“Clergy and church workers are often facing difficult relationships at home and in their organisation, challenges in dealing with difficult people, no way of thinking about the congregation as a system and no guidelines for thinking oneself out of emotional intensities that arise in the congregation.” R Gilbert MD. “The Cornerstone Concept.”

Part 1 morning program-Systems theory and the congregation

• The congregation as a system
• Key systems sensitivities – togetherness and separateness
• Appreciating the continuum of emotional/relational maturity. Bowen scale of differentiation of self.
• Triangles in congregations...and the spread of interlocking triangles.
• Relationship fusion
• Relationship cut-off
• How can theory be used to avoid major system derailments 

Part 2= afternoon program: Systems theory and the ministry team. Exploring systems leadership.

• The relationship interface between ministry team and congregation
• How to manage the pull to take sides/triangle around congregational disputes
• The anxiety forces in ministry teams- fusion, emotional cut off, triangles.
• When emotional anxiety gets cloaked in biblical justifications. How to tease out the difference between biblical principles and anxious relationship processes.
• What is systems leadership?
• How to work on relational maturity.
• Being realistic and compassionate about gaps in relational/emotional maturity. (implications for selecting new team members and their fit for the relational demands of ministry)

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Am I in too deep? - When pastoral care and complex counselling issues merge

Trainer - Jenny Brown

Many people in pastoral care ministry, speak of the challenges of knowing how far to go in assisting others who often open up distressing life issues.  Workers often express the concern that they feel like they are out of their depth.  Others express the challenge of meeting with people to encourage them and discovering that their helping efforts seem to promote dependence. There is commitment to demonstrating Christ-like love but the potential for burn out often seems to loom large. This 1 day workshop will explore these and other common dilemmas of pastoral care.  It will illustrate, with practical examples, how Bowen family systems theory and understanding of symptoms can provide assistance in the process of ministering to others who are in difficult circumstances.

Topics covered

• Exploring the boundaries of biblical guidance, pastoral care and clinical counselling for complex life and personal issues?
• What kind of help may become a hindrance?
• What kind of help promotes personal responsibility and resilience without reducing sacrificial care?
• Essential counselling skills. How this is different to advice giving
• What to do when another discloses serious symptoms?  How to determine who is responsible for what?
• The challenge of taking sides in peoples difficulties.
• Responding to  symptoms of depression, anxiety and addictions

Jenny Brown is a Masters level social worker who is the director of the Family Systems Institute. She has over 25 years of counselling experience and has been training professionals in family systems theory for many years. Jenny’s church involvement and consulting to church and mission workers has heightened her interest in applying Bowen theory to relational aspects of Christian ministry.

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Excerpts from:  Bowen Theory and a Biblical World View – How one Christian approaches secular thinking and knowledge?  Jenny Brown

“Since then you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above not on earthly things.” Col 3: 1-2.

As a Christian who works in the mental health profession I am mindful of the danger of relegating a biblical perspective on the human condition to the periphery with modern psychological theories dominating the discourse........

...the Christian in psychology and mental health learns to be wary of any secular counselling that may assume moral authority in deciding and declaring what is a right and wrong way to live and behave in relationship.  This kind of advice inevitable puts itself in the place of God.  Approaches that promote the  human’s capacity to become essentially good and achieve full potential through self effort, will undermine the Gospel which is only good news because of the solution it provides to helpless state of selfishness we humans are in.  Any approach that promotes a life goal of an endless effort towards self knowledge can only be at odds with the Biblical call to love and know God with all our heart mind and strength. ................

Bowen family systems theory does not tell humans how they should live but is an effort towards science that describes (through research observations) how humans predictably react in relationships.  Just as medical science describes the behaviour of cells that distort, systems theory describes the knowable patterns of humans in their relational spheres.  (These same patterns are observed in other species).

It describes much that is not made clear in the Bible. The Bible describes the source of symptoms and disharmony in humans and their relationships---the effect of taking charge of our own destinies and ignoring the authority of our creator.  It does not describe in clear detail the emotional and relationship processes that are part of the fallen human condition.  Bowen theory describes the very same patterns of relationship and emotional symptoms in the lives of Christians as in the lives of those who are not believers.  The objective observations of what humans do in the midst of relationship stressors describes those in and outside of the church.  According to Bowen theory the key variable is a person’s level of differentiation (emotional and relational maturity).  Theory describes observations of the instinctual ways that human’s behave to reduce the discomfort of sensing discord in relationships, through losing thoughtful boundaries to create a feeling of harmony (fusion), through distancing in the face of differences (emotional cut off), side taking or focussing on a third person to return a sense of security (triangles), and being overly helpful to others at the expense of their self management (Over and under functioning). ......................

Bowen theory may be seen as part of this helpful knowledge base that is part of the generosity of God’s common grace to all humanity.  At the same time the Christian stays mindful that any explanation of the human that comes from secular thought will not reveal our greatest problem...our separation from our creator God.  There will always be limitations to human knowledge and any quest for knowledge to give meaning to life inevitably lowers our horizon to this short life and not to the world that Christians believe is to come.  The challenge, on the other hand, is not to reactively dismiss information that does not come from Biblical thought but to use our God given thinking capacity to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Cor. 10:5

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UPCOMING EVENTS - SYSTEMS @ WORK

• Systems Theory and Healthy Congregations - Using Bowen family systems thinking to navigate relationship challenges in congregations/pastoral community and in ministry teams.  Click here for further details and to register Online
• Exploring boundaries in Pastoral Care and Counselling - Am I in too deep? - When pastoral care and complex counselling issues merge.  Click here for full details    Register for April Workshop    Register for September Workshop