Peter Steinke, the best-selling author and occasional subject of the Just a Little Bit More book blog, is at it again with a new book. Teaching Fish To Walk: Church Systems and Adaptive Challenge is now available at the website of New Vision Press.

Steinke continues to lead the way translating systems theory to congregational functioning. With the current large-scale changes in society and church, Teaching Fish To Walk is timely and instructive. Steinke urges congregations to use change and conflict as opportunities for learning. Many of our churches face the challenge of how to better serve the world and represent the promises of God’s kingdom in the new changing context.

To set the theme for the book, Steinke uses the example of the bichir fish from tropical Africa. This amphibious freshwater fish has both gills and lungs. This species prefers being in water, but when forced to survive on land, it can do so. These fish adapt by drawing their fins closer to their bodies and elevating their heads, which allows their necks more flexibility. Eventually bone and muscle adaptations permit these fish to walk. As Steinke says, “The fish learned to walk, but it took an adaptive challenge for it to happen” (p. 3).

Many congregations founded during the church’s heyday of growth in the mid-twentieth century are now faced with dwindling memberships and questions about future mission. Steinke reaches out to leaders of these congregations and others facing acute adaptive challenges.

This book is not just for clergy but appropriate also for church leaders, many of whom are unfamiliar with systems thinking and terminology. Steinke gives a concise and understandable description of systems thinking in chapter 3, under the section “All of a Piece”:

*Seeing the relationships that exist in discrete parts;

*Knowing that things only exist in relationship to other things;

*Recognizing that the whole cannot be understood by studying independent parts;

*Understanding that nothing is influenced in one direction, as in cause-and-effect thinking;

*Acknowledging that behavior is mutually influential and maintained (p. 33).

Practical descriptions such as this one help church leaders and pastors work together with new thinking and subsequent fresh ideas on the adaptive challenges their congregations face.

Steinke’s viewpoints are not simply rehashes of his previous work – he gives up-to-date insights on the relationship between anxiety and imagination; the differences between adaptive change and technical change, between managing and leading; and, a more expansive and helpful definition of the Greek term metanoia (repentance). Metanoia understood as “large mindedness” enables new thinking and visioning.

The effective synchronizing of psychology, theology, and practical insight has always been the hallmark of Steinke’s work. Teaching Fish To Walk follows in Steinke’s well-established tradition. I highly recommend Teaching Fish To Walk to pastors and congregational leaders who trust that the cycle of death and resurrection applies even to the church in the twenty-first century.

Read my interview with Peter Steinke from January 2016.

This blog and website are representative of the views expressed in my book Just a Little Bit More: The Culture of Excess and the Fate of the Common Good. Distributed by ACTA Publications (Chicago), JaLBM is available on Amazon as a paperback and an e-book. It’s also available on Nook and iBook/iTunes, and at the website of Blue Ocotillo Publishing.

If you’re a member of a faith community – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or other – consider a book study series of Just a Little Bit More. The full-length book (257 pgs.) is intended for engaged readers, whereas the Summary Version and Study Guide (52 pgs.) is intended for readers desiring a quick overview of the work. It also contains discussion questions at the end of all eight chapter summaries.

Readers of both books can join together for study, conversation, and subsequent action in support of the common good.

The Spanish version of the Summary Version and Study Guide will be available in October 2016. ¡Que bueno!

¡El librito de JaLBM – llamado Solo un Poco Más – saldrá este Octubre de 2016!