The Church Renewal Podcast

Case Study: Grace Community Church - A Fable

• Flourish Coaching • Season 4 • Episode 19

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A slammed Bible, a 2 a.m. email, and a congregation holding its breath—our fictional case study feels uncomfortably real because the patterns are everywhere. We walk through a pastor’s unraveling and a church’s long memory, tracing how chronic anxiety, low trust, and an aversion to critique grow into a culture where secrets linger and leadership freezes. Using family systems theory, we map the difference between the thing, the emotion, and the reaction to that emotion, then show how differentiation helps a leader stay present, speak clearly, and stop striving for acceptance through outcomes.

We dig into the pastor’s family story—authoritarian father, unspoken grief, cutoff siblings—and how attachment wounds often turn gifted leaders into reactors under stress. Then we widen the lens to the church’s history: a golden era without transparency, mishandled allegations, and decisions that eroded credibility. You’ll hear practical steps for change: multi-perspective narrative gathering, clear and open processes, predictable communication rhythms, and prioritization that targets what truly moves the needle on trust. We also explore the culture shift from guilt-innocence to shame-honor, explaining why messages of forgiveness must be paired with robust language of adoption and belonging to calm anxious systems.

This is a masterclass in non-anxious leadership: own your part without self-protection, invite accountability without fear, and lead at a humane pace that respects people’s real lives. Whether you’re a pastor, elder, or lay leader, you’ll leave with a framework to diagnose reactivity, resist scapegoating, and rebuild trust one transparent step at a time. If this conversation equips you or someone you serve, share it with your team, subscribe for future case studies, and leave a review to help others find the show.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Church Renewal Podcast.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm Matt. I'm Jeremy.

SPEAKER_00:

Case studies are a standard tool in professional training, from business schools to seminaries. They are useful because they let learners practice applying theory to real life complexity. In this episode, Matt and Jeremy work through the profile of a fictitious but familiar church demonstrating how family systems theory can be used to diagnose anxiety, reactivity, and leadership patterns in a struggling congregation. It's both a live demonstration and an invitation. Case studies like this are practice grounds for non-anxious leadership, helping pastors and elders learn how to map problems and set priorities in order to lead with clarity.

SPEAKER_04:

