that. I can say, okay, well, here's what you need to understand.

Speaker 2: 22:16

By the way, here's the content you need to understand anytime you hear someone say to you here's what you need to understand. Prepare yourself to run into a roadblock. That's just take it. 95 percent of the time it's gonna be a roadblock. When I try to approach this from an understanding point of view, I've missed the emotional process, and what I'm not saying here is I need to stop and say oh, tell me how you feel about that. Are you sad about this? Oh, it's really hard to be sad. I do this with my nine-year-old, because this is where my nine-year-old is. My nine-year-old is still learning how to govern herself, how to be responsible for her emotional state and how to shepherd herself through the emotional state that she's in to something that is better. I forget, though, that when my nine-year-old becomes an 89 year old, she will still struggle with these things, and she will still need me to stop, just the way Jesus did, and listen first and not give the answer. Not give the prescription and not give the answer. Not give the prescription, not give the content.

Speaker 2: 23:28

The way that we talked about this in my counseling program was we would climb in the casket with the person, because life does suck sometimes, and both Matt and I can tell you we've had our fair share of suck and it's bad. And when someone else is there, me, coming in and saying oh well, that's because you don't have enough faith. If you just followed God, take these scriptures, it doesn't work. Why? Because life is hard. Jesus didn't come to us and say do you remember? I sent the law through Moses. Follow the law and you'll get to God. Here's the information you need.

Speaker 2: 24:04

Jesus came in and was acquainted with our suffering.

Speaker 2: 24:10

He bore, walking alongside of us, the same temptations that we feel, so that he could be an advocate to the Father as our high priest.

Speaker 2: 24:22

When we come in, we have this content thing and we have this process thing, and it's very easy to come in and say, oh well, this is what's wrong, here's what we need you to fix it, instead of hitting the brakes and saying, oh, that's right. I remember from my family systems training that I can identify what's going wrong here, but this doesn't actually give the prescription for how to fix it. What's going wrong here, but this doesn't actually give the prescription for how to fix it. How to fix it is found in the gospel, because that's where the relationship dynamic that exists between me and God, that's broken, is impacting the relationship dynamic between me and my wife that's now fractured, and the only way for me to fix what's going on between me and my wife is to first recognize what's happening between me and God, to let the gospel come in and heal that, and then, out of that hearing God say to me, you are my son, in whom I'm well pleased, to then turn and, as is in most cases, repent to my wife and ask for her forgiveness.

Speaker 2: 25:22

Which changes the emotional process I just spread my arms out wide, like you couldn't see that because there's no camera so what you're trying to help you understand is that it's not as though content is unimportant.

Speaker 3: 25:39

Uh, the bible's there to tell us what you know human relationships would look, what marriages should look like, what life in the body should look like. Sometimes the content is unimportant. It's to realize that as people come in contact with the content through us as leaders, that it impacts them emotionally, and the way that they respond to us many times as leaders is not related to the content. They probably, more than likely, if they're willing to live under the Bible's authority, agree with the content they're wrestling with. How do I deal with that? What do I do with my experience that this is going to mean change Change for me, change for our group of people? What impact will this have on others in the body?

Speaker 3: 26:31

And I think that that's the wise leaders who are working towards change recognize that they. They see more than just content issues for people. They see that people experience change as loss and they're willing to walk alongside of them as they grapple with loss. That puts people into grief and if you don't, you end up disconnected from people, you may end up out of a job or those people will end up out of your church. And that's not to say, even if you do all this well, that you might not lose your job or people might not end up out of the church, because rubber bands tend to go back to the shape that they were, so systems resist change, even if they're deformed. If you pull the rubber band out of the bag that's deformed, it will still try and go back to that shape, and so it takes patience. I'm working with a pastor I'm coaching right now on strategic patience.

Speaker 1: 27:36

Stay tuned for part three of our conversation with Dave next week. We'll pick it up right here. Till then, God bless.

Speaker 3: 27:43

It's difficult to exercise strategic patience because you're walking alongside people, Even if you can see the change that's needed ahead of time, because they experienced that change as loss. It's very difficult for them, and so wise leaders are. It's not that they're not bringing content to bear, it's they're walking alongside people as people grapple with the loss that it will mean for change to come to the system.

