This document discusses concepts related to anxiety, differentiation, and healthy leadership in religious communities. It notes that chronically anxious church families may splinter off or submit to manipulative power groups. Leaders must recognize resistance as normal and let their own values guide decisions rather than emotional bonds. Differentiation involves thinking clearly, acting on principle, regulating reactions, and choosing responsibility. Healthy leaders tolerate pain to use anxious times creatively and manage their own anxiety rather than accommodating the weakest members. Boundaries must be enforced to prevent harm. The immune system analogy applies - leaders provide healthy struggle around mission and accountability.

1. ANXIOUS CONGREGATIONS
Leadership in

2. FAMILY SYSTEMS
Reaction
Response
Anxiety

3. FAMILY SYSTEMS
Reaction
Response
Anxiety
History
FamilyLoss
Differences
Non-reflective

4. ANXIETY
Chronic anxiety is habitual. We can’t put
anxiety to rest. Even the slightest change or
trivial annoyance incites reactive behavior.
Chronically anxious church families may
have small groups splinter off periodically.
Or the family stays intact but is submissive
to a small but manipulative power group.
Steinke, p20

5. ANXIETY
When we begin to feel anxious, one of
the first questions we usually ask is
whose fault it is.” p 91 Creating a Healthier Church

6. DIFFERENTIATION
Undifferentiated Differentiation
Emotional / Instinctive
Reactive
Infectious
Defensive
Thoughtless / Herding
Undifferentiation (instinctive, reactive, defensive, thoughtless behavior)
1. Accommodates, pleases, or acts to take care of the others’ pain To maintain a
relationship, the leaders “gives in” and “gives up” self; is anxious about losing the approval
of others.
2. Focuses outside of self To stay close to others, the leaders pays attention to the actions
and feelings of others, not his own. How someone else will react is more important than
how he can take a position.

7. ANXIETY AND DIFFERENTIATION
Principle-Centered
thoughtful
Defining Self
Regulate Self
Reflective / Solitude
Responsible
Differentiation is the ability of people to guide their own functioning by •
thinking clearly • acting on principle • defining self by taking a position • coming
to know more about their own instinctive reactions to others • learning to
regulate those reactions • staying in contact with others • choosing a responsible
course of action
Emotional / Instinctive
Reactive
Infectious
Defensive
Thoughtless / Herding
Undifferentiated Differentiation

8. ANXIETY AND DIFFERENTIATION
Edwin Friedman, author of Generation to Generation and a student of Murray Bowen, has
claimed: “Actually religious institutions are the worst offenders of
encouraging immaturity and irresponsibility. In church after church
some member is passive-aggressively holding the whole system
hostage, and no one wants to fire him or force her to leave because
it wouldn’t be ‘the Christian thing to do.’ It has nothing to do with
Christianity. Synagogues also tolerate abusers because it wouldn’t
be ‘the Christian thing to do.’’’3 Indecisiveness is reactivity. It’s a
defense against a split in the house.
Immaturity Maturity

9. You will have to contend with some members ready for
new ways of seeing and doing things and some riveted
to the old.
1. Will your relationship with either side affect your
thinking?
2. Will emotional bonds determine your decision, or
will your own values and beliefs guide your actions?

10. DIFFERENTIATION
Differentiation is a process in which a
person moves toward a more intentional
and thoughtful way of life (and a less
automatic way of functioning).

11. DIFFERENTIATION
“Leaders who keep on working on their own
self-differentiation,”...automatically challenge
their followers to do the same and, thus,
maximize the process of self-differentiation
throughout the entire family. (p. 233)

12. WHAT IS OUR MISSION
Providing a focus is the work of leadership.
If the congregation is not focused on its
mission, it will focus on something—
perhaps the budget, the past glory days,
or the pastor’s performance.
What is our mission?

13. DIFFERENTIATION
What is our mission?
Is it Christian?
We like Steve’s Preaching, Teaching and Mission/outreach focus,
but…
We don’t know him very well
My friends are not here and we don’t know why
I was upset and he didn’t take care of me
Etc.

14. DEALING WITH ANXIETY
If the leader adapts his functioning to the
weakest members, he enables their dependency,
encourages their happy ignorance, and reinforces
their helplessness. To protect a congregation from
bad news or upsetting changes is to admit that
the system is weak and fragile, too brittle to be
challenged. The congregation’s threshold for pain
is low and its opportunity for changing is
negligible. But distress is not always an obstacle
to learning.

15. DEALING WITH ANXIETY
If the leader does not have some degree of
toleration of pain, it’s doubtful that others will be
able to tolerate pain and use it for growth. As a
result, Friedman asserted, the weakest, most
dependent, and most emotionally driven people
will control the congregation. They will influence
the emotional field, not you.

