Setting The Frame: Invisible Loyalties

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Welcome to the Church Renewal Podcast.

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I'm Matt. I'm Jeremy.

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In this second conversation with Dr. Ken Quick, we stay with his work on invisible loyalties and ledgers, but move more deeply into how those loyalties form us as leaders and wound our congregations. If you haven't listened to part one yet, you may want to go back and hear that first, because it lays the groundwork for the language of ledgers, owing, and distorted loyalty that we'll keep building on here. In this episode, Ken helps us trace how family of origin stories, church origin stories, and even unspoken expectations of loyalty shape the way power works in a congregation. Along the way, we ask what it means to move from loyalty to faithfulness, to reorder our priorities under God, to tell the truth about generational patterns, and to let the gospel begin to heal what's been broken instead of simply replacing people or structure. As you listen, we'd invite you to hold two questions in mind. What family and church patterns do I carry into my leadership? And where is my congregation still living out of old pain instead of gospel-shaped faith?

SPEAKER_03 1:06

So let me ask you this. It's

From Loyalty To Faithfulness

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very easy to take a swipe at a pastor who says, You owe me, as my staff member, you owe me blind loyalty. But process, not content. Where does that come from? How can I sit back and say what was going on prior to my entering into this relationship? That the what I'm entering into has a starting point of this dysfunctional. How can I better understand that and be able to have compassion for it, but also be a well differentiated self here? Who will probably get fired? Okay. Hi like Leon. But I can give what I do owe, but not be held hostage or exploited, would be the term that he uses, for something I don't owe. How do I how do I look at that from that from a Christian grace perspective and say, I can see where this went wrong, I can see where the need, where the pain, where the fear, where the anxiety exists, and I can see how this is a gospel issue.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

For the senior leader. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I I tend to maybe this is where your brain went to, Dr. Q, but I think about family of origin many times. So we have not talked a ton about

Four Families That Shape Leaders

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family of origin. So maybe you could give just a minute about how the influence of family of origin comes out in the ways that leaders sort of think about their leadership. Is that a fair way to set up the question?

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yeah. In the book I wrote called Healing the Heart of Your Church, I talk about the four families that every spiritual leader has. And the first is their family of origin, the family you grew up in, the family that you enter into in marriage and create, and the family of the congregation that you become a part of and get wedded to in a very real sense. And then the family of God. You are God's child as well. So those four families shape you. The one that has the most impact on you is your family of origin, because that's where you were learning your value system, that's where you were learning gender roles, that's where you were learning what's important in life, the value system. Uh, you are getting cultural things, you are getting ethnic things uh from your family of origin, all of which are shaping you. And then you enter into those other three families, those big ones, even the child of God. And a lot of times you are projecting on to God the very same issues. If you had an issue with your father who was demanding, if you had a mother who was an alcoholic, you know, you all of a sudden are projecting on to God as his child, the very same dynamics that you experienced.

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It's interesting. My parents were not believers with me growing up, but they had both come out of abusive families, and they were very reflective. It's very interesting that despite the fact that both of my parents came out of very difficult backgrounds, they were really thoughtful. And they were thoughtful with my brother and I. And they were imperfect, but they were thoughtful and they reflected well in the experience that they had and really worked to not replicate it with us. And my brother and I marvel at this because it's um it is unlikely that you wouldn't get two people who got married very young from those backgrounds and end up with two kids that have been stable, they've had stable marriages, we've had children, both have master's degrees, we've done well in the world, and and it's it's not destiny. Your family of origin is not destiny, but man, is it data? And if you don't take that really seriously and and reflect as a leader, why am I like this? Right. You're now it's destiny.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

If you if you're not reflective, you're you're you're you're stuck in it. Why do I exaggerate? Why do I lie? Why am I drawn to pornography? What is that about? Why do I react so to criticism? I mean, those are the questions that I think any wise leader,