Hey Matt, we are back again. Hey Jerry. My lead here, I've given you a case study that I've made up. This is completely fictitious. Any likenesses to people living or dead is purely coincidental. So this is this is not taken from anything except for the depth of my depraved mind. What I've done is I've prepared a case study. I'd like you to read it to us, and then I'd like to see how you think about and how you work through a situation like this from your perspective as a coach. And then give us some of the insights that you're looking at from a family systems theory perspective that help you as you're navigating this analysis and then determining how to enter and bring uh as a practitioner help to the system.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay. So here's the case study. Remember, this is uh completely fictional. Uh Reverend Thomas Mitchell, age 47, has served as the senior pastor of Grace Covenant Church. That's GCC in northern Indiana for the past 11 years. The church belongs to the Presbyterian Church in America and is located in a transitioning community that was once largely blue-collar and now reflects a blend of aging industrial workers, suburban professionals, and a growing Latino population. Tom previously served as an associate pastor in a large urban congregation in Minneapolis. He was called to GCC as a healing and vision candidate following a decade of instability and division with the church. What's the presenting issue in this church? Why am I there as a coach? The church session initiated coaching for Tom after a series of incidents raised concerns about his emotional stability, judgment, and capacity to lead amid intensifying congregational tension among the triggering events. So here's the things that led to me getting involved with Tom in the story. During a closed-door staff meeting, Tom slammed his Bible on the table after a disagreement about revising the strategic plan timeline, then stormed out mid-meeting. In an elder email thread, Tom sent a 2 a.m. message accusing the board of, quote, operating a shadow leadership structure and warning that their lack of support, quote, would be remembered. Following a contentious QA forum, Tom was heard by multiple members saying, I'm tired of babysitting theological toddlers. A longtime member confronted Tom after a sermon and he replied, Maybe this just isn't the church for you anymore. That member and her family left and were followed by two others. His preaching has become increasingly pointed with veiled references to unnamed critics. The worship director privately expressed concern to two elders about, quote, a low-grade fear that's hanging over the staff. The associate pastor has grown functionally estranged from Tom and has quietly asked to be excluded from future visioning meetings. Tom's wife Lisa reached out to one of the elders privately and said, he's not yelling at us at home, but he's just gone. It's like he disappears into his thoughts and he doesn't come back. So those were the triggering events that have led me in this fictional story to be involved as a coach with Tom. What was Tom's family origin like? Tom is the oldest of four children, born to Alers and Janice Mitchell in rural Mississippi. His father served two tours in Vietnam, returned with untreated TSD, and struggled with anger and alcoholism through Tom's childhood. Though he eventually entered recovery, his presence in Tom's formative years was authoritarian and erratic. Janice, his mother, functioned as both caregiver and peacekeeper in the household. Deeply involved in their small Baptist church, she managed much of the family's social appearance. Her youngest son, Peter, this would be Thomas's brother, came out as gay at age 22, which resulted in an informal but total cutoff by Alan, that is Tom's dad, and near complete withdrawal by the extended family. The family's unspoken trauma includes the death of Tom's infant sister Bethany, who died of SIDS when Tom was four. The loss was never discussed in depth. At family reunions, Tom is often called on to say something meaningful and to speak for the family, reinforcing a narrative of emotional leadership and control. His middle brother, David, served time for embezzlement from a family business in his 30s, further entrenching the idea that Tom is the stable and responsible one. Though he has maintained appearances, Tom has not spoken directly to David in nearly a decade, despite their parents' efforts to reconcile them. What was the history of GCC then? Prior to and during Tom's tenure there. Grace Covenant Church was founded in 1903 and enjoyed a golden era of growth and stability under Reverend Harold Dunlap, who served from 1971 to 2004. Dunlap's era was marked by theological rigor, mission support, and tight-knit social circles. However, it was also marked by an aversion to internal critique and transparency. Allegations of sexual misconduct involving a youth leader surfaced in 2005, but no public acknowledgement or accountability followed. The victim's family left the church quietly. After Dunlap's retirement, the church called Reverend James Elders, a younger pastor from a conservative reformed seminary. He served for only four years. During that time, two elders left over theological disputes concerning gender roles and family ministry philosophy. Behind the scenes are also reports of verbal abuse by elders towards administrative staff. He resigned in 2008 amid rumors of an emotional affair with a married congregant, though no formal complaint was filed. During the two-year interim period that followed, three staff members resigned and the church lost over 20% of its membership. A retired elder referred to it as a slow bleed of trust. It was during this period that the nominational leadership advised a strategic review which identified GCC as functionally orthodox but emotionally fragile. Tom was hired in 2012 as a quote, pastor who could rebuild. His call was warmly warmly received, and his first few years saw renewed engagement, a new website, reinvigorated small group ministry, and increased baptisms. But by year five, old tensions resurfaced. A proposed merger with the multi-ethnic PCA church was torpedoed by veiled resistance, framed as, quote, doctrinal caution, though one minority leader later reported being, quote, talked over and dismissed repeatedly. COVID-19 deepened the fractures. The church reopened earlier than most in the Presbytery, with Tom making a forceful theological case against ongoing closures. This led to behind the scenes arguments and several prominent families leaving. Tithes dropped by 18%, and the church quietly laid off its part-time youth coordinator. Most recently, a founding elder's daughter filed for divorce, citing emotional and spiritual abuse from her husband, a deacon. The situation exploded privately, with accusations of church leadership, quote, covering for the man. Though no legal action followed, this incident further exposed fractures within the elder board, some advocating open investigation, others urging silence, quote, for the good of the church. The congregation currently exhibits low volunteer engagement, shallow attendance recovery, and signs of chronic anxiety, especially around leadership structures, generational turnover, and the role of women in ministry-related service.

SPEAKER_02:

That's a deep one, Jair.

SPEAKER_03:

You know how to write a case study, man. One note for our listeners, um, when we there's a difference uh when talking about anxiety where you can have acute anxiety. Say um your wife and your uh Jair was talking to me last night about him having appendicitis and uh calling an Uber to go to the hospital um at eleven o'clock at night to have his appendix out. Okay, so that um is acute anxiety. I'm worried because of a very pointed situation um and anxious. Okay, so that's acute anxiety. Chronic anxiety, on the other hand, is uh there all the time. Right? That's why it's chronic. Like I have chronic high blood pressure. If I don't take medicine, my numbers are going to go up. I have chronic high blood pressure. And so in a congregation, you can have chronic anxiety where the sheep are unsettled, they're jittery, they're kind of looking around, they're trying to figure out what's this gonna be like. And that's why when you've got chronic anxiety in a congregation, people are are anxious in a lot of different ways.

SPEAKER_04:

Two questions here. Sure. One, how off base is this scenario from what you've experienced?

