The Power Of Shared Emotions In Church
by Rev. Mark E. Tidsworth, Founder and Team Leader
Emotions are not our faith. Our faith is our faith. Yet, emotions are powerful forces in faith communities, especially in churches whose primary metaphor is Body. We are at our best when we are one body, the Body of Christ, the manifestation of Christ’s presence in flesh and blood no less. We didn’t invent this audacious and bold identity for ourselves. Christ himself called us into being, naming us Body of Christ. God’s work of salvation through Christ gave birth to this body, gathering us around the inspiring and challenging Way of Jesus. This is our faith story, initiated by Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit. So when it comes to emotions, we are not surprised that such an intimate expression of community shares moods and emotional states. Regardless of the health and vigor of our churches, there is a remarkable ability to influence the emotional lives of one another.
Though God’s Church has experienced the sharing of emotional states for centuries, contemporary social science, informed by brain research into mirror neurons, recognizes the power of emotional contagion. “The more cohesive the group, the stronger the sharing of moods, emotional history, and even hot buttons.” 1 So the closer our sense of fellowship and community as churches, the more likely we are to share and influence the emotional states of one another. This is not a judgment, an evaluation assigning positive or negative values. This is simply a description of the way we function in the Body of Christ. Our experience, plus research from various fields, tell us that we powerfully influence each other simply by being a strong group; by being church together.
The pastoral and lay leaders among us intuitively know their emotional responses during times of crisis are super-sized, exceptionally influential. “In such a grave crisis, all eyes turn to the leader for emotional guidance. Because the leader’s way of seeing things has special weight, leaders manage meaning for a group, offering a way to interpret or make sense of, and so react emotionally to, a given situation.”2 Clearly, leadership matters; especially in this intricately interconnected Body of Christ.
Permacrisis
Hurricane Helene just completed her rampage through the Southeastern USA. We were already living in a highly anxious culture due to the hyped-up presidential campaign underway. Then, at an even deeper level, we are making the Modern to Postmodern shift, with so much changing about how we understand and occupy the world. In this environment, without even naming the pandemic, the word “permacrisis” is making its way into common usage. The waves of crises rolling onto the beach of our lives are more frequent, with less space between them. There is little separation from one wave to the next, as compared with the recent past (our lifetimes), yielding a state of nearly permanent crisis it seems.
So what do responsible and informed clergy, church staff, and lay leaders do in this environment, knowing emotional contagion is part of being the Body of Christ?
Stepping back and reconnecting with the one who can reset our emotional barometers is a responsible spiritual discipline given how leaders directly influence the emotional states of our churches. “Because emotions are so contagious – especially from leaders to others in the group – leaders’ first tasks are the emotional equivalent of good hygiene: getting their own emotions in hand. Quite simply, leaders cannot effectively manage emotions in anyone else without first handling their own. How a leader feels thus becomes more than just a private matter; given the reality of emotional leakage, a leader’s emotions have public consequences.”3 Once we know this, the powerful influence of leadership regarding emotional contagion, we cannot un-know it. We must use this knowledge about how we humans function for the good of God’s Church.
So pastoral and lay leaders, get yourself to a good place. Look to our Lord. Step back, breathe, look upwards, settle. Invite God’s full presence into every part of your being. Cast your anxiety and care on God for God cares for you. Ask the Holy Spirit to fill you, pushing away the toxicity and fear, replacing them with health and peace. Trust God to do this, for God is able and faithful. In fact, this is the very time for which God has been preparing you. God has and shall give you everything you need for the living of these days, for the doing of God’s will.
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1. “Moods And Emotions In Small Groups And Work Teams,” Janice R. Kelly and Sigal Barsade, Working paper, Yale School of Management, New Haven, CT, 2001.
2. Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, Annie McKee (Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA), 2002. Preface.
3. Ibid. p.46.