Projecting Family Patterns Onto God

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male or female, has to process in themselves. And I think God is calling them to, because he ultimately wants to heal whatever may be driving that engine. Yes. And then at a corporate level, when you get into churches, you got the exact same things going on, depending upon the history of the church, kind of the family of origin, as a if you think of it in terms of a church, the dynamics are all there. And depending upon how that started and what was on the heart of the original birthers of that ministry, a lot of times you got the very same sinful things going on that create, as time goes on, uh a dysfunctional body.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Yeah, the the origin story of a church. Sometimes the churches that we'll work with will flourish, they'll be 150 years old, right? And you can't get back to the origin story. But other times we're just engaging with a church right now where it's just on the other side of a church planter. Whatever dysfunctions he brought into that church are going to mark that church in some way, and trying to help them become, even as he's transitioned onto something else, helping them in transition become conscious of that and reflective. That's the role of the practitioner. That's what Dr. Q does, it's what we do, and that's trying to help you, you know, not perpetuate that dysfunction.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

And churches, churches are famous for knee-jerking. Oh, well, you know, so he was a people person, but he was an administrative disaster. So we're gonna swing, we're gonna make sure we get ourselves an administrator that does everything right and has, you know, and then once again. He can't relate to anybody in the church, but he means he really gonna get everything organized, and and uh, you know, and so then they had that for a couple of years, and then he leaves and they go, Oh my gosh, we can't, you know, we gotta get somebody who knows how to relate to people the next time. And so the church is just you know back and forth.

SPEAKER_03 7:11

Yeah, you're scapegoating everywhere because obviously the problem is not us, the problem is not the process. We just have the wrong. So we're in a place now where we have just you know, for the sake of argument here, you're the pastor demanding loyalty of me. I'm the subordinate trying to work in the system to follow the will of God, to be faithful to my calling in ministry, to shepherd the flock, to support the leadership. And I'm in a place now where I'm I'm experiencing

Church Origin Stories And Power

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this conflict. And what you've said here is there's family of origin content, information, data that can be really, really useful for me to better understand. And so I can approach this now, even from the low power dynamic position that I'm in, seeking to understand not just what caused you to be the way you are, but why I'm responding to you the way I am. Whether I'm becoming reactive and then running around and telling everyone who's not in the church about how horrible you are, or I'm being adaptive, and I'm simply going along with what you say. Or I'm blaming you, or I'm harboring bitterness, or I'm becoming fearful, or I'm out of anxiety, changing my resume to put you off of it in some. There's there's all kinds of things, but I have to look at this not just from a you perspective, what's going on with you, but also with a what's going on in me, recognizing the whole time, as we've talked about a hundred times, I'm only responsible for myself. But I can seek to better understand. Thank you, Stephen Covey. I can first seek to understand what in fact is going on in you that has put you in a position where this is how you're responding to me. And I can be much more intentional, much more thoughtful, much more careful. I I love my grandfather very dearly. He went home to be with the Lloyd back in 95. He was a pastor in the Assemblies of God, he was a superintendent of the Hispanic Assemblies of God for the Eastern East Coast for, I don't know, nine years or something in the late 60s, I think. He had five kids. I've got a mother, three aunts, and an uncle. They were all raised in church. And they were all raised as Puerto Rican kids in New York City during the time of Nikki Cruz and David Wilkerson. And fat my grandfather and his wife were pastoring in this context. Uh, where, you know, the stories of there are multiple stories I've heard about my my grandmother or grandfather going and breaking up gang fights and taking the weapons from the gang