SPEAKER_03:

Not at all. Okay. No, it's pretty common that pastors, especially with time. Um, I've been in ministry for over 30 years, and um the number of people that my wife now meets, we're privileged to meet lots and lots of people through thousands and thousands of people through the years. Um, the number of pastors that we meet, where both the husband and the wife come from intact families, is shockingly low. Like we're surprised when we meet somebody whose whose parents are both still together. And so the fact that when you look at a ministry couple, that one or both of them are dealing with really significantly difficult things from their family of origin that are largely unacknowledged but affecting everything, um, is pretty high. Um, and churches tend to have difficult things. When you look at this particular church that at GCC, that long tenure without a significant and helpful transitional pastor makes the the next pastor a short-termer. He becomes what we used to tongue-in-cheek call an unintentional interim. And that's what the guy was that was there for four years. Um, all of the anxiety in the congregation, that's natural, it's understandable, uh, right? Change is loss, loss induces grief. What do people do with grief? Well, they they expend it on that next short-term pastor, um, if it's not dealt with uh in between. I think also that long-term pastors set the church up uh for all of these things, uh, which is hard to say. Uh we have two two churches, I have one tomorrow night, I'm gonna talk to where this guy's been there for 30 years. I talked with one last month. But unless you really take a pause, uh a good couple of beats, and you do a systemic look at the church, this is why we do church health assessments um in transition. Unless you step back and you really are willing to see what's here, Lord, what do you want to deal with with the gospel as the answer after the analysis um is that that long-term pastor, and this happens too often, but that long-term pastor brings um great strengths to the table. That's why he was there long, and church grew and you know, things were good. Uh church came to its zenith under that long-term pastor, but he also brings his weaknesses to the table. Right. And so those weaknesses that that long-term pastor had, the without acknowledgement um of difficulties, accountability, I think that you you get um you just get problems, right? Um, that that then persist in the system because you've built something that um you kind of you've sowed the seeds of your own destruction. Sorry to put it that bluntly. Um, but that's a common way that I that I put it because I think that you're yeah, that you're that's what you've done. Um if you've got an aversion, what in the case study here, Dunlap's tenure was marked by an aversion to internal critique and transparency. Is that if you um uh Keller in Freedom of Self-Regretfulness just talks about what how the healthy leader, the gospel humbled leader, can really do something with critique. Because that's not crushing, because identity and acceptance are not at stake in internal critique or in accountability, they're gifts. But if you're a leader who can't receive those as gifts, then then it's a problem. And you actually set the culture up for problems further on because it's there's no gospel self-correcting, um, if that makes sense. Yeah, I'm not sure I've said that before, but yeah, there's no gospel self-correcting. Yeah. Did I answer your questions?

SPEAKER_04:

Uh you answered the first one. So my second question is this um this case study that I wrote, I'm handing to you without you having having actually been within the church. But uh so the question here is is the information that I've provided here similar, dissimilar from what you would be collecting in the church health assessment as you're going through the initial phases of determining where the church is and what's going on. Yeah, if so, how do you act similar about doing that?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, so it's very similar. So we gather the narrative of the church from several different perspectives purposefully through time. And the church health assessment, particularly in the hands of a uh transitional pastor who's also doing uh these SWAT interviews with uh lots of people from the congregation. So we'll just do a kind of informal uh SWAT interview uh with congregates, just asking about the strengths and weaknesses, the opportunities and threats in the church, um, you know, what brought people to the church, what keeps them with the church. And people, when you give them space, will tell you in even in our structure interviews that we do in the Church Health Testament, the way that we start those off is just to say, what do you want, what do you think is important for me to know about your church? Yeah. And by giving people that space, we get closer to multiple perspectives on the true narrative. Um, because you need the true narrative in order to help it.

SPEAKER_04:

You're saying multiple multiple perspectives. I see the aperture being opened. Yeah. Yeah. Gives a little bigger picture.

SPEAKER_03:

Yep, yep. Because we can't help you unless we know what the real issues are. Um, churches tend to hide their real issues because they're cons they're uh they feel a shame about them, right? And where we're trying to say, well, let's let's deal with the real issues and apply the gospel to them because yeah, um your church is made up of sinners. Wow, big surprise, shocker to us. We've never worked with a church filled with sinners before who've managed to mess things up, or leaders or pastors, right? No, that's why we're there. We're the Michel Church.

SPEAKER_04:

Anyone level. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03:

Call someone else. We're here just for pretty churches with no problems. No, we're there because churches have challenges, right? Just like all the churches in the New Testament. People are like, we just want to be a New Testament church. Great. Which dysfunctional one would you like to be, right? Um yes. Yeah, which dysfunctional New Testament church would you like to be?

