Setting The Stage: Loyalty’s Power

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Welcome to the Church Renewal Podcast.

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I'm Matt. I'm Jeremy.

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Throughout season four, we've been looking beneath the surface of church life at the patterns, pressures, and stories that shape how leaders and congregations relate to one another. Today, we begin a two-part conversation with Dr. Ken Quick on one of the most powerful and often hidden forces at work in those relationships, loyalty. Drawing on the work of Hungarian family systems thinker Ivan Naji, Jeremy, Matt, and Dr. Quick talk about ledgers and relationships, invisible loyalties, and the sense of owing that forms in families and then shows up in the life of a church. They consider how good bonds can become distorted, how justice and gratitude intersect with loyalty, and why pastors, staff, and congregations so often end up feeling that someone didn't hold up their end of the deal. In part one, you'll hear the foundations laid, how this way of seeing relationships clarifies conflict, reveals dysfunction, and opens the door for a more biblical, Christ-centered way of belonging to one another. This is part one of our conversation with Dr.

Who Is Ivan Nagy And Why He Matters

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Ken Quick on loyalty, ledgers, and the life of the church.

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Dr. Ken Quick, welcome back to the Church Renewal Podcast.

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A pleasure being here. Thanks for being with us. We appreciate it.

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Back in 2009, 10, somewhere in there, you and I met in a seminary class that you were teaching. And as a part of that class, you introduced me to an author of Hungarian descent, Ivan Naj. Naj is spelled hyphen nagy. And I can't say the first part of his lesson.

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I can't either.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Orz Gamani or something. I don't know what it is. Uh he's no longer with us, sadly. You know, your background, my background, are very deeply in psychology. You, I believe, have two PhDs. One is in divinity, the other is in psychology. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_03 1:54

Well, I like being thought to have a PhD. Actually, I have doctors subministry.

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Okay, two demons.

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Yeah, so you know, uh, Mary Magdalene had however many, what 12? I've got two. We got two demons, yeah.

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Well, you introduced me to Naj, and uh one of the uh contributions that he made, he wrote about in his book, Invisible Loyalties. When we talk about Edwin Freeman, Naj is more on that level of uh this is definitely a graduate level work that you're working through. He's unpacking what I'm gonna describe as relationship dynamics and the bonds that we have, the good bonds that we have to the people in the families in which we grow and in the communities with which we grow, where we're born, because of essentially the reciprocity of how we live together. So at a very basic level, he talks about a child born into a family owes something to the parents because even though the child didn't ask to be born, the parents gave that child life to take care of that child, and that child owes something back to the parents as a result. That owing he describes as a merit. Um, but he all he looks at that and he describes that reciprocity as also being able to become dysfunctional and become exploited. So as a parent, I can exploit my child by not taking care of them. I can exploit my child by requiring more of them than I should require of them. And the reason that I wanted to talk with you about this, Dr. Quick, is that we've described already that the church is a family system built of family systems. We've talked about the importance and the need to do family of origin work as a leader. We've talked about the the benefit of doing it as an individual. And what I'd love to talk about with you is how as you've worked with churches, you have seen the impact of specific family of origin things being played out at the congregational level. Does that make sense to you in terms of a backdrop?

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Well, I think we can take it from there. Uh we are talking about a vast, a vast subject. Naj himself has vast implications in terms of uh approaching and understanding personal dynamics, understanding history. There's just uh a ton of things that he touches on.

Ledgers In Relationships Explained

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And the way I see Naj, uh, just uh to help the audience kind of get a better handle on exactly who this guy is, he really has an uh an accountant's view, is the way I would describe it. An accountant's view of personal relationships, that we are doing things to each other and for each other, some of which go in the positive column uh assets, some go in the negative column uh as uh debits, or I'm not sure. My wife would who is an accountant would say, gosh, you got that all screwed up. But anyway, uh the the reality is that they're on the positive or negative side of the ledger. Yeah. And he talks about ledgers in relationships. And so in a church, you just raise that up a level, you see that pastors are either contributing to the positive side of a ledger in terms of their relationships with their congregation, their board, their other staff members, or they are putting things in the negative side of the column. And if that happens, that begins to impact history, not just the present relationships. But if you were to leave, whoever stands in that position has a negative balance already in place in terms of the way I relate to them. So uh that happens again in all relationships. That's that's Nodge's brilliance, I think, is to see and understand how we're keeping ledgers all the time, all the time, all the time, and that we relate out of those ledgers. We understand uh a relationship when we first enter into it based on again our history and our understanding. So it could be a woman's uh ledger in relation to men, right? Uh it can be a congregation member's relation