Knee-Jerks And Scapegoats In Hiring

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members and putting them in the desk drawer because there was respect for elders at that point, even at that at that time in the way that civilization was already breaking down, there was still a high level of respect for elders. But there was also a high expectation from my grandparents, so that my grandmother is reportedly would stand at the door with sweaters to hand it people, specifically women, as they were coming in, if they were not deemed to be showing sufficiently little skin. Um, you know, those stories and and I and my grandmother is still with us, she just turned 102. My and uh I I've talked with her about these things, but I've also talked to my mother. I've also heard uh about how my mother, at least in her experience, was expected to, by her action, uphold a particular image. And that did not always work out for my mother's good. There was a there was an expectation, a loyalty, both from the family of origin in terms of Hispanic culture and the way that family loyalty is understood. There was a Christian morality side of this. There was a pastoral side of this, where you're a pastor's kid, and they lived under all these things. And uh, you know, as much as I know my grandfather loved the Lord, he didn't get these things right all the time. Now my mother can go back if she wants, and she can deconstruct and she can start hating on her parents, and she can start hating on the gospel, and she can start hating on God, and she can start hating on patriarchy and all these things if she wants to. She hasn't. She's recognized that her father was a flawed man living in a flawed world, and she's a flawed person who got to live in a flawed world with other flawed people. Thanks be to God, he came to save sinners.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:37

That's I think a healthier approach. But it if you if you don't if you're not able to recognize that these dynamics are at play, you really are are left a victim in a storm without any kind of compass. And I'm not saying that you know Naj or Friedman or anyone else gives us the GPS in the map, but they do give us a compass and say, here's a here's a direction

Responding Wisely To Demanded Loyalty

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you can be looking in. This is what north looks like. If you're not facing that way, this is what it might look like. And it can help reorient you. And because Dr. Quick, you and I come from a more saturated area in the psychological literature that really does have a lot to offer to Christian leaders. I wanted to be able to share some of that today as we spoke. And I I really appreciate uh your perspective and and the uh insight that you have given to this this whole conversation.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

There's an interesting thing here, I'm pondering. One of the pieces or one of the authors that's a great introduction if you're uh for our listeners, if you're just trying to get into Family Systems some uh reading Pete's Cazar is very helpful. He's popularized some of these uh principles in in really, really helpful ways. But one of the things in their emotionally healthy relationships course that I have found and used with numerous of our clients, they talk about what a fair expectation is. And this is the intersection with loyalty. I don't know if you know where I'm going with this, but the Pete and Jerry talk about in the emotionally healthy relationships course that a fair expectation has four traits. Maybe you're the person who's under someone who demands loyalty, or maybe you're somebody who is in the position of sort of demanding loyalty, and you're trying to think you're going, oh, this is uh I haven't been doing this right, or I'm an assist that doesn't work right. How do you help remedy that? This has been very, very helpful to me. So, what's a fair expectation? It has four traits, according to Gizero. If I have an expectation, it's conscious. Like I know I have it. Um, it's verbalized. I say it. Dr. Quick, we expect you to be at the church at 10:30 to begin with a podcast, right? It's verbalized. It's uh, and this is the math summary, so these words are probably not the perfect ones, but they're they do get the essence. Um, it's doable. Like you could you could physically, emotionally, spiritually do the expectation, right? You can get in the car and drive here today to the church, right? And then the last one is is uh is the kicker. Um it's it's agreed upon. And so I think that many times where we end up, this adver observation from Naj about loyalty is it just is it's an is, right? It it is the way that we mentally work. But the way I think that we make it better is if we've done this, like we've actually talked about here's the fair expectation for our relationship, and so that everybody's clear and we're not sort of in the dark, because where that loyalty ends up in bad places is when it's in the dark and then it sneaks out, right? And now we've got all kinds of problems because you're like, I had no idea that you were expecting that, right? But you very naturally expected a certain kind of loyalty. It's interesting. I I found that from Schizero a really helpful way of like putting on the table what the loyalty lines look like in terms of expectation. Does Naj offer a different kind of way of trying to suss out what those loyalty expectations are?