SPEAKER_04:

So as you're looking at this, you've been with the church to get this kind of information. You've been with the church for how long? A month, three months? Uh, usually three months. Okay. So with this information, how do you, as a coach, start thinking through next steps, prioritization, uh, and tactic of approach?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. So prioritization is maybe the easiest one, which is that we're always trying to figure out what is the thing that if we address it, moves the needle the most towards the health of the congregation. Right. So that's what we're so in terms of prioritization, that's what we're trying to do is work towards the health of the church, towards the health of the leadership culture, and we want to address the thing first that is going to move the needle the most. Okay, so prior to the city.

SPEAKER_04:

So that may be different than what is the biggest pain point? Correct. Okay.

SPEAKER_03:

Yep, because sometimes big pain points are actually fairly easy to solve. Uh, we had a church that we worked with where the finances were a mess and people knew it, and it's just not hard. You appoint somebody that can help put it together, you get a forensic accounting person, you get the books so that they're accurate, and then you talk about them every month with people, and anybody can come look at them. That can feel like a if I think it felt like a really big issue in that church, it's marvelously easy to solve. It really is not hard to solve, comparatively speaking, right? So it can feel really big, but it's not, it's actually not that hard to solve if the church is willing to take the steps, right? But the church must take those steps in order to restore trust that the ties that people ties and offerings that people are trusting at the church are being used. Um, they can see how they're being used and they're being used um to pursue the Great Commission. Right. Um okay, so that was prioritization. What was the next thing? Sorry. Approach, angle of approach.

SPEAKER_04:

How do you think about how to start working with this?

SPEAKER_03:

So I think that as a coach coming in and being asked to coach the pastor, and Jared doesn't know this, but it's always a warning sign to me when elders approach me about coaching their pastor. Why is that coaching that is pushed on someone and not sought by them is typically resisted. So the pastor's already in a pip performance and proven planning. Exactly. Okay. And it's not that I won't work with them, and it's not that I haven't done these situations, I have, um, but it's always a warning sign for me, and I'm always trying to help the pastor understand I'm here for you. They've hired me to help you. And if helping you means that we find a way for you to leave, that's still me helping you. And I'm not opposed to that. The elders may be pissed, um, but I don't care. They hired me to coach you. Okay. So delicate situation I was in some years ago where I was actually coaching both the church and the pastor. The pastor went on a lengthy sabbatical because he was burnt out, and the church contracted with with Flourish with me working the contract, um, to both coach the pastor and coach the church, that they both would be healthier while holding open the possibility that the pastor might not return from the sabbatical. And um both pursued it. This was much healthier situation, not an unhealthy one. It was a healthier situation, and they both pursued it, and the church was healthier and the pastor was healthier, and they came back together again, and he still serves there. But it was it was fraught, but they both leaned into what they needed to, and that's the absolute key, right? That's the key where this works. So if this church, the fictional church you've laid out, that the leaders think that the only issues are with the pastor, that is that's where we get into problems. The pastor's got problems. I'm not saying it doesn't, right? But the leaders have inherited a culture where they have an accumulated, it appears from the case study, they have an accumulated distrust in following leadership.

SPEAKER_04:

And you're it's you're gonna say that's the primary Yeah, that's the primary.

SPEAKER_03:

And it's uh on the one hand, it's understandable that they have an accumulated distrust of leadership given the previous pastors and what's happened, and given Tom's reactions to his emotions about the things that they've gone through together. He's they came in with distrust, probably subconscious. His actions have not helped them with their distrust, they've deepened them. But if the you can help Tom understand his background, help him get some counseling, um, work with him to on his reactions, help him think through how to have strategic patience and trust in the Lord, and that takes people a long time to come around to things. Remember, in leadership, um the pastors think about this stuff 24-7. They're trying to help leaders come along who are thinking about it at most in a couple of meetings a month. And they're trying to bring along congregants who might hear about things a couple of times a year if the church holds town hall meetings and not just an annual meeting. Right. Right. And so you have a pastor who is thinking about this stuff all the time, trying to lead people who rarely think about it. And that produces a lot of tensions because the pastor can't imagine why people, like in this case, don't want to go quicker on the strategic plan. And they're like, our lives are full, our kids are in sports, we have jobs, we, you know, we can give a couple of hours a week to the church, and you want to move faster. And what that means for me is that I can't, I don't know how I fit that into my life. And pastors can be non-realistic. Um, I'm all for calling people to sacrifice of time and money and calendar and all those kinds of things. But I think that's a slow burn. That's a slow burn to see people's lives um become very uh non-acculturated to American culture. That is, I think that the American dream, consumerism. Um these are things that are so deeply entrenched in people's lives that until the spirit opens their eyes to them and they go, Oh wow, we're gonna live very counterculturally. We're gonna be looked at as odd by our coworkers in our neighborhood. We're gonna be the weird ones because our kids don't do everything and we're not trying to do all that we can to help our kids get ahead and have the most opportunities. We're gonna be the weird ones. That's that's it's true. It's what we're called to.

