Peter Steinke, author of “How Your Church Family Works: Understanding Congregations as Emotional Systems,” bluntly calls contentious congregational clashes “viruses.” These viruses are usually found in unexpected places and are driven by deep and unexpected motives. Steinke offers a solution to system infection in field theorist Kurt Lewin’s famous formula b=f(p.e.). This formula symbolically represents the axiom: “One’s behavior is related both to one’s personal characteristics and to the social situation in which one finds oneself.”
The embrace of this systemic truth leads the individual towards self-differentiation. He/she is freed from his/her basic instinct to default to dormant habits, detrimental behaviors (reptilian reactions) and/or immediate social environment. So, rather than vainly attempting to directly change the people responsible for the infection, or the environment itself, Steinke suggests a change in our personal approach to the whole problem, which will affect the environment and the individuals within, positively changing them both.
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Steinke’s thinking on this is sound, but it has been far too long since I read him.
My question is this: How does negatively addressed disagreement (contention) get heard and responded to positively? I find in congregational life that it is not unusual for perfectly valid points of view to be discounted or ignored because it was expressed in a negative manner. The Spirit does not always work through the most rhetorically talented or emotionally healthy individual in the world. Sometimes people are ignored until they act out. As a community discerning God’s call to us, how do we hear others who speak in tones that might repel us?
That’s a great question, Joel. I think leaders have to be differentiated enough to not only address contention, but also engage it healthily. If we can do that, then maybe we will also be able to hear to rare good in repelling tones.
Again, that a great question! Because it is true that sometimes the problem with certain tones is ours alone, and rooted in rhetorical preferences. Part of differentiation is becoming aware of this fact.