16. DEALING WITH ANXIETY
Whatever the trigger of anxiety might be,
whatever the anxious behaviors, the healthier way
for leaders to function to affect this emotional field
in pain would be to
• recognize resistance as a normal reaction to
leadership rather than taking it personally;
• know that relationships are reciprocal and
interactive and that our own calm, reflective
functioning influences the congregation positively;

17. DEALING WITH ANXIETY
• exercise patience because anxiety’s effect on an
emotional field is immediate, whereas our well-
composed functioning influences the emotional
system in the longer term;
• consider their goals for the congregation to avoid
giving in to the pressure of the moment, such as by
quickly fixing problems and taking care of people’s
anxiety;
• learn to tolerate anxious times in order to use
them as opportunities for creative responses;
• manage their own anxiety.

18. BOUNDARIES
When boundaries are inappropriately crossed
and people are harmed, no one wants to name
the violation. It’s as if the disturbance of the
group’s serenity is a greater offense than the
viral-like behavior. Boundary violators go
unattended and suffer no consequences.

19. BOUNDARIES
Although going the “second mile” (Matt. 5:41)
with offenders is commendable, to go the third,
fourth, and fifth mile is indefensible. The lack of
attention only enables the repetition of the
invasive behavior.

20. BOUNDARIES
In congregations, typical boundary offenses include
one person or a group of people that
• accuse someone without reasonable cause or
without initially talking to the accused;
• find “living tissue” in which to grow their rumors or
careless talk;
• disregard guidelines, policies, and procedures;
• consistently break appointments and miss meetings;
• humiliate people, publicly or privately;
• use verbal pressure to intimidate;
• hold others hostage by threats or demands;

21. BOUNDARIES
• enlist others to attend secret meetings, distribute
petitions for signature to discredit others, or send
unauthorized messages containing disparaging
information about someone;
• ignore or neglect others, as if they don’t exist, for no
other reason than the others hold different views;
• hide their real agenda by appearing harmless, maybe
even beneficial: “We’re only concerned for the good of
everybody”;
• break an agreement not to talk publicly about a
matter until a later date;

22. BOUNDARIES
• withhold affection, approval, and appreciation to
demean another;
• label others with emotionally-packed words;
• discontinue giving the money they pledged;
• speak on behalf of others, as if they know what the
other is thinking;
• tell different accounts or share different information,
depending on the hearers;
• attach fear to any issue in order to control others.

23. EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY CHURCH
Leaders supply for the community what the
immune system provides for the body.
a healthy struggle around such questions as:
How are we going to function as a community?
What is our defining and unique mission? What
are the norms to which we hold each other
accountable? What are the expectations of each
member with regard to the whole?

24. EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY CHURCH
I would add that, just as bodies need immunity
to be healthy, bodies politic do poorly without
immunity. People in our communities who lack
the ability to regulate self will invade, intrude,
trespass, attack, and rudely interfere—making a
mess of things. Silence and avoidance on the
part of the leader only enable the “disease”
process .

25. Maturity
Infant
Adult
Child
Adolescent
“The church will
never mature
beyond the
leadership.”
Peter Scazzero

26. EMOTIONAL INFANTS
• Look for others to take care of them
• Have great difficulty entering into the world of
others
• Are driven by need for instant gratification
• Use others as objects to meet their needs

27. EMOTIONAL CHILDREN
• Are content and happy as long as they receive what
they want
• Unravel quickly from stress, disappointments, trials
• Interpret disagreements as personal offenses
• Are easily hurt
• Complain, withdraw, manipulate, take revenge,
become sarcastic when they don’t get their way
• Have great difficulty calmly discussing their needs
and wants in a mature, loving way

28. EMOTIONAL ADOLESCENTS
• Tend to often be defensive
• Are threatened and alarmed by criticism
• Keep score of what they give so they can ask for
something later in return
• Deal with conflict poorly, often blaming,
appeasing, going to a third party, pouting, or
ignoring the issue entirely
• Become preoccupied with themselves
• Have great difficulty truly listening to another
person’s pain, disappointments, or needs
• Are critical and judgmental

29. EMOTIONAL ADULTS
• Are able to ask for what they need, want, or prefer—clearly,
directly, honestly • Recognize, manage, and take responsibility for
their own thoughts and feelings • Can, when under stress, state their
own beliefs and values without becoming adversarial • Respect
others without having to change them • Give people room to make
mistakes and not be perfect • Appreciate people for who they are—
the good, bad, and ugly—not for what they give back • Accurately
assess their own limits, strengths, and weaknesses and are able to
freely discuss them with others • Are deeply in tune with their own
emotional world and able to enter into the feelings, needs, and
concerns of others without losing themselves • Have the capacity to
resolve conflict maturely and negotiate solutions that consider the
perspectives of others”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It's Impossible to
Be Spiritually Mature, While Remaining Emotionally Immature