SPEAKER_04:

Um, but it's a lot for Americans to swallow. Hey, let me let me hit you with this because that that hits on the acceptance of the case. Absolutely, right? Absolutely. You can go the other way, and you can actually find your identity in that being distinct. Yep. And all of a sudden it's actually a pride thing because now you have to find your identity and the wrong thing. Right. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

But it's a slow burn to help people grow in their apprenticeship to Jesus, that they're willing to live in a different way, that the world is going to think that they're odd. And this is getting, I think, harder as our culture moves towards a more honor-shame sort of dynamic where you can be canceled. Um, I think that this is getting um hard.

SPEAKER_04:

Talk more about that because you and I talked about that offline, but unpack that a little bit for us.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. So when I first came to Christ in uh the fall of 89, so we're not talking about almost 36 years ago, you know, the environment that I had grown up in and the way that the culture was was it was very much a guilt-innocence culture. You'd done wrong things, um, and now um, you know, you you're not innocent, and so you need Jesus to die to pay for your guilt, right? And so, you know, things there that guilt-innocence culture are the things that have predominated in Western cultural dynamics for millennia, right? Is why justification rightly, but it's why justification was so important in the Western church and to be resurrected in the Reformation, and beautifully so, it just doesn't speak as clearly and as easily to people from an Eastern dynamic where guilt-innocence is not the polarities that they're looking at, right? They're looking at shame and honor. They're they're not they're looking more at the acceptance side of things. And so American culture over the last, you know, 35 years has moved from a basic guilt and innocence kind of dynamic, right, to something that is much closer to shame and honor. And so we used to say, well, you know, there's a little, you know, my kids uh getting uh bullied because he doesn't have the right shoes, right? And so he's subject to peer pressure. But actually now we have an entire culture that is based on peer pressure. Uh, we were talking offline the other day about people that are talking about how empathy is a problem because Christians are getting peer pressured by the culture into changing their beliefs out of supposed compassion for people who are struggling with temptation toward particular sins, and Christians to be to be loving and to be compassionate, they're being pressured to not call them sins, right? Because, well, that's just the way somebody feels. I how can you say that the way somebody feels is sinful? Think about say same-sex attraction, right? Um, and so our culture has has shifted very dramatically to where the way that the world is trying to push you into its image, the way that Satan is exercising his wiles right now is to conform us to a certain way of being. Um, and that's shame and honor, and that's why you can get canceled. So it's to be excluded, to lose out on all acceptance culturally.

SPEAKER_04:

Exactly. So in guilt innocence, you're talking about identity. Right. In shame honoring about talking about acceptance. And what's interesting to me, and this is a totally different podcast, but what's interesting to me is that in a guilt-innocence culture, you can have restoration. Right. Yep, did the crime, I did my time, I re-enter. Right. And shame honor, because it's about acceptance, yep, forgiveness is a foreign concept. Unneeded. Does not necessarily translate over. Right. Which as a Christian, you know, I I've heard, and I could be wrong about this, Matt, so I'm sure you'll correct me, but I've heard that forgiveness is kind of important to the Christian worldview.

SPEAKER_03:

It is. Uh actually both are important. And I think that as practitioners, we're trying to help people realize um, or people have done some really good stuff on this 40 gospel. You know, there's people that have done really good stuff on trying to help what used to be needed if you were going to go be a missionary in the East or the Mideast, right, is now much more relevant now because um people, of course, remember um fear, shame, and guilt, they're those are the three uh primary emotions that flow out of the fall in the garden, right? And so cultures tend towards predominating to a great degree, all cultures mix them, but predominating to a great degree uh around those three emotions. There may be more, there's debate among missiologists, but anyways is a broad heuristic, okay? So if you are still preaching a gospel that is exclusively focused on forgiveness of sins and is not recognizing without losing forgiveness of sins, uh that what we are given is final and full and unfailing and unchanging acceptance into the family of God. Um then you're missing out. You're missing out on reaching into the hearts of people that are desperately hoping that they won't be excluded and that they will be received and accepted. And that's why Jesus came so that we could be.

