Addiction and Anxiety: Pastoral Intervention in Anxious Organizations
Pastoring an anxious church steeped in addictive emotional processes can be like leading a recovery support group. In fact, anxious churches may have a number of the same characteristics as people in addiction recovery groups, including:15
- High leader expectations
- Participant passivity
- Resistance to extending beyond themselves
- Shallow sacrifice
- Entitlement mentality
- "Poor me" focus
- Projection of guilt
- Inappropriate anger directed at leader
- Unmanaged high anxiety and frustrations at inability to control it
- Inability to recognize options
- Egocentric focus on their own needs
- Unwillingness to change
- Overall ineffectiveness of empathy
- Selfish focus on their own needs at others’ expense
- Grouping together based on similar pain to justify and perpetuate their pain
- Tendency to become inconsistent in their faith walk
- Lack of healthy boundaries
- Pain-driven behavior
- Immediate gratification orientation
- Low self-esteem
- Controlling behaviors
- Undermining of leadership
- Defensive behaviors
These are just some of the many forms of anxious congregational behaviors. As leaders learn to understand that congregations function and respond as systems, they begin to see the complex interaction of groups and their respective ways of managing anxieties. As leaders recognize, understand, and respect these dynamics, they begin to see that church leadership is not just a matter of leading or motivating individuals. It’s also a matter of shaping, influencing, and leading systems away from crippling anxiety to greater health and vigor and more effective realization of the congregation’s mission.
Speed Leas and George Parsons’s Understanding Your Congregation as a System: The Manual and the accompanying Congregational Systems Inventory provide an excellent way to learn about and introduce the concepts of systems theory in a congregation.
- Thomas F. Fischer, "Support Groups: Paradigm for Transformational Ministry," article no. 349, online at ministryhealth.net.
|
|
