When I work with congregations striving for health (which is my day job inside the UMC), one of the first things I point out to worried churches is we are dealing with a systemic issue.

Funny thing - many of them don’t know it. They might feel it, but often enough a local church thinks it is going through a unique issue.

I always start with the systemic.

• It calms the congregation.

• It often gives a bigger picture to the personal struggles they have.

• We are able to then talk about specific issues in the congregation through a systemic lens. This removes a form of responsibility which often leads to further distress or hurt feelings.

And this data point will be making it into my file of often shared statistics.