SPEAKER_04:

Um here's a question based on the case study. Yeah. And based on the fact that we're doing this entire series on family systems theory. What concepts from family systems are you picking up on that you that you're you know, you're just kind of making a mental note. I wanna pull on this thread as you read through the scenario.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, so I think the pastor, the pastor is exhibiting um reactivity, right? He's he's seeing what's not going well in the system. He's likely not understanding what's going on well inside of him or inside of the system. But the only thing that's obvious and why the elders have reached out looking for a coach for him is they've seen his reactivity. Okay. Okay. So I think that that's uh at least one that's there. Um, I think too that when you look at at scenarios like this, it's easy to see that there is an understandable anxiety in the system, right?

SPEAKER_04:

Um you mean the church system or do you mean in the pastor's family system?

SPEAKER_03:

No, well, I think in the church system for sure, I think you'd have to have a little bit more done, it would be surprising. Uh the, you know, the wife's uh come along and say, well, he's not yelling at us, but he is distant, right? And so he's not, you know, he's not engaged in the way at home that would be most helpful to his wife and his kids. Right. And so he's withdrawn, right? He's stepped back from the line. His differentiation needs improvement, right? Because I think he's not um he's clearly not differentiated from outcome, that's for sure. And remember the point of differentiation is not to isolate, but it's actually to give the opportunity. The gospel affords you the opportunity to differentiate, which means you can come right up to the line, not step over it, but relate right there, super close to people. And so that's clearly an area that's there. Chronic anxiety in the system is understandable, but would need to be addressed. Um, he's not doing it in the ways that would be helpful for it to be addressed. I think it would be challenging in a setting like this to help. The leaders realize that they're also not differentiated and that they're anxious. They're kind of looking for a silver bullet to solve their the problems, and they think that all the problems are located over in the pastor. Right. Um, which is um, you know, there are different words that you would use sort of in the counseling trade to to describe that. You know, blame, right?

SPEAKER_04:

It's a scapegoating, it's the identified patient, it's the indexed the problem here is is you know is over there, right?

SPEAKER_03:

It's not in here when it's almost always both. And so I think that there could be resistance from the elders to actually look at themselves. And um yeah, so I I think that that there's at least a few things. You've probably got some too. So what what do you see that I didn't see?

SPEAKER_04:

Well, I'm I'm looking at the pastor and I'm looking at his uh what I'm gonna pull on the thread of his identity. Okay, because of his family background, I would want to help him either find a place that he could do some family of origin work, right? As we talked about, or want to do that with him.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Um, because there's what you described as the pulling back in the line is evident within his family.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Uh his father demonstrated that same dynamic in his in the relationship over function, dead under functions.

SPEAKER_03:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. We talked about this in the last episode with complementarity. The other description that Friedman uses is it's kind of like playing tug-a-war. If both parties are tugging, the rope doesn't move. But it when one moves one way, the other's going to follow suit. So if I want you to fall, I simply let go.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

Because it's going to have that opposite and equal reaction. So all of that's going on. You've got the sibling relationships, you've got uh, and you know, it's very generalized, and and it was written this way on purpose, but you have sort of the overbearing dad, the gentle-hearted mom, you have the firstborn golden-haired child, you've got the scapegoated black sheep, big head.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04:

Right. And you've got the dysfunctional child in the last one, plus you've got the hidden family grief.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

The sister. Which is, you know, we don't talk about that.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think that the it's interesting in talking about the pastor, is that he probably he probably did not feel enjoyed and accepted by his dad. Yep. And I think that when you don't have that, even if you're like the one that people look to, right, is the one to say something or the emotionally stable one or the the mature one, the successful one, whatever way you want to put it, right? That's the the way the case study is set up, is that that's who this is. Um, there can still be a deep and profound hole that's left if you if you didn't have that uh with your dad. That's uh I think that that's when we look at it from a system family system standpoint, that brother that came out as gay, right? Um, and the studies that have looked at that, apart from you know that some people may have uh be born with a predisposition because of the fall. Some people may be born with a predisposition towards same-sex attraction. Um doesn't mean that apart that by the spirit they have to act on it, but that's a possibility that I think is a is it certainly could legitimately could be one of the effects of the fall, right? My blindness is right, and so um, but when you look at a kid that does not feel accepted, received, and enjoyed by his dad, yes. Um, which even though growing up my dad was an unbeliever, that was not our experience. Right. We were we were enjoyed clear, very clearly. My brother and I both were. But when you haven't had that, it it has all kinds of effects. The work that's been done so helpfully on attachment theory is so good. So if our readers don't know, the book Creative for Connection, this is a newer resource to me. I'm not sure I've mentioned it on a podcast before, but we'll link to it in the show notes. And it's really quite marvelous to say that yes, though maybe you've heard about the work that's been done with, say, kids that were in like the foster system and they they struggle with attack with been broadly called attachment disorders, right? But what this work is saying is that that need for attachment that we do have as a children, that if you didn't receive it, then it does mess you up. It doesn't stop when you're an adult. No, not at all. It doesn't stop. We we continue to need it, um, particularly from our spouse. Our spouse needs it from us and we need it from them. And I think that helping Tom to grow in his marriage, his wife's obviously sticking with him, but she's she's concerned and he's not getting up to the line, not giving her uh the attachment that she needs, and he's not receiving it from her because he won't get up to the line.

