Am I Helping or Enabling?
“So, should we help them or not?” A Church Board member charged with discerning requests and disbursing a benevolence fund to meet legitimate needs waited for the other six members of the Board to respond on the Zoom meeting. A family who previously sought financial help from the church recently submitted another request. A job loss and mounting medical bills led to an urgent plea for assistance. The ensuing conversation from a week ago illustrates a significant theme in Edwin Freidman’s book “A Failure of Nerve.” He asserts the need for application of his leadership principles from small organizations like the family to large organizations like the government, and everything in between, like the church.
Based mainly on work in family systems theory, Friedman claims to diagnose the problem and prescribe the cure for ineffective leadership and change within all organizational systems. Self-knowledge and self-control serve as critical characteristics of the leader who will effect change for the better. He calls those characteristics self-differentiation. In contrast, ineffective leaders lack self-differentiation, i.e. nerve, and concern themselves with good feelings over progress and cave to anxiety, producing tentativeness rather than decisive action.
Back on the Zoom call, opinions abounded. The majority view vocalized the recurrence of requests from the same family as a sign of dysfunction that the church should not support. One member in the minority opinion recommended the desire to meet the need. Previous discussions signaled the group that a decision contrary to that one person’s endorsement would result in lengthy Bible references about helping the poor and the need for compassion. The group consensus shifted, resulting in a vote to help the family another time despite no clear path forward for them to establish self-sufficiency. The general guidelines of the benevolence fund call for short-term help allowing for a return to self-support.
What just happened? Did a biblical argument result in appropriate help, or did the influence of one unhealthy person cause several others to acquiesce? I believe the majority opinion members of the Board relented due to the anticipated resistance and pain of the member who gives guilt-inducing spiritual support for his opinions. Edwin Friedman may well call it choosing “empathy over responsibility.”[1] In a later chapter on the topic, Friedman claims an over-emphasis on empathy becomes a tool in the hands of weak or immature, sounding spiritually noble but resulting in avoidance of personal responsibility and growth toward relational health. How can anyone stand against helping people? However, is it legitimate help, or is it enablement of patterns that require change and growth, not concession?
An enduring question of application emerges from a need for a clearer and objective way to gauge healthy compassion versus unhealthy enablement. A benevolence fund serves as a low-level example, albeit a recent example. I participated in that Zoom call and chose not to offer an opinion. I deemed the decision as minor. I also recall other occasions when I yielded positions on minor issues simply because I did not want to deal with anticipated response of someone of a different view. If I could ask Friedman a question, it would be, “should we pick and choose our battles in regarding self-differentiation, or is it needed at all times with issues large and small?” Sometimes it does not seem to be worth the trouble. I suspect Friedman would argue that each opportunity helps create a culture of some type, healthy or unhealthy.
As a lead pastor, I carry forward from the reading a corporate concern related to leading a congregation toward personal responsibility rather than immaturity. Empathy exists as a standard expectation within the role of the clergy, while Friedman’s call to self-differentiation often gets perceived as uncaring when put into practice. Over the years, I have heard the assertion, “we just want to be heard.” Through experience, I understand that often means “we feel heard if what we want becomes a reality.” Pastoral ministry can quickly morph into people-pleasing. The evaluation of the effectiveness of a pastor’s ministry can be concentrated on the overall satisfaction level of the constituency. Friedman’s call to know yourself, your mission, and your vision offer a needed balance to the reality of people to whom you minister. The need for self-differentiation requires regular time away from the day-to-day demands of ministry to reflect on God’s mission for the church and my part in leading that mission within my responsibility.
The next time a dynamic like the one described above unfolds on a low-level issue, I plan to enter the discussion. Is it worth it? You never know until you know.
[1] Edwin H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (New York: Church Publishing, 2017),
About the Author
Roy Gruber
Husband, father, pastor, student, and sojourner in Babylon7 responses to “Am I Helping or Enabling?”
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“An enduring question of application emerges from a need for a clearer and objective way to gauge healthy compassion versus unhealthy enablement.” What an insightful question.
How do we help people who do not want to help themselves?
I have a staff member that challenges me to consider your question. Maybe empathy is better defined as contextual empowerment to thrive.
Roy,
Pastoral work is incredibly challenging work, as noted in your blog. A friend of mine once commented: “Eric, you know the difference of your work and mine? You get to choose your people, I don’t!” Well said.
All the more, to find the balance of self-care (I really wish there were a word that better captured what Friedman spoke of) in order to best serve others, I believe that is an important lesson.
May the Lord lead you, and all of us, in how we may better “be” in Him to “do” His work.
The need for self-differentiation requires regular time away from the day-to-day demands of ministry to reflect on God’s mission for the church and my part in leading that mission within my responsibility.
Roy,
I love the question “should we pick and choose our battles in regarding self-differentiation, or is it needed at all times with issues large and small?” that you would want to ask Friedman. Sometimes I find myself not wanting to engage in the small ‘battles’ in order to have strength for the ‘war,’ but in result, it’s the ongoing presence of the small (generally repetitive) ones that wears down the stamina needed for the larger ones.
Similar to your example of the benevolence fund, so much of what we read this week makes me wonder how it reconciles with several statements from the Sermon on the Mount. The tension between empower and enable — or to generously bless others — takes so much discernment from the father.
Kayli, I have been “living” in the Sermon on the Mount recently and I share the challenge of how to make many of those statements applicable in real life!
Roy, Wow I understand your struggle. So often it is the low-level issue that chip away at our compassion and identity. Your observation, “I have heard the assertion, “we just want to be heard.” Through experience, I understand that often means “we feel heard if what we want becomes a reality.”” is one many in all types of organizations can relate to!
Friedmans argument in all of this is the hope that self-differentiated leaders will lead the organization to rise to the top in their own self-differentiation. I think I agree but it isn’t easy and clearly doesn’t always effect the system.
Could your question about do we sweat the small stuff be answered in implementing Friedmans full understanding of self-differentiation? What would these low-level issue conversations look like when we are self-aware of our own emotions and what they are about, while being able to reframe the question instead of coming up with a different answer to the same old questions?
I encourage you to practice when the cost is low so that you have stronger sense of what it “feels” like when the higher risk issues arise 🙂
BTW…have you ever done CPE?
Nicole, I wanted to do CPE about five years ago at a SLC hospital but they required 20-25 hours per week and I could not make that work. I’m guessing you have done it and found it helpful?
Roy I would highly recommend it! I did 3 units of CPE and it was a formational experience in particular to developing a deeper self-awareness. It’s not always fun and often can be painful but so worth it.