Anxiety in Community: Is the Church Really Addicted?

It would be easy to overstate the presence of addictive dynamics on many levels in organizations and churches. Yet addictive dynamics are quite entrenched in civilized Western society. Abraham Twerski and Craig Nakken’s book Addictive Thinking and the Addictive Personality: Understanding the Addictive Process, Compulsive Behavior, and Self-Deception¹⁰ is perhaps the one book that affirms the prevalence of addictive behavior patterns in organizations. The relational dynamics of addiction Twerski and Nakken describe in organizations are virtually identical to those found in John and Linda Friel’s Adult Children: The Secrets of Dysfunctional Families, Robert J. Ackerman’s Perfect Daughters: Adult Daughters of Alcoholics, and several books on codependency.

Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself provides further agreement and insight on addictive behaviors. My article, "Ten Commandments of Dysfunctional Families," at MinistryHealth.net, further describes these dynamics, which are seen in pastors and parishioners alike.

It’s undeniable: unhealthy, anxious congregations behave like addictive individuals and families. Interestingly enough, it is specifically anxious, addictive dynamics that Rabbi Edwin Friedman attributed as a factor contributing to the "failure of nerve" in contemporary Western society.

Needed: Ecclesiastical Sobriety?

One unexpected but remarkable resource for understanding and intervening with addictive behaviors—and the unhealthy, addiction-driven, anxiety-ridden individuals who are in them—is Toby Rice Drew’s four-volume series, Getting Them Sober. Recommended by the likes of "Dear Abby" and Melody Beattie, each volume contains approximately 40 to 50 one- or two-page chapters. These short gems, which were originally written for family members of alcoholics to assist them in responding in healthy ways to their addictive relatives, provide many insights into antagonistic and controlling behaviors. Helpful and easy to read, these resources are remarkably appropriate for congregational leaders in addictive-prone organizations.

Developing an understanding of the dynamics of addictive emotional processes is an important way to maintain a healthy self and healthy leadership. Toby Rice Drew underscores the importance of intervention in addictive relationship systems in volume 3 in his Getting Them Sober series. As he says in that volume, "If you live with insanity long enough you will (a) feel insane, and (b) act insane."¹¹

Anxious churches may be addicted. Those that are have a choice: to heal or not to heal. If you are the leader, you have a choice. You can either go insane or apply strategies to establish a sense of sanity.

10. See also Craig Nakken, The Addictive Personality: Understanding the Addictive Process and Compulsive Behavior (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 1996).


11. Tony Rice Drew, Getting Them Sober, vol. 3 (Baltimore: Recovery Publications, 1994), 73.