SPEAKER_04:

Right. Yeah. So there's a couple things that stand out to me there. Um, one, the word that I used in a previous episode in this series was um striving. When I when I fear a lack of acceptance, yeah, when I can't, when I'm insecure in that, I will strive for it. So when I when I read here that Tom is upset with how slow the strategic growth is going, yeah, I'm seen striving. I'm seeing I need this because I this is how I identify my acceptance.

SPEAKER_03:

This is how I feel okay about myself.

SPEAKER_04:

And I also see tremendous care, even if it's not done the right way.

SPEAKER_03:

When his wife reaches out to an elder, absolutely how many pastors' wives do you know, Matt, in real life, who would reach out to an elder and say, Hey, I'm kind of having some can, you know, not not enough, and not enough elders, you know, where there's an uh a compassionate, loving elder who one of his shepherding groups, one of his shepherding with his wife is the pastor and his wife, where anything can be said. Um, and and that's that's unhelpful also because you you don't get the straight story on how the pastor is actually doing himself and in and in marriage. And so you're not caring for him in the way that he really needs. You're isolating him, even within the leadership group, if you don't care for him. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

The other thing that I see here is um unrecognized power dynamics that protect authority as if it is invulnerable to mistake. Right. And so we see that in the way that there's a lack of accountability going back the you know almost a hundred years, or more than a hundred years, we see that in the way that they're theologically strong. But the retired elder describes a slow bleed of trust. Right. We see it in the way that they've responded to the allegations, whether it's of uh sexual abuse or relational abuse, uh, from the the deacon to the elder's daughter. Um there's not an accountability, there's not a willingness to stand it up transparently. Yeah, absolutely. Right. And that speaks to a leadership mindset that will generally track from the leader who is most responsible for setting up the system.

SPEAKER_03:

Right. And is it leading them towards a a better way of relating that could restore trust? Certainly not so far.

SPEAKER_04:

The other way to think about this is churches are made in the image of their pastors.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Just to use time that by time, yes. That's why once the church gets over nine or ten years with one pastor, they're so identified with that pastor that that's why we recommend that they use a transitional pastor because they can't even see anymore. It's like asking a fish. How's the water today? What yeah, exactly. Um, and so churches need some distance from their previous pastor in order to differentiate again because they become so identified with the pastor. So, final question here.

SPEAKER_04:

What's your next step here with this church?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think uh for me, because it's you know, I've been asked to coach the pastor, I think it's the pastor being able to come back to his leadership group um and have a sort of honesty that he's not had before, a willingness to talk about us. Because if the pastor comes back showing that he needs growth and he's gonna lean into it, there's the possibility that he'll get the opportunity to lead others into growth that they need also. And so he needs to be the pace setter. Um, he needs to be the the big concrete block that's thrown into the middle of the lake that the first big wave goes over the leaders and has the opportunity to uh to wash them with the word and to and to lead them into something uh better and and um and helpful.

SPEAKER_04:

So that's my first move. I lied. Oh so I'm Tom now, and I just want to role-play this just just because I think this is really important. We're sitting down to have this conversation where you're gonna tell me this, and I've got all this baggage. What do you say to me?

SPEAKER_03:

Um well, I think that this time when Tom goes back to talk to his leaders is probably three or four or five coaching sessions in, and I've gotten to know him and his background and his story and his ministry history, and I have a much more nuanced sense of why he's frustrated. And I'm probably gonna come to Tom in a conversation. Um, I can remember this really distinctly, um, in a coaching conversation that um a gentleman that I've really, really enjoyed coaching quite a lot was coaching him to get through to get to a sabbatical where we could deal with some more things. But the first thing was just to get him to survive through the months that were upcoming to the sabbatical, right? Just to get to it, right? And the first conversation that we had once he was on sabbatical that I'd been praying about, and the spirit led me into, which was great, was just to ask, Do you do you think you struggle with pride? And um that marvelously opened up the conversation um to some really significant things and uh set the tone for us to have a kind of coaching relationship that's been um incredibly fruitful, one of the most enjoyable that I've had of hundreds now, uh one of the most enjoyable that I've had. So with Tom, I'm trying to wait for that spirit-given moment to say, brother, it it feels like some of this is unresolved stuff from the family you grew up in. It feels like you're you're you're reacting overly to what's gone on here, which is fairly pedestrian, but you're reacting like the world's ending. So there's the thing, your emotions about the thing, your reactions to your emotions about the thing. And um why are your reactions so high? What are the emotions that are underneath them? And so we're trying to get to in that conversation ah what's going on here is I'm not feeling accepted.

