Perhaps you were surprised to find references to something seemingly obscure called "family systems theory" on our webiste. After all, we are interested in promoting vitality in church congregations, so what are ideas from psychology doing here? Read on for answers to your questions!
Family systems theory finds its roots in the work of psychologist Murray Bowen in the 1960s. He argued that all interpersonal relationships are reflections of the dynamics of one’s family of origin. More successful organizations and relationships in any venue can be fostered through an awareness of ongoing relationship patterns that persist from one’s family of origin, recognizing that no interactions are merely between two people but always three (called “triangles”). Bowen’s family systems theory was first brought into the realm of congregational life by the Rabbi Edwin Friedman in his seminal 1985 book, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue.Healthy Congregations is one organization which today has the goal of using the Bowen/Friedman school of family systems theory to help foster congregational vitality.
Introducing Healthy Congregations
The Marks of a Healthy Congregation
The New Testament speaks of the church as a living system, “the body of Christ.” The apostle Paul makes it clear that the “body of Christ” is a whole comprised of many parts, yet functioning as one. The various members and services of a congregation interact, much as the cells and organs of the human body do with the ongoing interplay of blood circulation, nerve endings, chemical messages, and energy sources. The mark of organic life is the continuing struggle of balance and imbalance. If balance fails, there is sickness. Gross imbalance spells death. Health, therefore, is the drive for life, what an organism does to preserve itself, how it responds to challenges to its integrity, and how it adapts to changes. The same is true for the congregation. Its health is its response.
What responses create health in congregations? What kind of interactions and relationships happen in healthy churches? What type of functioning advances, rather than impedes, the mission of the church in the local congregation? Health is a multidimensional phenomenon. The following statements describe some of the most important health-promoting responses:
- Healthy congregations accept differences (rather than deny)
- Healthy congregations focus on their strengths (rather than weaknesses)
- Healthy congregations focus on mission (rather than “getting along,” the past, survival, “the minister,” or some other thing or issue)
- Healthy congregations respond to anxiety and change (instead of reacting)
- Healthy congregations manage conflict (instead of deny it)
- Healthy congregations act flexibly and creatively (instead of rigidly)
- In healthy congregations, leaders promote health through their presence and functioning (instead of techniques or skills)
- In healthy congregations, leaders challenge people (instead of comforting)
- In healthy congregations, leaders provide immune capacities (instead of enabling disease processes)
- In healthy congregations, people respond graciously and truthfully (rather than judgmentally or secretively)
- In healthy congregations, people develop caring relationships (rather than willful transactions)
- In healthy congregations, people empower others (rather than dominate them or cure them)
- Healthy congregations recognize the Creator’s interdependent design of life (rather than isolated, unrelated parts)
- Healthy congregations practice stewardship gratefully and willingly (rather than begrudgingly)
- Healthy congregations combine money and the Christian Life (rather than separate the one from the other)
- In healthy congregations, people share their lives (instead of each living for oneself)
- In healthy congregations, hospitality is offered to all (instead of favoritism for the few or like-minded)
- In healthy congregations, beginning again is a way of life (instead of staying stuck)
What is a System?
The word “system” comes from the Greek verb synhistanai - “to place together.” To think system is to look at the relationship between things. All parts of a system are interconnected. They stand in an ongoing reciprocal relationship to one another. One part cannot be understood apart from the rest of the whole. One person’s behavior influences another person’s, and vice-versa; all are affected by each other’s functioning. We cannot understand anything by itself. A system is an inseparable whole; a system is a single interactive unit; a system is “a collection of parts which interact with each other to function as a whole.”
If everything affects everything else, a farm is a system. What is good for the water is good for the ground; what benefits the ground benefits the plants; what is good for plants is good for animals; what benefits animals benefits people; what is good for people is good for the air; what benefits the air benefits the water. A farm is a complex, mutually influenced relationship of water, soil, plants, animals, people, and air.
What is Good for the Goose is Good for the Geese
A flock of geese functions as a system. In his book High Flying Geese, Browne Barr illustrates their reciprocal impact on each other: “As each goose flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the bird immediately following. Thus by flying in a V formation, the whole flock adds at least 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew on its own.” The system message is that we can get where we are going more quickly and easily if we have a common direction and give a good uplift to one another. “Whenever a goose falls out of formation,” Barr remarks, “it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to go alone.” The goose will return to the formation quickly to benefit from the lifting power of the bird immediately in front. The system message: We need the support of others.