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Yeah, I I think I think that uh the

Culture, Image, And Generational Pain

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thing that impressed me about Naj as I read him is just how thoughtful all these dynamics are, especially, you know, I think the metaphors we choose, and given that Naj chooses an accounting metaphor for relationships, it's interesting. Is is uh with all the kind of fingers and uh dimensions that counting uh dynamics would bring to a relationship to understand what deficits and credits and um uh you know, all that kind of thing. I think anyone would be helped by kind of exploring that, just taking that metaphor and looking at relationships in terms of what I've been given versus what I, you know, one of his books is called Between Give and Take. So, what am I giving? Uh, what am I taking? Am I giving more than I'm taking? Am I taking more than I'm giving? Uh, all of that again in just an accounting context. And does that mean I owe something to the relationship, or does that mean I'm owed something in the relationship? So uh all of that, I will I will mention this about Schizero just because people know him. I graduated uh a year after him from the same program. So wow. My family systems training uh is from the very same context. I took mine in the direction of healing church as he took his in the direction of the emotionally healthy. Oh, that's fascinating. Was that Eastern? I didn't know.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Yeah, from Eastern Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

That's actually fascinating. So in in the business world, right, you can you can know you know this, I'm sure, but going back to what it means to have expectations, we can talk about SMART goal setting. You know, the acronym SMART. It's got to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Right. How do we know this in the business context? You know, there's there's l lots and lots of uh trees that have given their lives for these kind of things over the years. We can talk about them, uh, but but but but somehow they don't s there's like this membrane that's not nearly as porous as I wish it were, which I'm very grateful for. The, you know, I think it's one of the things here that we're doing here with the podcast, is trying to make a more permeable uh barrier between the church, business, psychology, the theory, the practical, and say, we've there's a lot here that we can learn. And there's a lot of very simple steps that we can take to to look at, analyze the situation, say, are we doing this the right way? Uh where where can we make some some small adjustments? Because it's probably not the content.

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Right.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

It's probably our process.

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The emotional process is going on between the people and the family. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

That's good. Yeah, and I think uh we we try to impose uh templates on that stuff that seldom explain the things that we're really trying to figure out. And especially if we if the template is simple, because these things are not simple. They are deep, they are powerful, uh, they are going on all the time. And I think your description of your parents coming out of you know the kind of painful dysfunction that they did and being thoughtful, thinking

Using Systems As A Compass

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through what happened to us and how how can we carefully, not reactively, but carefully, change how we relate to our own children. Just, you know, so I I I don't think that's a Christian thing. I think Christians are better equipped with the Holy Spirit to be able to do that, but uh non-Christians can do it if they're thoughtful, if they they think through, they can break these horrible chains that often bind us to ways of relating that are gonna be destructive to the people around us.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

So remember that the the the reason we like having Dr. Q on the podcast is because these things that we're talking about that happen in individual families, they also happen at the church level. Right. Right. And that's the space that you spend a lot of time in your ministry is trying to go into churches and help them realize here's the recurring family patterns of our church.

unknown 19:17

Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

Exactly right. Um, so like I I have a friend, uh actually the first uh gentleman that ever shared the gospel with me, his his mother was an unwed mother, he fathered her child out of wedlock, and the child that he fathered out of wedlock had a child out of wedlock. Right. And that cycle, painful as it is for him, and Lord willing, his daughter's daughter will not have the same pattern. Hopefully they'll have figured out how to break that pattern. But that pattern that we see in families in that way also happens in churches. Absolutely. And so part of um part of what we're trying to figure out is if this dynamic that Naj talks about, if this loyalty dynamic is the broken thing in the church, that's worth looking at. Right. That's worth figuring out. Um, how does the how does the power in a church work? We were talking about this earlier in a different episode, but how does the power work in a church? And many times it's broken, it's not healthy as a reaction to previous things that have happened. Right. Just like the way that you lead is a previous reaction to your family of origin, right? You know. So what what mistakes do you see churches make as they

Fair Expectations: Conscious, Said, Doable, Agreed

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try and understand their dysfunction? What are some ways that you think that churches could do better at this? Trying to like uncover that, like this kind of thing in themselves. What it how could they do better?

