Other tips for dealing with an anxious emotional system include:
• Be careful not to feed it. Anxious people and systems feed on the reactivity of others. Leaders who are calm and thoughtful provide an antidote to congregational anxiety. As my systems colleague says, Don't defend, don't explain, don't justify.
•Seek out those who can diffuse emotional intensity and limit exposure to those who increase it. In any emotional system, there are those who amp up emotional intensity and those who reduce it. Rabbi Edwin Friedman, a family therapist and consultant on leadership, likened these to transformers up and transformers down along high voltage lines. There are those who can make mountains out of molehills and those who can make molehills out of mountains. Minimize your time with the former and expand it with the latter.
• Use humor and paradox to reduce the seriousness of the atmosphere and help the conversation careful that they aren't perceived as sarcasm, which would make things worse.
• Do healthy things that help you manage stress under any circumstance. Exercise, meditation and prayer help. So does keeping the large-picture perspective.
• Remember that any anxious focus has its own life span. In time, some other focused issue, and different individuals, will replace the ones that distract us now. At that time, you'll have a chance to practice these responses again.
A tsunami of anxiety has washed across our Lutheran communities since last August's Churchwide Assembly. In systems theory, the issues most powerful in creating anxiety in churches are sexuality, finance and change.
We're awash in all three.
Because of sexuality decisions, finances are at risk and the perception of change is extreme. Moreover, we're part of a larger culture anxious over terrorism, war, finances, health care and massive change. No church leader today can escape the harmful impact of an anxiety avalanche.
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© 2013 Augsburg Fortress, Publishers