SPEAKER_02:

And that's yeah, that's what I felt at home from dad.

SPEAKER_03:

Because if we can get there, Tom can kind of go, okay, now I've got something that that the gospel can address. And to me, that's what I'm always trying to get down to is I'm trying to get down to something uh that the gospel can address. So for me, you've heard me say, probably listener, that so many times in circumstances where I feel very reactive, where um I'm feeling as though you know someone thinks that I'm unwise, they don't like the direction that I've gone, or or whatever. When I get down to the bottom, what I'm feeling is um that I'm at stake. And the gospel can actually address that because I couldn't possibly be at stake, because my identity is secure in Christ, and because of what Christ has done for me, I am forever and permanently accepted into the family of God. And so I'm trying to help Tom dig down far enough that there's something that the gospel can actually address that calms him, calms his reactivity, because the thing that he fears that he's not going to get from the situation, if I can help him see that he's already got it in Christ, then he doesn't have to try and squeeze blood from a rock. And instead he can wisely lead, he can use gospel leadership to lead others towards it.

SPEAKER_04:

So in that conversation, at some point you get back around to Tom, do you think you you can based on your acceptance in Christ, go back and sit down with the elders, sit down with a session, and talk about what your experience has been here.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep.

SPEAKER_04:

Own what own your part, own your reactivity, yes, but also recognize that you're still called to lead here. Yep. Yep. And then I sit there and I say, I I don't know. I don't think so.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. And it's understandable, right? I've helped guys strategically decide to transition because it it um it had gotten poisoned, people wouldn't respond to him, he could deal with his own stuff, but other people wouldn't deal with their stuff. It's trust, you don't you don't know, can you restore it? Right. Um when you do stuff like Tom's done here, um you can you can get you can ask people for forgiveness and receive it and then really really have forgiven you. But you you fried the trust, and there's not it's not possible to be um rebuilt, and that is just true sometimes. I wish it weren't. Um I I wish I could be more Pollyanish and pie in the sky and um say that uh all things can be restored, but uh all things will be restored in the new heavens and new earth. Right. But there's no promise that all things will be restored now.

SPEAKER_04:

So in the language of getting to yes, separating the person from the problem, you're not just separating the person from the problem, but you're identifying the right person to talk about in the situation. The right person here is yes, I screwed up, but there's a savior who whose blood covers all of our sins.

SPEAKER_03:

Yep. And secures our acceptance in the family and gives us an identity that we can receive and not have to work for, not have to strive for. So that's what I'm trying to get down to with Tom, because if he can get down to that, there's the possibility that he, as he brings that non-anxious presence, that vulnerability, that willing to be willing to be held accountable, as he brings that to his leadership group, there's a possibility that they'll give him the opportunity to lead them towards that as well.

SPEAKER_04:

Is there also the possibility that even if they won't give him that opportunity, that by his non-anxious leadership, they may be more able with the next guy?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, absolutely. So they might not be able to break the dynamic with this guy, but it's possible that his, and especially I think this is what a transitional pastor is trying to do, right? Is to help them have a healthier leadership culture that when they do receive the next guy, it's they're not reactive with him, right? And that's that's worth it. That's worth doing.

SPEAKER_04:

Last question. Shall we end here? I'm kidding. Thank you for doing this, man. This has been this has been a lot of fun. Uh, we're sure on listener. Thank you for bearing with us. Um, this has been useful to me, helpful to you, I hope. We'll talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal podcast from Flourish Coaching. Flourish exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever God has called them. We believe that there's only one fully sufficient reason that this day dawned. Jesus is still gathering his people and he's using his church to do it. When pastors or churches feel stuck, our team of coaches refresh their hope in the gospel and help them clarify their strategy. If you have questions or a need, we'd love to hear from you. For more information, go to our website, flourishcoaching.org, or send an email to info at flourishcoaching.org. You can also connect with us on Facebook, X, and YouTube. We appreciate when you like, subscribe, rate, or review our show whenever you're listening. It can be hard for churches to ask for help, so when our clients tell us who referred them, we'll send a small gift to say thanks. All music for this show has been licensed and was composed and created by artists. The Church Renewal Podcast was directed and produced by Jeremy Sefferati in association with Flourish Coaching, with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called you. Bye for now.