Speaker 2: 28:06

So we've talked about homeostasis, status quo, we've talked about emotional process, we've talked about process versus content. There's some other concepts here that we're going to be unpacking. Triangles is one of them. Sabotage Sabotage is another. We can pull back this and look at this from an organizational design perspective as well, because this is something that you do when you go into churches. There's certainly the paper leaders. When you look at the org chart, who is who reports to?

Speaker 3: 28:34

who? What's the structure here? Who are the leaders on paper, the formal?

Speaker 2: 28:38

organization, but there's also an informal organization who actually do we need to talk to before we can make this decision. Who's going to be very, very upset if we change this aspect of whatever?

Speaker 3: 28:52

Who could sync this if we don't have them on board?

Speaker 2: 28:56

And does it matter that they're not listed on this organizational chart anywhere? And the answer is no, it doesn't, because it's a set of relationships built one on top of the other. It's what I call a Venn within a Venn, overlapping relationships. If you played with a spirograph, the spirograph, as you're going around, starts making intersecting lines with the previous intersecting lines that you made, so that when you finish, you have what looks like a very intricately braided knot. Those are the relationships that exist in the organization, understanding how they're connected.

Speaker 2: 29:36

And when we look at a system's theory perspective, there's several ways that we can map this out. We can use genograms, we can use a family history, triangles, interlocking triangles. What we're looking at is what are the relationships between two people? And then what are the relationships between the basic unit, which really is three? Because you and I can have our own relationship and it can be going along perfectly fine, and as long as you and I are copacetic, it doesn't matter what happens around us. And as long as you and I are copacetic, right, doesn't matter what happens around us. But as soon as my kid interrupts our conversation or your wife texts you about your son, there's a third party introduced to this right, our relationship necessarily has to adjust right now. Again, we talked about the triune nature of God. Here we have have God, the Father, god the Son, god, the Holy Spirit, fully identified in their own person, fully in relationship with each other, including in submission one to the other, appropriately, yet without conflict, at complete peace.

Speaker 2: 30:40

And this is the picture that, as I think about relationship, triangles is what I'm looking for. Where is this out of alignment? Where is it not matching the relationship that we see God as the basis for how we understand proper relationship? There's a couple ways that when we look at triangles, we determine this. We look at what is the dynamic between this relationship? How strong is the relationship between these two people? Which direction does the relationship go in terms of power? Does it flow both ways? Does it only go one way? Is it a broken relationship that should be there but has been broken? Where is it affected by someone else?

Speaker 2: 31:23

You used the example of the rubber band. I think it's friedman that talks about triangles also in terms of a band. If you take three people and put a rubber band around, all three of them, as soon as one person in that triangle, if you're trying to keep the rubber band at at the same tension. As soon as any one of them moves, the other two also have to move in order to maintain that tension. And so, when we talk about this homeostasis, that's what's going on. So, as we're looking at churches and organizations, we're looking at the relationship between individual relationships laid over other individual relationships, laid over other individual relationships, and the way that they interact with each other, either well or poorly, and what you're doing is you're coming in, trying to help them have the like you said strategic patience to be able to identify where there's blocks, where there's relational conflict going on.

Speaker 2: 32:24

That is not yet diagnosed it's an unhealthy family system, right so that you can then bring the light of the gospel into it so that health can be pursued, because it's not just about this balance, it's about health. An unbalanced body is one where cancer cells are multiplying and taking over healthy cells and making them into cancer cells. We haven't talked about it yet, we haven't defined it, so I wonder, if you could. This is probably where we need to end, but could you define for us, surrounding togetherness, pressure as opposed to differentiation.

Speaker 3: 33:01

Sure, yeah, jared and I both re-listened to or I listened to, but I don't know if you read or listened to Shatama's book.

Speaker 2: 33:09

It's the same thing for me.

Speaker 3: 33:10

Yeah right because he's blind. Shatama talks about this and I think it's a good enough illustration to use for this. He talks about going to his future wife's house for New Year's and their New Year's meal was something that involved both sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. So he sits down at his future wife's family meal and they're passing around the mashed potatoes and the sauerkraut and some meat of some sort or whatever. He watches his wife take a scoop of mashed potatoes and then put a scoop of sauerkraut on top of the mashed potatoes, and he looks at her and he goes who puts sauerkraut on mashed potatoes? To which the rest of his wife's family looks at him and he goes who puts sauerkraut on mashed potatoes? To which the rest of his wife's family looks at him and says who doesn't?

