Equilibrium and Predictable Behaviors

To the extent that organizations maintain the status quo, they demonstrate the natural tendency toward equilibrium. Just as physics shows that "an object at rest tends to stay at rest," so organizations will tend to continue to demonstrate predictability. This does not mean, however, that these organizations are necessarily healthy. By the same token, such patterns are not necessarily unhealthy either.

Many healthy churches enjoy the stability of a ministry characterized by cycles of discerning vision, stretching toward attainment of that vision, successfully dealing with opposition and other barriers, and enjoying the fruits of their labors. To a significant degree, such healthy patterns are as predictable as unhealthy ones.

There are, however, limits to that predictability. While leaders can anticipate that they will likely experience the same dynamics in their ministry as those experienced by the pastors who preceded them, each minister’s experience will be akin to a different verse of the same song; each new pastor is different from his or her predecessors, and new people and personalities may have entered the congregation.

Can Change Happen?

To paraphrase a common cliché, churches, like people, can change—but not very much. This means most changes will be met with various levels of resistance. The larger the change, the greater the potential for resistance. Congregations seeking to break the so-called "150 barrier" in weekend worship attendance, for example, will almost predictably resist the relational, programmatic, and organizational shifts required to attain and sustain long-term worship attendance of 150 people. Likewise, congregations that had their origins in congregational splits will tend to split again and again…and again.

In one schismatic congregation, not only were the splits predictable, but the timing of when they would reoccur was also predictable. In this congregation, each of four successive pastors spent his or her first three years overcoming the antagonism that existed in the congregation. In each pastor’s fourth and fifth years, the church grew dramatically. At the beginning of the sixth year, the growth came to a screeching halt, and during the seventh year each of the pastors was sabotaged by congregational anxiety. This repeated cycle seemed to center around congregational anxiety triggered by the following issues:

1. Finances: The congregation, which had no long-term debt, was wary of taking any risks that might require even small, short-term loans.



2. Growth: Many long-time members of the congregation were threatened when they realized that twenty-five percent of the congregation had joined in the last two years. Such growth meant they would lose their influence. Most important, it would threaten their patterns of dealing with anxiety. Indeed, the new families, simply by virtue of managing anxiety differently, would create greater anxiety among the longer-term members.



3. Trust: One of the key indicators of congregational anxiety can be the inability to trust others, especially leaders, during anxious times. As leadership was distrusted, accusations of embezzlement, false teaching, and incompetence permeated the organization, though there was no truth to any of the charges.



4. Poor Anxiety Management: One of the underlying triggers for the group’s anxiety was the inability of the dominant forces to manage their individual anxiety in a healthy manner. When anxiety runs amuck, so do people. It was this out-of-control anxiety—and not the presented (and unsubstantiated) issues of conflict—that really caused members to leave. They left the church because they were afraid of, or were unwilling to deal with, anxiety.

This "seven-year itch" pattern was repeated five times in this congregation’s first forty years. At this writing this church is in its third year with its current pastor. Guess what? The congregation is starting to grow! What will happen next? One can hope that history will not repeat itself, but it’s hard not to be pessimistic given the congregation’s history.

These seemingly predictable patterns of behavior can be very challenging for church leaders. Leaders who have been in situations similar to the "seven-year itch" congregation described above will understand the agony of such an experience and the gut-wrenching soul-searching they engender. All of the pastors who served that congregation wondered at one time or another what they had done to deserve such treatment, and the pain of seeing God’s people attacking each other, leaving the congregation, or standing by and doing nothing was overwhelming. A sense of being helpless to intervene to prevent further damage only added to their sense of failure and loss.

Much of this pain could have been avoided, however, had they understood the historical patterns of the congregation. Understanding the predictability of such patterns is an important first step toward gaining insight as to how to intervene in anxious congregations.