Healthy Congregations: A Systems Approach

Rating:
Summary: Help for Anxious Churches and Church Leaders
Review: Steinke's Healthy Congregations begins where his first volume, "How Your Church Family Works," left off. He presents ten principles of health, how to deal with corporate anxiety, and the role of spiritually and emotionally healthy leaders in influencing the church's emotional competence. Of particular value is his discussion of Infectious Anxiety (pp. 55-67), where problems such as murmuring, gossip, secrets, accusations, and triangulation are discussed.

Rating:
Summary: Help for Anxious Churches and Church Leaders
Review: Steinke's Healthy Congregations begins where his first volume, "How Your Church Family Works," left off. He presents ten principles of health, how to deal with corporate anxiety, and the role of spiritually and emotionally healthy leaders in influencing the church's emotional competence. Of particular value is his discussion of Infectious Anxiety (pp. 55-67), where problems such as murmuring, gossip, secrets, accusations, and triangulation are discussed.

Rating:
Summary: Good introduction to family systems applied to congregations
Review: The latest book to apply family systems to the congregation is Healthy Congregations, by Peter Steinke, a student of the late Rabbi Edwin Friedman. Steinke approaches his subject positively - how do healthy congregations behave?

Congregational health begins with mature, self-differentiated leaders. Leaders in an anxious system (as all systems are, from time to time) must avoid becoming overly concerned with solving others' problems or assuaging their anxiety. Anyone who has served in congregational leadership knows how difficult this can be. Steinke holds out the faith that leaders who model good immune functioning can in time be the "salvation" of their congregations.

Steinke's account of congregational maladies ring true, and his prescriptions are pragmatic. Healthy Congregations is a worthy sequel to Steinke's previous Alban volume, How Your Congregational Family Works.

Dan Hotchkiss, senior consultant for the Alban Institute