SPEAKER_01 20:43

How could they do better, or what do they do? Uh very two very different questions. So much time.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

So, what do they typically do, and what would be a better way for them to think about that?

SPEAKER_01 20:56

Typically, they are gonna fire and hire uh with the anticipation that the problem is in the person. And if we just get this rid of that person and get a new person in, all our problems will be solved. And uh that that that single dynamic uh probably defines 50% of what churches do to try and fix things. The second thing is to see their uh situation as problems to be fixed and not a body to be healed. Say that again. Okay, that uh they take a business model. And uh most churches operate by a business model where uh we are a business, uh, and so the things that are going on that are bad are problems and they need to be fixed. And so men, men and women, whoever is in the board uh and on the staff, gather around and they try to fix the problems, not understanding that it's a body that is maybe carrying wounds, maybe uh broken. Uh something may have happened 20 years ago that broke trust. And you think, okay, if I think of that as a problem, how do I fix broken trust? There isn't a way to fix broken trust. You not if you think of it as a problem that has to be fixed. Uh you have to if if our body has experienced broken trust, that is a wound that requires leadership, and especially if it took place 20 years ago or 50 years ago, but our body is continuing to carry that wound, then uh it is not going to be fixed by hiring somebody different. It's not gonna be fixed by changing ourselves from a congregational form of government to a an elder-led form of government. That's another that's probably another 25% of solutions that uh churches take. That all these things I think go back to what Christ has given as the metaphor for who and what

Ledgers Of Give And Take

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we are, and that is a body. So I have to now look at our church, and I think boards that are wise and staffs that are wise say, okay, where's our church experiencing pain? Pain becomes the the marker and and we start talking about pain instead of problems. And if a church can do that, then they can say, Oh, well, actually, this pain goes back. It's been in our church since uh 1975 when we experienced a split. We went from 500 people to 100 people, and that pain has continued to manifest itself for the last you know 50 years in one form or another, it keeps coming up, same pain. And so it's clear it's not healed. And so we've got to figure out we've got to go back to what this this original injury and determine what it is that Christ was saying to us about that, because he has not let us loose, he has not healed our church by the things we've done to try and fix it. Um we've got to find out how to heal this thing. So I think it's uh those are the two things that churches do. They try to fix and they should be looking to heal.

SPEAKER_03 24:31

It's interesting to me. As I read Naj, um, he gives very open credence to the biblical uh uh description that the sins of the parents will be j will be visited three, four, five, six, seven generations.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Yeah, that's where you see the biblical dimensions, Naj.

SPEAKER_03 24:49

And he says when you're when you're looking at these systems, the the good practitioner will look back at least three generations, at a minimum three generations. But thanks be to God, they can also see the same thing. Just because the pattern existed there three generations ago doesn't mean it can't be

Business Tools, Church Processes

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repaired, right? It can't be healed. And that's done by bringing things back into proper balance. In terms of priority, my priority is not to the senior pastor, my priority is to God. He's called me to this role. My priority is not to my job, my priority is to care for my family, my priority is not to my kids, my priority is to my wife. I've got to put those back into the proper context, put it back into the proper order, and then trust God that where I still have anxiety because something's not going the way I want it to, I don't feel safe. My identity is at stake here, that he's able to take care of me. That he, in fact, will be faithful to me, not loyal to me, but he will be faithful to me because he's faithful to himself.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Yes, faithfulness is the proper thing we should seek in relationships, not loyalty.

SPEAKER_03 26:04

That's interesting. Dr. Quick, thank you so much for your time.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

A delight. I really enjoy speaking with you guys. Real glad to have you here. Thank you. It's a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

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.

Problems To Fix Or Wounds To Heal

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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 Sefferati in association with Flourish Coaching, with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called you. Bye for now.