How Your 21st-Century Church Family Works

Understanding Congregations as Emotional Systems

Peter L. Steinke, René Steinke

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9798881851989
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Social Psychology

The first edition of How Your Church Family Works was written nearly thirty years ago, and the reach and velocity of change in the last three decades poses a new challenge for churches. Thirty years ago, churches functioned in a fairly stable environment and focused on growth an expansion. The tide has turned now, though, and supplanted increase with decline. Bowen family systems theory—on which How Your Church Family Works is based—has not changed, but its application has to be revised for the twenty-first century. How Your 21st-Century Church Family Works, the second edition of Peter Steinke's landmark book, addresses the radically altered landscape of church sustainability with new introductory and concluding chapters bookending updates throughout the now-classic text. Core chapters of the book feature fresh examples of emotional process that are more exemplary of the current scene. One key addition is a new trigger of anxiety for churches—the change process. Change threatens the familiar and stable and suffers from negative connotations of endangering tradition. Where gradual change has been the norm for so long, churches now see a blistering pace of disruptions, some of which have forced change too early or too late, or sometimes in unproductive directions. How Your 21st-Century Church family works embraces the anxiety caused by change, transforming it from a source of anguish to a font of opportunity.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I: Conceptualizing Emotional Processes
• Chapter 1: The Concept of a System
• Chapter 2: Anxiety and Reactivity
• Chapter 3: Separateness and Closeness
• Chapter 4: Stability and Change
• Chapter 5: Clarity and Compassion
• II: The Congregation as an Emotional System
• Chapter 6: Do Not Go Gently into That Glob of Glue
• Chapter 7: Being a Prophet Is Nice Work—If You Can Find a Job
• Chapter 8: What Shall It Profit a Parish If It Gets over the Hump but Falls into the Abyss?
• Chapter 9: Remembering the Future
• Chapter 10: Believing and Belonging
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author