30. Anxiety
Herding
Reactivity
Blaming
Quick Fix
Reactive, Repressive,
Infectous

31. An emotionally regressive family will tend to adopt an
appeasement strategy with disruptive members in order
to be ‘inclusive’, while sabotaging those who would
stand up to them. It will bend over backwards to
accommodate people who are focused on their rights,
rather than responsibilities, and attack the person who
seeks to take an unaccommodating and self-defined
position, presenting them as cruel, selfish, or insensitive.
This is so predictable that being called such names is
usually a sign that you are moving in the right direction.
Quick Fix

32. the regressive society exhibits a herding tendency. It will
tend to ‘reverse the direction of adaption toward
strength, and it winds up organizing its existence around
the least mature, the most dependent, or the most
dysfunctional members of the “colony”’ (67).
Herding

33. As long as there is blaming, it is nearly impossible to
institute change. Blaming is a sign that people are
stuck in the instinctive nature.
Steinke, p54
Blaming

34. When anxiety ushers in its relatives—anger, anguish, and
grief—the temptation to scapegoat is strong. Scapegoating is
an attempt to pinpoint a culprit or to find fault with someone.
The blame throwers at first will hurl charges indiscriminately
at any target. Most likely, however, anxiety will be projected
onto people in the most responsible or the most vulnerable
positions in the congregation.
Blaming

35. “When there is something to blame,
there is nothing to work on.”
T. Cooper
Blaming

36. Herding
Reactivity
Blaming
Quick Fix
‘raising our own threshold for the pain another is experiencing can
often motivate the other to take more responsibility for his or her
life’ (85)
Anxiety

37. Anxiety
Herding
Reactivity
Quick Fix
Poorly defined leadership
Low threshold
of pain, peace
mongering,

38. PASTORAL CARE
Pastoral care and leadership, then, are not
about helping people relieve their anxiety
through the offering of palliative comfort,
but rather helping people to engage the
powers that have hold of their life so as to
leave what is old for what is new.

39. People have a strong tendency to deny troubles—as if
the difficulties should not be present, as if “Don’t
disturb” signs are hung on every door.

40. OVERFUNCTIONING
Overfunctioning happens when one
person takes increasing amounts of
responsibility for the functioning of one or
more other people.
As the underfunctioner does less in on or
more of these three areas, the
overfunctioner does more.

41. OVERFUNCTIONING
A common misunderstanding of good
“pastoral” care is that when someone is
having a personal difficulty in the church,
it our job to ‘make them feel better.” This
is, however, a type of overfunctioning.

42. OVERFUNCTIONING
The pastor had to work hard to clarify what
was and was not his responsibility and to
develop a new way of relating to and caring
for people who had difficulties. He worked
at not taking on other people’s jobs or
doing things for committees that they
could do for themselves. (p141)

43. NEXT STEPS
Leadership Re-Alignment
Behavioral Covenant
Staff Parish Training

44. Closely related to denial is oversimplification.
Congregations simplify by using comments like, “That
just happens” or “Things were worse before.”
(this kind of thing happens in every church…
That’s just the way they are….)

45. When facing anxious times, a high percentage of
congregations freeze. Since action might trigger
opposition, leaders delay and delay.

46. No one wants to upset or offend others. Immobility can
put off the inevitable, but only momentarily. As long as
the congregation is stuck, it remains knee-deep in
anxiety.

47. To work on your capacity to regulate your own anxiety and
reactivity—to be a nonanxious presence—think about these
things:
1. Knowing your limits and the limits of others
a. A clear understanding of where “I” end and
someone else begins
b. A respect for the rights of others to be the way they
are, yet refusing to allow others to violate or intrude
upon your own rights
c. A readiness to define who you are from within,
rather than adapting to please others or defining
yourself over against others

48. 2. Having a clarity about what you believe
a. Having a set of convictions, values, and beliefs
b. Knowing what you would “die for” and what’s
important
c. Recognizing about what you are certain and about
what you are not certain

49. 3. Taking stands with courage
a. Defining where you stand and what you believe in
the face of disapproval
b. Refusing to give in for the sake of harmony when it
is a matter of principle
c. Standing firm in the face of strong reactions (such
as, “You can’t think, act, or feel that way and be part
of this community!”) ultimatums

50. 4. Staying on course
a. Resolving to follow through, in spite of reactive
opposition or sabotage
b. b. Exercising emotional and spiritual stamina to
follow a vision, not allowing reactive forces to
change your course.

51. 5. Staying connected to others, despite it all
a. Maintaining a nonreactive presence with people
who are reacting to you (by verbally attacking you,
avoiding your presence, minimizing your viewpoint)
b. Resisting your own impulse to attack or cut off from
those reacting to you, or to appease them to dispel
their anger or frustration
c. Managing your own anxiety, not others’ anxiety