Understanding Your Congregation as a System: The Manual (Book)
George Parsons, Speed B. Leas, Authors.  Herndon, VA: Alban Institute, 1993.

In this book, the authors use their combined training and experience in ministry, organizational development, systems theory, conflict management, counseling, and psychology to show how systems theory can be used to determine the forces at work within a congregation and the congregation’s readiness for change.

"The content of ministry is powerfully determined by the organizational system, by the vessel that surrounds it," the authors write. "When congregations exhibit strong program life, vibrant fellowship, effective outreach to their community, or meaningful worship, they do so because they have given adequate attention to the vessel that carries all of these elements."

To help readers evaluate the processes through which their congregations create ministry and the systems being used to sustain those efforts, the authors developed the Congregational Systems Inventory (CSI), an evaluative instrument sold separately from this volume. The areas the CSI addresses are congregational strategy, process, pastoral and lay leadership, authority, relatedness, and learning.

A considerable portion of Understanding Your Congregation as a System is devoted to describing how to administer, score, and interpret the CSI and how to use the information it reveals to effect positive change.

This book and the evaluative instrument it describes would be helpful to all congregational leaders, particularly when their congregations are coping with growth or decline, anticipating a building or capital campaign, moving through a pastoral transition, preparing for long-range planning, anticipating staff changes, facing a significant change in the demographics of the surrounding community, or recovering from an organizational trauma.

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