Burnout or Breakout

Systems Thinking for Stifled Leaders and Stuck Churches

John Messer

• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781098055226
• eBook ISBN: 9781098055233
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

How can church leaders be effective without sacrificing their marriage, their family, or their health in the process? How can good leaders get stuck churches unstuck without becoming another casualty? Burnout or Breakout provides answers to both. The burnout epidemic among church leaders, combined with cultural volatility, uncertainty, and complexity catalyze with unhealthy church processes to get churches stuck. All these forces combine to stifle good leaders until it seems that no reasonable leadership effort can succeed. This book brings new insights to churches and church leaders frustrated with making tireless efforts to move the church, yet constantly falling short of their goals and objectives. It helps church leaders avoid quick-fix solutions that actually keep churches stuck by applying systemic, long-term solutions. This book brings hope to stifled leaders on the verge of burnout. Building on biblical and experiential evidence, the author presents burnout as a systemic problem. Seeing from a systems perspective enables leaders to discover how their church really works and provides tools and strategies to help them realign their church system for health and effectiveness. Based on a comprehensive introduction to systems thinking, leaders are encouraged to see their congregations as complex systems of interrelated and interdependent elements. Effective leadership, from a systems perspective, aligns the church to achieve intended outcomes. Based on the account of Jethro and Moses in Exodus 18, leaders are equipped to identify and diagnose church systems designed for burnout and provides strategies to overcome the stifling forces within the church. Leaders are further equipped to apply systemic thinking to common church system problems, such as declining attendance, mission confusion, and volunteer shortages. Brings hope that stifled leaders and stuck churches can break out of their limiting conditions by investing time and effort to learn and practice seeing from a new systems perspective.

Chapter 1

Systems Basics

“Every change changes everything.”22

Systems are everywhere. In fact, they are so common that we often don’t recognize them. Schools, hospitals, businesses, and churches are all systems. Families, communities, and social clubs are systems. We think, live, and exist in systems so much that we don’t recognize them as systems. Learning to recognize and think about systems is important because systems have common properties and characteristics, and they operate in common ways. When leaders don’t understand the system they are leading, they cannot be effective, plan wisely, or anticipate organizational needs. The common leadership process of identifying a problem and applying a fix may alleviate symptoms for a time, but this usually results in unintended consequences in the long-term. By gaining a systems perspective on their church and their role in it, leaders will be equipped to apply effective long-term solutions to organizational problems, plan more effective strategies, and more accurately understand the behavior of their congregation.

Let’s begin with a little background. Systems thinking is actually a meta-concept of systems science. Systems science is a vast field, including mechanical, biological-environmental, and social systems under that broad category. Both quantitative and qualitative data are used in systems science, although social systems comprise more qualitative data than mechanical systems. As one of many branches of systems science, system dynamics originated from the work of Jay Forrester, an engineer and management scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who focused on creating quantitative computer models of systems. Dr. Forrester’s work brought systems thinking to a broader audience, primarily management and business leaders. Dennis Meadows and Donella Meadows applied systems thinking to economics and population growth, authoring the ground-breaking and controversial study Limits to Growth (1972), expanding the accessibility of systems thinking even more. Although their study was controversial at its publication, it has proven to be more prophetic than many could have imagined.23 Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline brought systems thinking to a broader leadership audience and has assimilated throughout businesses, government, public policy, and the social sciences. Pertinent systems thinkers in this general branch of systems science also include Daniel Kim, Virginia Anderson, John Moreland, John Sterman, Dennis Sherwood, Michael C. Jackson, and George Richardson.

As a meta-concept, systems thinking applies across multiple disciplines, including leadership and management. Systems thinking has been called the “fifth discipline” among Senge’s disciplines of “personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning.”24 Systems thinking is central to these disciplines to the degree that Senge identified it as the “core discipline.”25 Systems thinking is being taught not only across multiple disciplines but across generations. Students from kindergarten to college and graduate school are learning the basics of systems thinking because of the applicability across so many academic disciplines. Indeed, one cannot understate the value of systems thinking in understanding the church and how it works.

In a sense, this book is an attempt to create a resource I wish had been available when I began ministry thirty years ago. Systems thinking is not just a set of tools for problem-solving. Nor is it a new leadership technique that will be discarded when something better comes along. As a church leader, I have found that systems thinking provides a perspective that I believe is biblical and, therefore, crucial to church leadership in the twenty-first century. Also, the nature of change has become more intense—both inside and outside the church. Leaders need the perspective and skills of seeing beyond a quick-fix, linear, problem-solution approach to ministry leadership and the church. The value of being able to anticipate consequences of our proposed solutions—and how they may impact the church, negatively or positively—in the future can enhance any leader’s effectiveness and any church’s health. Basic ability in systems thinking and facility in applying systems tools can improve church leaders’ problem diagnosis and intervention, strategic planning, and overall ministry leadership.

What is a System?

A system is perfectly structured to create the outcomes it is producing

A system is “a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent components that form a complex and unified whole.”26 We see systems everywhere—in nature, in science, and in our homes (appliances are mechanical systems). More importantly, our families, communities, schools, businesses, and churches are systems. Whether we’re thinking about a toaster, an ecosystem, a family, or a church, as a system, there a...

Table of contents

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8