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Welcome to Episode 216 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama, and we are continuing my discussion with Reverend Lauren Richmond Jr. From the Future Christian Podcast. In this segment, we drill down into what it looks like to be a non anxious leader in the midst of this denominational conflict. So without further ado, here is Episode 216, what's going on in the United Methodist Church, part two of three.

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I really appreciate you taking a macro view. Tell me more about the micro view from an FST family systems perspective.

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From the macro view, there's nothing we can do. We're going to split, just like all the others. From what I've heard from some friends and colleagues in other denominations, it gets really ugly. Feelings are hurt, relationships are broken, lawsuits are filed. Money becomes central money becomes central, money and assets and and it just gets really ugly. If you think about that, if you think about all the ways that Christianity has become irrelevant to so many people, you just have to wonder what they think when they see Christians fighting like this. My biggest concern is what an awful witness it is to the grace and love of God. My concern at this point is that we figure out a way to move forward with the grace and love of God. To me, what family systems theory teaches is that we can only control our own functioning, that we can only work on defining ourselves, and we can't define others. If we try to define others, we get into this so called conflict of wills where it's all about who's right and who's wrong, and that's where we are. What I'm hoping is that we can teach Christian leaders to be more self differentiated.

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That is to not give in on our own principles, but to say, this is where I stand on this. I believe this is how I'm going to follow God. But then also say, but if you don't, that's okay. If you disagree with me, that's okay. Because I think if we could do that, that would be a powerful witness. If we could actually figure out a way to part and send each other off with a blessing, it would at least show to people that, hey, okay, Christians disagree, just like the rest of the world. But Christians do it differently because of their common bond in Jesus Christ. I don't see that happening, but I'm not giving up. I think part of the work I feel called to do is to help people learn that it's possible and to do that. I have really close friends who we knew each other as Christian siblings even before we went into the ministry and it's another couple that the woman went into the ministry a couple of years after I did and then the husband and a year or two after that, the man after that. They are very traditional.

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I don't know if they're going to go global Methodist Church or not. Actually, we've been trying to get together and we haven't. But we made a commitment that we would treat each other with love and grace, no matter what happened. I think we have been doing that. We're trying to do that. That's really why I want to connect with them. I haven't actually seen them, had a conversation with them for a few years and would love to just hear how they're doing and what they're thinking, where their God is calling them. I don't want to see them lead the denomination, but that's not up to me. That's their choice. I think that's what self differentiation is. What our instinct is to say, well, if they're leaving, they can't be good. Only the good people stay. Well, that's a little monolithic, right? I guess we'll see how that goes.

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The conflict of wills, I want to highlight that because I feel like I'm not sure what your perspective would be, but I feel like for me at least, it feels so prevalent in all aspects of our society right now where we're trying to define the other and I don't know, one of my friends and colleagues, he wrote a substack about basically how we're... If I remember correctly, something to the effect of like, we're basically trying to argue from a different in source book, if that makes sense, foundational text. And I wondered about the efficacy of saying, basically saying, this is wrong because this source says so. Meanwhile, the other group we're arguing against is going from... It basically has a completely different source book. Again, to stay with the metaphor. What's a better way of functioning there?

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Let's be real, right? We can't even agree on what's truth anymore. Fake news and facts. If the pandemic showed us anything, we all interpret so called facts differently. And so then when you go to using different source books or different interpretations of our source book, the Bible, it doesn't get us anywhere. It just gets us into deeper and deeper conflict. Adam Grant, who's a psychologist at the Wharton School of Business, he's an organizational psychologist. His most recent book is called Think Again. He has in there four archetypes that come out when we're in some disagreement. I won't say argument, but just disagreement. The first, he says, is preacher. We'll start with preacher because we're Christians and we're clergy. When you go into preacher mode, you're trying to convince the other person that you're right and they're wrong. That's what we do when we preach. We preach the truth. This is the truth. The other is prosecutor. In prosecutor, we're trying to convince the other person that they're wrong. We're trying to convict them. We can do preacher and prosecutor in the same conversation. But I think they're helpful understandings of different ways that we get into this conflict of wills.

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The third is politician, which is, Oh, well, we really don't have any principles. We're just trying to get along and we'll say anything. We just want to get along with the other person. Of course, what he's saying is none of those are helpful because, and my interpretation is, they either get us into a conflict of wills or the politician is a form of adaptivity. It's a form of just giving in to what the other person wants because we don't want to get into conflict. It's a form of conflict avoidance. He says the most helpful approach is what he calls the scientist. What he talks about is that scientists really don't care what the truth is. They just want to learn the truth. They'll form a hypothesis and they'll run an experiment and they're just as happy to find out that their hypothesis is wrong because they they got closer to the truth. A ctually, I was in a Bible study discussion this morning and we were emphasizing the word curiosity. I think curiosity is this really helpful approach to everything, whether it's the so called facts or whether it's a person that's in your face or just whatever is going on in the world.

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When we're curious, we're less likely to be likely to be angry, we're less likely to be reactive or adaptive. And as you know, one of the things I always recommend in those anxious situations is just to listen. So curiosity and listening go hand in hand. It's ask going back to this couple, I was at our annual meeting of our churches. This was probably in 2016. And the woman was setting up a display for the Wesleyan Covenant Association, which is the forerunner to the global Methodist Church. It's the traditional conservative organization. She was an officer of the organization, still is. I just went up and I just said, So tell me, what are your organizational goals? What are your aims? And then I asked her, What would it take for us to keep our denomination together? And she told me. And then she asked me the same thing, and I told her, and we still weren't quite on the same page. But we weren't arguing. We were just sharing where we were without trying to convince the other. And that didn't change anybody's minds, but it kept our relationship intact. I think this idea of being curious and not trying to win the day, I think that's the problem is we're trying to win the day.

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And trying to win the day is going to cause us all to lose the day because it is going to get nasty for some people. I'm trying to just keep it from getting nasty in my own little part of the world and perhaps help other people do the same. Okay, that's where we're going to pause this week. Next week you will hear part three of the interview where we go a little bit deeper into family systems theory, and I answer some of Lauren's questions about me personally. In the meantime, you can find the show notes at thenonanxiousleader.com/216. You can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com. I heard from somebody this past week with a great idea for an upcoming episode, so I'm looking forward to hearing from you as well. Until next time, thanks and goodbye.