If a goose gets tired, the goose simply rotates to the back of the wing and another goose flies the point. In systemic terms, no one has to do the difficult tasks all the time. At the back of the formation, the geese constantly honk to encourage those up front to maintain their speed. Healthy systems, too, have the good sense to “honk” encouragement. When a goose becomes ill or wounded, and falls from the sky, two other geese fall out of formation. They follow the other goose down to help or protect it. They remain until the downed bird is able to fly again or until it dies. Standing by each other is a system at its best.
Many Parts Cooperating
The human body is a web of relations. Many levels of organization interact - molecular, cellular, tissue, organ, organ system, and whole organism. Together they create processes that sustain health, produce disease, or recover health. Biologically, the breakdown of cooperation between these different systems underlies the pathogenesis of many diseases. “If an organism is to survive, every activity within it must in some way be part of the effort,” surgeon Sherwin Nuland observes; “Moreover, it is imperative that there be total coordination if the outcome is to be the singular momentum that is ongoing life.”
Keeping Cool
In a car, the cooling system consists of many parts: hoses and clamps, a fan, a radiator, a water pump, a cooling jacket, and a thermostat. By themselves, the parts do not form a system. Together they function as a system to keep the engine from overheating. Separately they are useless. To do the work of cooling, all of the parts must be present and must be arranged in a certain way.
Stormy Weather
A storm is a network of influences. A cloud forms, the sky blackens, leaves twist upward, a breeze stirs. We know that it will rain. A number of factors have come together, air pressure, temperature, and the like. After the storm, the rainwater will runoff into groundwater miles away. The sky repairs its color in due time. All these phenomena are distant in time and space, nonetheless everything connects. Each part has an influence on the rest, an influence invisible to the eye. To understand the system of a rainstorm, you must see the whole, not anyone part of the interaction. System thinking is to see the full pattern of interactions.
Emotional System
Systems are composed of connected parts. The parts cooperate to form a whole. The parts are arranged so that the whole functions well. Human systems function in the same way, but they are more complicated.
Human systems are emotional systems. When people interact, emotional processes are stimulated. People affect and adapt to one another. Emotional processes are automatic. They are instinctive, without thought. Thus, they are not readily available to consciousness, nor are they easily changed in a volitional manner. The more intense an interaction is, the more automatic behaviors will be. Our behavior is said to be “reactive,” that is, more defensive and less intentional. “A reaction,” says philosopher Robert Nozick, “is a small part of you relating to a small piece of the situation.” In contrast, a response is “a large part of you responding to a large part of the situation.” A “response” is chosen.
Behind all of our interactions with one another are two powerful forces - being apart and being together. Neither is good nor bad. Both are necessary for life. There’s a time to be your own person, and there’s a time to be a team player. Separateness and closeness are complementary forces that create tension in our lives. Ideally, they coexist within us, each bringing a different degree of intimacy at different times. The key is to keep them in balance.
“A distance must be kept,” Fredrich Buechner exclaims, “not just from our children but from everyone we love.” Jesus, he continues, certainly “bled” for people, but he was not “a bleeding heart.” He did what he could for the sick and burdened who encountered him. Then he moved on. He wept for Jerusalem but allowed Jerusalem to choose its own way. “If love is a matter of holding fast to, and identifying with, and suffering for, the ones we love,” Buechner concludes, “it is a matter also of standing back from, of leaving space for, of letting go of.”
Jesus told the incomparable story of a father with two sons. Space and distance are central to the story. The older son was responsible, industrious, and a no-nonsense kind of person. His younger brother was just the opposite. He left home with his fortune and went to a “far country.” He distanced himself from his family. Bereft of fortune and friends, the younger son ends up feeding pigs (a shameful task for a Jew). He decides to return home and be his father’s servant. His father welcomes him graciously and festively. Hearing the commotion, the older son inquires about what is happening. He learns of his brother’s return and his father’s joy. The fatted calf is killed. He is angry. He refuses to join the party.
This is a story of the importance of separateness and closeness in relationships. There is a loss of balance between the two fundamental forces, leading to an overemphasis of the one to the detriment of the other. The younger son emotionally cuts off (extreme separation); the older son uses his work habits as a way to keep his father’s love (extreme closeness).
Once we form patterns of functioning with one another, it becomes difficult to change these patterns. We act automatically. In emotional systems, there is no fundamental change until people change how they function with one another. More data, more content, more information will not change an emotional system. Systems change when people change how they interact with one another.