How History Shapes Present Church Dynamics

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to a pastor because the previous pastor was abusive. Right. You've got all these histories that are playing a part because of the accounting mechanism that we are all operating by.

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It's interesting. This is another thing I've not read before, but the Gottmans talk about how in relationships we make bids. I don't know if you're familiar with that idea, but this is very interesting. Yeah, so this is a very interesting interplay. So it's sort of like there hasn't been an accounting yet, but when I make a bid, it has the potential, depending on how you react to it. Um, so a bid is it's a request of some sort. Dr. Who, would you come on the podcast? That's a bid, right? So it's interesting. People who come to pastors with critiques are actually making some kind of request, they're making some kind of bid, they're asking for some kind of emotional connection. And pastors, I think sometimes, and certainly I did, misunderstood that. They're they're making some sort of relational bid by bringing a critique. They're they're asking for something out of it, right? And depending on how you react as a pastor, that interaction may go into the positive column, yeah, or it may go into the negative column, right? Which is which is interesting. Right. Um, to just combine the two of those. That's it's very, very interesting.

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Well, when Naj talks about loyalty, he traces the etymology of the word loyalty to the French word for law. And so the idea here of ledgers, the accounting, is not just a you and I interacting, but there's also an owing factor of an objective reality. He describes the way that we have understood justice historically, and and he he talks a lot about justice and parses that out in terms of both the beneficial, the philosophical, but also the uh interpersonal justice, as he uses it in his in his literature. Uh, because he asks the question outright. He says, Does a discussion of justice, a seemingly theological and

Bids, Critiques, And The Ledger Effect

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philosoph philosophical term, uh, belong in a discussion of psychology? And he argues and says, it absolutely does, because we are all born into a particular context, and in that context, there are pre-existing realities. And we are obligated in some way to these existing realities, whether it is to challenge something that is wrong or to uphold something that has been handed to me. I have the responsibility to uphold what it means to be a separati. I it's not something that I can come come in and simply say, well, you know, uh forget that. That that's that's some kind of ancient patriarchal, familial, clan something. I'm my own person. He says, Well, I mean, you can do that, but he describes that as a dysfunction. And he specifically says that that is now possible because of very particular technological advances which have fragmented the family structure since about the you know the midpoint of the 19th century.

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Right.

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So the idea here of an owing what is right plays in very closely with how we relate to each other and whether or not I'm doing what is right by you and what I can and perhaps should then expect you're going to do back for or to me. A friend of mine talks about a church that he served at and he described a situation, and he said that this uh this particular church had a church princess. And what he meant by that is there's a particular woman in the church who is afforded extreme uh graciousness by others in terms of her whims, desires.

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Deference, yeah.

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Yes, because of the dynamic, the relational dynamic that stems from some kind of familial interaction, some kind of protectionism of this person and its impact can be seen on the entire church. I'm sure you've seen this kind of dynamic

Loyalty, Law, And Justice In Systems

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work out in other places, Matt. Right, right. Distortively, usually. Oftentimes. Yeah. But from a practitioner point of view, when I look at that, one of the questions I'm asking is where where did that come from? Why is this imbalance in place? How do I how do I understand what led to this family system being out of proper functioning norms and it's now having an impact over here on a larger system? And how do I, as a Christian, as a leader, as a coach, come in and speak into this so that the gospel can have a corrective impact not just in the larger system, but also at the individual level, so that the real need that is present in a person's life can be addressed both between them and God, and so that the relationship between that person and the others around them and the you know, expanding concentric circles becomes properly Christ-centered, functional, appropriate. So that you can expect that what I owe you, I will give to you, and I can expect the same from you. And scripture says we are to owe nothing to anyone but to love them. We talked about this in the last episode, Matt, that what Jesus said is going to be the mark of the church is that we love one another.