Speaker 3: 33:53

So that's an example of surrounding togetherness, pressure. There's something that you should conform to here. That word should is important. Kurt Thompson says where there's a should, there's shame. Now there are certainly commands that God calls us to obey out of love, because it's good for us. God's commands are good because they put us back into the place that he created us for and he knows us better. I'm not saying that obeying God's commands isn't a good thing knows us better. I'm not saying that obeying God's commands isn't a good thing, but in most human relationships, the should that others put on us is meant to exert that togetherness pressure to in some places, in some ways, to shame us into doing something. You see this in peer pressure that both kids and adults face. You see it in our culture where if you don't conform to something, you'll be canceled. Those are examples, various ways of thinking about surrounding togetherness pressure. So it's whenever surrounding togetherness pressure is whenever someone else or a group of people is trying to get you to conform to something, right, okay.

Speaker 3: 35:13

Differentiation of self says that, in the midst of that surrounding togetherness pressure, that I have enough of a solid sense of my identity, my acceptance with God, that I can say okay, that's cool that you like sauerkraut on mashed potatoes, I don't think that's for me. I like my sauerkraut over here with my meat. And that I'm willing to be an individual and not have to go with the group in order to feel okay about myself. Okay, go with the group in order to feel okay about myself, okay. So I have that, that solidity to exhibit my own goals and values.

Speaker 3: 35:56

Now notice also the emotional connection in the way I described that. Jared, it's awesome that you want to put your sauerkraut on top of your mashed potatoes. Thank you, love you, brother. Think you're crazy, but still love you. I'm not going to do that and so it's possible. And again, bowen would say that we're differentiated on a scale from zero to a hundred and that most people are only differentiated at best 50% of the time. So we struggle with this. We struggle to live life the way that Jesus did, where he did not have this challenge of exhibiting his individuality, knowing his own goals and values and proceeding through life in that and responding kindly, staying connected to people, but not conforming to that togetherness pressure. Right, is that what you were looking?

Speaker 2: 36:49

for yeah and because we're going along here, I think are there any other definitions that we haven't hit yet?

Speaker 3: 36:56

So we haven't hit sabotage.

Speaker 2: 36:57

Okay, I want to come back to that. Okay, I want to touch on triangles really quickly. Sure Again. First, to set up for that. When we talk about triangles, this is going to be really important as we move forward. A triangle exists whenever you have two people who are in a relationship and anxiety is introduced into that relationship A triangle?

Speaker 2: 37:16

discomfort, anxiety, fear, any of those things. A triangle exists in order to spread the weight or load of that discomfort over more people, so that it's easier to bear, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The question becomes is it being done in a way that is appropriate, or is it being done in a way that is not appropriate?

Speaker 3: 37:39

So, for example, an inappropriate would be Jer's wife's name is Hannah. Jer's a little late getting a podcast in. I text Hannah because it feels too uncomfortable to text Jer directly. I'm like Hannah did Jer have an interview or something as to why this podcast hasn't dropped yet? And families do this all of the time. Churches do this all of the time where you don't directly talk to the person one-to-one. Time where you don't directly talk to the person one-to-one but you add a third person because you feel anxious about the relationship.

Speaker 2: 38:14

That's a triangle I called julian told her to tell you to stop doing that so, and triangles should?

Speaker 3: 38:21

tom is really good at this. Triangles can exist, certainly. We see it a lot in people, but you can see it with other things. A third piece in a triangle can be work or a substance problem, or where there's lots of things that can make up a triangle, trying to displace the weight of discomfort that's in the one-to-one relationship with somebody else, and that's where sabotage comes in, because you can read Chitama, you can read Bowen, you can read Friedman.

Speaker 2: 38:47

All of them will tell you three people being in a relationship is not what is wrong. Again, the Trinity is three people in a relationship. What's wrong is when one of those persons is trying to use another one of those persons to change the third, either by adding to or taking away, instead of having that direct relationship. That is walking in integrity. Sabotage comes in where I, as the person who wants a change or doesn't want the change that you want, I'm going to enlist someone else to come in to break this process down, to halt your progress, by gaining an ally, if you will, by gaining another means of support. That is, you know, when we're talking about dysfunctional triangles. It's inappropriate, it shouldn't happen that way.

