Family Systems and Congregational Life

A Map for Ministry

Creech, R. Robert

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781493416950
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Ministerio cristiano

Experienced pastor and seminary teacher R.Robert Creech helps pastoral leaders increase their effectiveness by applying family systems theory to congregational life and ministry. Creech introduces readers to the basic concepts of Bowen Family Systems Theory, applies family theory to the work of ministry in church settings, and connects systems thinking to the everyday aspects of congregational ministry, such as preaching, pastoral care, leadership, spiritual formation, and interpreting biblical texts. Each chapter contains discussion questions, and there are five helpful appendixes with supplemental information about Bowen theory.

Part One: Orienting the Map

1
Always Take a Map

The Value of Bowen Family Systems Theory

Then thought I with myself, who that goeth on Pilgrimage but would have one of these Maps about him, that he may look when he is at a stand, which is the way he must take.

—John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

Always take a map.” That was one of a dozen “notes to self” that my wife and I made after a near-disastrous canoe trip down Arkansas’s Buffalo National River. The Buffalo flows unhindered for 135 miles, without any bridges, roads, fences, dams, or people around. For a day and a half, Melinda and I floated in solitude down this picturesque stream, enjoying the mountains, fishing for smallmouth bass, and absorbing the beauty and quietness of the surroundings.

Halfway through the second day, the shallow river, about fifty feet wide, suddenly narrowed to an S-shaped chute about ten feet wide and four feet deep. The water rushed through in a noisy, powerful current. No one had warned us of any dangerous places. The canoe rental agency billed this route as a “float trip” for families, not a whitewater adventure. We could have taken our canoe out of the water and, with some effort, carried it around this spot, but after surveying the scene, we agreed to navigate the chute. The only hazard appeared to be a large stump, about three feet in diameter—the remainder of a tree on the bank of the river. The soil had eroded around it, leaving an enormous root system hanging down. We needed to enter the chute, evade the stump, and negotiate a ninety-degree turn. Then we would be back on a wide and gentle part of the river. It looked like fun.

We entered the chute but found the current so swift that we were unable to steer. We crashed into the roots. The impact knocked Melinda down into the canoe. We were unharmed, but the bow of the canoe had lodged in the roots. As we tried to pry it loose with our paddles, without warning the canoe turned sideways in the fast stream and capsized. Both of us spilled into the rapid flow with a lot of debris. All our possessions floated down the river. The canoe wedged sideways in the root system, held there by the powerful stream. Suddenly a huge piece of the tree broke loose and fell on me, pushing me to the river bottom. I thought I might die.

The current finally pushed the stump off me, and I surfaced. The canoe broke loose from the roots, sending Melinda downstream, pinning her leg against a protruding log. A canoe full of rapidly rushing water held her tight. She thought her leg was breaking. We struggled to move the canoe enough to free her leg. She was uninjured except for bruises. But the strong current still trapped our canoe fast against the log.

Miles from civilization, we did not know where to find help. With excruciating effort, we turned the canoe enough so that the water worked with us, straightening it out. We beached the vessel, emptied it, pounded out a dent created by the log, and gathered our remaining gear.

We were both exhausted from battling the canoe and the current and by the quick drop of the adrenaline rush from our bodies. With no idea how far we were from our end point, we began to paddle what proved to be but a short distance to our take-out spot.

Driving back home to Texas, we brainstormed what we had learned that would help if we attempted such a journey again (which we did, with friends, a couple of years later). We recently came across that scrawled list. At the top was the admonition, “Always take a map.”

Anytime we engage unfamiliar territory, a map is a useful companion. Someone has been there before us. We can navigate unfamiliar territory by using their observations and experience. The map is not the territory, but if it is accurate, we have a way to think about the territory and to make our way through it. We can circumvent obstacles. We can avoid dead ends. We may discover shortcuts. The territory is less formidable.

Mapping the Territory of Congregational Ministry

The territory of ministry is often unfamiliar terrain, even to the experienced. More than one minister facing a difficult, unforeseen scenario has lamented, “They didn’t teach me about this in seminary.” In fact, the territory of congregational life is so diverse and so unpredictable that no education could prepare one for every possibility. Pastors require a map, a way of thinking about that territory, so that we can find our way through it successfully.

We can think of navigating some of the territory of congregational ministry in terms of competencies, skills, or programs. We usually feel prepared to offer these. And the more we practice them, in reflective ways, the more confidently we apply them in the future. We can float down these parts of the river.

The whitewater of congregational life, however, occurs in the rapids of relationships. This truth is not self-evident. Pastors may enter congregational ministry like newlyweds, starry-eyed and convinced that “love is all you need.” It is not. What congregational life and marriage have in common is that they both require a lot more than warm feelings, communication techniques, and good intentions when anxiety rises like a flash flood. These relationships, so beautiful and satisfying when the system is calm, can become terrifying in a moment. Clergy may point to the church’s governance system, or a building program, or the budget as a problem. That is a bit like blaming the canoe for the rapids. We can navigate these intense relational events successfully in most cases, but seldom will we accomplish this accidentally.

If the territory in ministry that is most unpredictable—and potentially the most dangerous—is human relationships, what map might we rely on? How do we learn to think about our relationships in a way that, despite the uniqueness of each one, allows us to understand ourselves and others?

Bowen Family Systems Theory (BFST) has served as such a map for me for nearly two decades. Honestly, I did not engage the study of Bowen theory because it seemed like a nifty idea or because I wanted to become a more effective pastor or because it was trendy. My family was suffering symptoms of extended stress and anxiety, and I wanted to find a way forward. A strong wave of emotional process threatened what was most dear to me and held us in its current. I was ready to do whatever was necessary to get free. What I learned was lifesaving. Only later did I discover the obvious: what was true about managing myself in the anxiety and emotional process of my own family was also true about managing myself in the emotional current of the congregation I served as pastor. Bowen theory became for me a map, a way of thinking about myself and about how relationships worked. That map, when I managed to follow it, helped me find my way through the twists and turns of each new part of the exciting, treacherous, and rewarding territory of human relationships.