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Right, right, right, right, right, yeah.

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And one of the things I find really fascinating about all this is that you know you and you and I have been really careful to keep this conversation though, uh, very theologically based for the sake of our audience.

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Right.

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But there's such an overlap here. Uh Naj when you especially around chapter four or five, he becomes very specifically theological. And I don't know that he intends to do this from a theological perspective, but as he talks about what is owed and how we understand right and wrong, he he unpacks brilliantly, I think, a foundation of Christian morality. Did you did you find that?

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Do you I do? I think uh of all the family systems practitioners and theorists that kind of started family systems, uh, going all the way back to Marie Bowen, I think Naj and uh Friedman probably both have the most theologically consistent uh presentation of the the way family works. You just uh uh believer reading Naj or Friedman are constantly struck by how does this guy know so much about my church?

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He's been reading my mail.

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Yeah, how does he know so much? And they're not trying to do that. It's just I think that so many of the principles are are biblical and and family systems as a whole, it's an approach psychologically, I think, and therapeutically comes so much closer to biblical set of values. So you see a lot of touch points. I know having been trained in it, uh, it was a common thing to see touch points with with scriptural things and even scriptural dynamics. It definitely has uh strong touch points with the nature of ministry and the nature of congregational dynamics that inform, yeah. I I you know, I when I would require my students to read uh Friedman, you know, they look at me askance again in a theologically conservative cemetery.

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We're reading a rabbis anyway.

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Exactly. We're reading a rabbi, we're reading a psychologist. What you know, you know, what you know, who what could he possibly say to me? They come out of the experience going, oh my gosh, you know, how did this guy know so much about what I'm dealing with? You know, and I always give a preface that you're gonna find things you don't agree with. Sure. You're gonna find things that you don't agree with. He may talk about divorce and and encourage it, you know, and and you may be have a position that you can't do that. But understanding, he's not coming from a biblical point of view, he's coming from a therapist point of view. Right. If you understand his approach and the philosophy that's guiding it, there is so much that that really resonates

The “Church Princess” And Distorted Deference

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with scripture, and particularly the way we relate to each other and explains things that that happen at a corporate level that we have not been able to understand before because of our inculturation with individualism, that we just haven't learned to think at that level. And these guys have.

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Yeah, they're they're accurate. Another guest that we had on, we were just talking about how it's even if the origin of it is not people studying the Bible, that doesn't mean that people can't be accurate observers of human behavior.

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Exactly.

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And accurate observers of the way when you put humans in community, the ways that they interact and and even the things that they run into. Because sometimes I say to our clients that you may not want to believe that sociological realities are as real as a virgin birth, but sociological realities are just as real as theological realities. You just can't avoid them, right? You might want to, but these people are trying to help us really take account of a lot of those sociological realities and the dysfunction that happens when people get in the same spaces with each other, whether it's in a family or in a family of families in a church. Right. And um, and that's helpful. This this concept from knowledge of loyalty is interesting to me as I'm reflecting on various experiences that I've had in leading in the church, and even the churches that we're helping with, my brain is spinning. Sometimes the conflicts that people end up in church is precisely at this issue where I felt like in our relationship, you owed something to me. Right. And then you didn't deliver it. And that can be between believers in the church, that can be a pastor to a congregant, um, that can be a congregant to a pastor. Um, it can be between staff members in a church. Yes. Um, I'm rereading now uh a conflict with a staff member that I had in this with this lens going, ah, that staff member felt like I owed something to them. Right. And I didn't, I was not, I didn't have the knowledge that they felt like I owed that to them. It doesn't change that that's what they felt.

