Peter L. Steinke, A Door Set Open: Grounding Change in Mission and Hope. Alban Institute, 2010.
Referenced in:
- Adaptive Leadership
- Change Concepts and Theories
- Leadership and Emotional Systems, Self-Differentiation
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
Peter Steinke is among the best authors in the field of church leadership, especially in applying the emotional systems theory of Murray Bowen and Ed Friedman. His previous books, including Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times, are excellent. This new volume is a substantive addition, including interaction with a number of theologians and missiologists on the place of mission and hope, and good integration with John P. Kotter’s change theory and Ron Heifetz’ theory of adaptive leadership. In this respect, Steinke offers a unique amalgamation. It is not a how-to book. In fact, Steinke is critical of quick-fix change artists. It is a reflection on the importance of mission and hope as a spiritual and theological resource in a time of change.
Steinke begins with an overview of the often hostile challenges churches face in the current culture, highlighting postmodernism and the new atheism. Here he focuses on external pressures from the outside, and compares our time to the dislocation and disorientation experienced by the Jews during the Babylonian exile. Next he suggests a renewed commitment to the Great Commission and other biblical mandates as a basis for congregational purpose in evangelism and social justice. He suggests not only does this guard us from mission drift, but also aligns us with a realized-eschatology of Christ’s return, the transcendent reality toward which all life and mission aims.
From the Publisher
We resist change less when we associate it with mission and fortify it with hope. So argues longtime congregational consultant Peter Steinke in his fourth book, A Door Set Open, as he explores the relationship between the challenges of change and our own responses to new ideas and experiences.
Steinke builds on a seldom-explored principle posited by the late Rabbi Edwin Friedman: the ‘hostility of the environment’ is proportionate to the ‘response of the organism.’ The key, Steinke says, is not the number or strength of the stressors in the system—anxiety, poor conditions, deteriorating values—but the response of the individual or organization to ‘what is there.’
Drawing on Bowen system theory and a theology of hope, as well as his experience working with more than two hundred congregations, Steinke makes the case that the church has entered an era of great opportunity. Theologian and sociologist Ernst Troeltsch said the church had closed down the office of eschatology. Steinke reopens it and draws our attention to God’s future, to a vision of hope for the people of God. The door is set open for exploration and new creation.
About the Author
Peter Steinke is an internationally respected congregational systems consultant who has also served as a parish pastor, an educator, and a therapist for clergy. Drawing on the work of family-systems expert Edwin Friedman, Peter’s accessible books have helped countless congregations understand their hidden workings and use that understanding to become healthy and vital.
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