This book is about that map and how we can use it to make our way through those aspects of ministry in which relationships most impinge on us, in which emotional currents bind us, preventing us from moving forward: how we lead our congregations, how we preach, how we offer pastoral care, and how we read and understand Scripture. We may know the skills involved in each of these. But knowing how to paddle a canoe is different from knowing how to steer when it threatens to capsize amid dangerous debris and a strong current. The rapids of relationships can also easily overturn a ministry.

Bowen Theory Meets Congregational Life (1985–2018)

Since the publication of Edwin Friedman’s Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue in 1985, many pastors have discovered that the eight concepts of BFST help them understand their own lives and families as well as those of their flocks. Friedman, a student of Murray Bowen, demonstrated how the emotional system of the clergy’s own nuclear and extended family interconnects with the emotional systems of the families of the congregation as well as the family that is the congregation. Friedman applied BFST in a way that made sense to many who were engaging congregational life daily.

Clergy training programs in BFST soon spread across North America, beginning in 1990 with Friedman’s own organization, the Center for Family Process, in Bethesda, Maryland. Larry Matthews’s Leadership in Ministry workshops, Roberta Gilbert’s Extraordinary Leadership Seminar, Peter Steinke’s Healthy Congregations, and Doug Hester’s Ministry Leadership Concepts are a handful of some of the more well-known programs.

Other congregational leaders turned to educational programs not specifically designed for clergy, such as the postgraduate program of the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family in Washington, DC, and others. The Center for the Study of Natural Systems and the Family provided Defining Leaders, a three-year program in the Houston area geared toward ministry leadership. (See appendix D for information on these and other programs across the country.)

Mainline seminaries frequently include at least some exposure to the theory as part of theological education. Clinical pastoral education programs often incorporate it into their training regimen as well. In addition, a modest collection of resources is available, as practitioners and scholars continue to engage the intersection of Bowen’s theory and the life and ministry of the clergy. Writers such as Roberta Gilbert, Israel Galindo, Peter Steinke, Ron Richardson, Margaret Marcuson, R. Paul Stevens, Jim Herrington, Trisha Taylor, and myself have addressed aspects of clergy leadership, congregational emotional systems, and the clergyperson’s family. For nearly three decades, Bowen’s thinking has influenced the way many pastors function in proclamation, pastoral care, and leadership.

So why yet another book on the subject? Other books on BFST and ministry tend to focus on explaining the theory in the context of congregational life so that clergy may understand it. Those that focus on application of the theory tend to address the topic of pastoral leadership. The application of BFST to such pastoral tasks as biblical interpretation, spiritual formation, proclamation, and pastoral care is more often ignored. Additionally, the focus on leading in a regressed society (one of Bowen’s eight concepts, and in his mind one of the most important) is omitted from most works on BFST and leadership. This book is an effort at a more comprehensive engagement of BFST and congregational life—from issues of leadership, especially during crises and times of societal regression, to issues of pastoral care, spiritual formation, proclamation, and biblical interpretation.

The Popularity of Bowen Theory among Clergy

Why have congregational leaders found this theory so attractive? I have no scientific survey of clergy responses to that question. However, based on observations from my own engagement with the theory as a pastor and from working with scores of students and colleagues in classes and workshops, I offer the following:

1. Thanks to the programs and resources mentioned earlier, the theory is readily available to clergy in forms directly applicable to their work.
2. The theory is understandable. Pastors can learn and practice these ideas.
3. The theory is compatible with the biblical perspectives and theological categories held by mainline religious traditions.
4. The theory helps clergy focus on self, rather than on others, whom they cannot control.
5. The theory provides ways for clergy to think about a variety of issues in the congregation, without having to develop separate expertise in counseling, management, conflict resolution, or other fields.
6. Clergy daily encounter family and congregational issues that are relational. Bowen theory applies directly to questions we face.
7. Clergy find that the theory provides a way of thinking about life in congregations and families that makes a practical difference.

During this same period (1985–2018), clergy of every tradition have witnessed seismic changes in congregations and society. Technological, geopolitical, environmental, moral/ethical, and economic issues have rocked the world, and their consequences have not spared the church. Bowen’s theory provides clergy a map for negotiating the terrain of social change as well. Thoughtful practitioners have engaged the theory to manage themselves amid anxiety generated in society, families, and congregations. Leadership in anxious times requires a way of thinking about both the world and oneself, and Bowen theory has offered a way forward. That Friedman’s offering of the theory to fellow congregational leaders coincided with the onslaught of such challenging times may have been a major factor in making the theory so attractive.

Bowen Theory, Congregations, and the Future

What of the future? Given scenarios of a surging world population, the growth of megacities, and the potential ecological crises we will face in the next forty years, how important might Bowen theory be for pastoral leaders in the mid-twenty-first century? The changes and challenges that lie before us appear to tower over those we have faced previously. What will the world of 2050 look like? To what will congregations and their leaders need to adapt?

The technology that will be part of the world fort...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part One: Orienting the Map
• Part Two: A Map for Practical Theology
• Part Three: A Map for Reading Scripture
• Appendix A: Mapping the Family of David
• Appendix B: Bowen Theory and Theological Language
• Appendix C: Important Terms in Bowen Family Systems Theory
• Appendix D: Bowen-Based Training Programs
• Appendix E: Bowen Family Systems Theory and Ministry
• Notes
• Index
• Back Cover