Self-differentiate! Trace your genogram! Do your family of origin work! De-triangulate! Thus reads the modern guide to ministry.
If your seminary training was anything like mine, family systems theory played a big part of it. It came up in pastoral care and administration, and ministers I worked for recommended Edwin Friedman and Virginia Satir with an enthusiasm that was almost creepy.
I ate it up. Sure, Friedman was a little too mechanistic and Peter Steinke a little too optimistic, but family systems theory explains things. It teaches you that unhealthy behavior is a symptom of an unhealthy congregational family system, not an unhealthy congregant. (Never call them jerks, not even if they’re assholes.) It puts you on the lookout for that staple of committee meetings and coffee hours—triangulation—and it names a new spiritual ecstasy for the minister to aspire to—non-anxious presence.
I don’t know if family systems theory is true, but it works where it needs to work, namely, in the heads of ministers and church staff. It gives us a somewhat predictable playbook for the chaos that is congregational life. And when most of us can’t expect to be at a congregation for more than five years, it gives techniques for treating the congregation when there isn’t a way, or time, to treat individuals.
I use family systems theory from the relative safety of my office all the time. I am the king of not being triangulated. (Except for when I’m not. And then, hoo boy.) I can throw up a non-anxious presence with the best of them too. But I need to take a step back today to ask a hard question: Do congregants deserve it?
Are congregants worth the constant gut wrenching I see my minister and church staff friends across several states and denominations put themselves through? Do congregants deserve these unacknowledged substitute parent figures known as religious professionals, who must always be available, always be open hearted, a task every mature adult will admit no one is capable of even with their own children? Do congregants have a right to ask others to run themselves through the family systems theory hamster wheel on their behalf, and, if so, on what grounds?
Or to turn the question around: What right do you have to a minister?
I would love to know what brought on this line of inquiry.
I remember hating Friedman by the end of CPE. I think his book was required in three separate classes. By the end, I was convinced he blamed the female in every situation he presented.
No doubt I am rebelling against my parents by questioning Friedman. :)
Ha! Wouldn’t you now?
I think I’ve been a closet Bahai for years now on the question of clergy (that is, no clergy). Or at least switching to an alternative model, like the rabbinic model. I don’t think the Christian model of clergy is a good fit for UUs.
What really got me about Friedman was that he thought we should all provide therapy for our own family! As if!
You are back! Ha Ha!
((( Do congregants deserve these unacknowledged substitute parent figures known as religious professionals, who must always be available, always be open hearted, a task every mature adult will admit no one is capable of even with their own children?)))
Does society deserve air traffic controllers who are skilled at what they do, always attentive, always detail oriented and quick witted enough to serve the needs of every plane, even those facing emergencies, and keep every plane from colliding into every other plane?
Dunno, but we need them.
CC
Well put, CC.