Speaker 3: 39:40

So those of you that have served on leadership boards before, I know you have never heard of this before, so I'll just tell you about it from someone else's experience. But I know you've never heard before a leader say, someone said, people are saying I heard that and that's the way sabotage happens. And sabotage happens because systems resist change.

Speaker 3: 40:08

Sabotage happens because the differentiated leader, the non-anxious leader we'll talk about why non-anxious is important, uh, as we go, and there's other books in this category that are super helpful but the, the non-anxious leader who's trying to institute change as they go about it, the system resists that, and one of the ways that the system resists change is sabotage, which is a way of trying to say hey, I'm objecting, you're changing the system, I don't like it, and it's not always conscious, and I think that's important. I think we can read sabotage sometimes as willful disobedience to church leadership, which is, and sometimes you can see it in families that it's willful disobedience of a child, or willful not following of a wife, of a husband, which is grave mistakes, because you're not realizing, even if you're leading in a good direction, whether in family or in church, that change is loss and people react to loss with grief, and so they're reacting emotionally, not because the content is wrong.

Speaker 2: 41:14

It is. There is so much more that we could unpack here, and we're going to, you know, we're going to spend the rest of the season here talking about real situations and referring back to these concepts, which is why I think it's worth the time to really be solid on these concepts. I'm sure that we will link a lot of resources. If you want to dive deeply into this, you can. Family systems theory came out of the organizational design work of Frank Taylor. It came out of biology. It came out of a psychotherapeutic model that was trying to respond to families that had schizophrenic members within their family. And again, what it provides is a way to understand the dynamics within the system and it helps you see where there are problems that need to be adjusted, but it doesn't empower you with the solution. It simply gives you the diagnosis from which you then need to apply a solution, and many people will apply a solution that is dysfunctional. Many people do it because they don't know they don't have another tool in their toolbox.

Speaker 2: 42:38

Here's something that's for free. When you experience sabotage, I will almost guarantee you that, whatever you come up with as the reason the person is doing, whatever boneheaded reason, whatever boneheaded thing they're doing.

Speaker 2: 42:55

That is what you would do if you were in their position. So set that aside and say, okay, it's probably not that. I've actually mistaken a mirror for a window, I'm not seeing you, I'm seeing me. And then go to them and say, hey, something's not working here. I'm not sure what's going on. Could we work on this together? That's how you circumvent this. Again, this comes down to identity and acceptance. You're not doing what I want you to do and I'm scared. But if you don't do what I want you to do, I'm going to be in danger and, as a result of the danger I'm feeling, I'm angry at you. I want to change you now, but it's not my problem. It's your problem, it's not my anxiety. It's that you're being stupid and I don't. I definitely don't want to feel my anxiety, man, because I'm not an anxious person. I don't know who's saying that he's getting anxious.

Speaker 3: 43:50

I don't know who said that, but it's not true. So we'll come back to this, because I think that there's many times that we feel a threat, we perceive a threat when it's actually not. It's the system saying I'm gonna experience this as loss and I don't like that, and that I think we misread Derek's trying to help. You see, sometimes we misread what's actually going on in church leadership and that we're wiser if we can pull back and look a little bit more at the emotional process that's going on.

Speaker 1: 44:40

Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching that's going on. When pastors or churches feel stuck, our team of coaches refresh their hope in the gospel and help them clarify their strategy. If you have questions or a need, we'd love to hear from you. For more information, go to our website, flourishcoachingorg, or send an email to info at flourishcoachingorg. You can also connect with us on Facebook X and YouTube. We appreciate when you like, subscribe, rate or review our show whenever you're listening. It can be hard for churches to ask for help, so when our clients tell us who referred them, we'll send a small gift to say thanks. A huge thank you to all our guests for making the time to share their stories with us. We are really blessed to have all these friends and partners. All music for this show has been licensed and was composed and created by artists. The Church Renewal Podcast was directed and produced by Jeremy Seferati in association. Bye for now, Thank you.