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It's it's one of the worst dysfunctions that I find in churches when pastors relate to their staff that way. Very transactional kind of approach to to ministry, where because you are on staff, I expect you to uh always support me, never say anything against me. And if I don't see that, if you violate that, if you report to somebody what something you see me doing that you think is wrong, and uh I hear that you've told somebody else about that, I will not give you an endorsement to take another church. This is what our African-American friends uh so often experience with powerful pastors. Uh you have to blackballed. Yeah. You are blackballed. You and I've had students that are in these churches come in weeping, knowing what their pastor is doing, knowing the kind of unethical things they may be up to, but they cannot say a word, and it's just tearing them apart because they're trying to to have integrity in these situations and they're watching something. This man that's standing up there that is adored by you know uh 5,000 people

Biblical Touchpoints In Family Systems

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and and operating in such a corrupt way, and they can't do anything about it, just torsion it it creates. So I I when it comes to loyalty, Bertram Russell, I don't agree with probably any other thing that Bertram Russell said, but he did say one thing that I now believe, having seen how loyalty can poison relationships, and that is that uh I think Bertram Russell's quote was all loyalty is evil. Interesting. Because loyalty says my country right or wrong, my pastor right or wrong. And I don't think God would ever say or expect us to operate that way.

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Right, only loyalty to Christ, right? That'd be the the primary and sole exclusive kind of loyalty. It's interesting that for the recording that we're doing in uh today and uh in this interview, uh one of the books that I'm rereading this year is um Chuck De Groats when Narcissism Comes to Church. And um I'm in uh uh enjoying it, getting more out of it the second time than I'm reading it. And uh it's fascinating that the narcissistic pastor uh requires that loyalty. Absolutely, demands that loyalty and how how caustic and corrosive that is to relationship to staff relationship to really the good functioning of a church, right?

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Just touch back with Naj, Naj would say that again, that comes from a sense of what you owe me in the relationship. If I'm if I'm the senior pastor, I am owed this. This is a debt you have to be paying all the time, too.

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And that's the way Naj would define it as and and it bears repeating that he's coming to this from a Hungarian perspective. He came to the US, he practiced out of I believe I believe Philadelphia during the midpoint of the 20th century, but he was born into a more uh eastern context of shame, loyalty, and honor. Where I I think that one of the things that that does is that gives a more robust understanding of the benefits of having positive loyalty impulses, positive owing ledgers based out of the fact that I was born into a family, I was born into a community, I was born into a culture, I was born into a country and it gave me things for which we can change, and maybe this is not too much on the margins here, but we can change loyalty at least to gratitude and say, I do owe something, right? My parents may have gotten a lot of things wrong, but they gave me life. That's a gift from God, and and I have to at least not just say, and this goes back to what we talked about with honoring your parents, it's not just it's for God if I do good. It is showing honor to my parents when I do good, and it's out of gratitude to say, no, I I received. The truth is I received a tremendous amount for the first two years of my life. If my parents didn't do anything, I would be dead. I was completely dependent on everything that they gave. And so, yes, there is an owing that exists here, and and Naj talks about this and he says, and and one of the problems that comes in is we have these conflicting priority of owing. When I get married, I do continue to owe something to my family of origin, but I owe something to my wife. And I owe more to my wife now in this relationship than I do to my family of origin. When kids come along, I owe something to my kids, but I still owe something to my wife. And I think Naj says this, and I would agree with this. I owe more to my wife than I do to my kids. And my wife owes more to me than she does to our kids.

Transactional Leadership And Staff Harm

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And it's easy to get those priorities into conflict. Well, they come into conflict, I guess it would be the better way to say it, when they when the priority is put out of order.

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And you can easily track how dysfunction flows out of that if it gets twisted, so a pastor can feel I owe more to the church than I do to my family, or I owe more to the church than I do to my wife. In other dysfunctional families, I owe more to my mother than I do to my wife. Right. And so if my mom comes and starts to pull my chain, I am leaving my wife behind. I am letting her, you know, uh, I'm deserting her in ways that are totally unhealthy for a relationship because of my mother. And my wife feels it. She sees it and feels it. That my mother is pulling me away from her. So I think those are those are all dynamics that I think Naj accurately describes in the sense of owing that drives us if we are not clear on, you know, what the right priority should be.

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Next time we'll talk with Dr. Quick about how anxiety spreads through a congregation and how leaders can stay grounded. Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal podcast from Flourish Coaching. Flourish exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever God has called them. 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. 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, flourishcoaching.org, or send an email to info at flourishcoaching.org. 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 with Flourish Coaching, with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called it. Bye for now.