When Conflict Comes to Church-2
August 25, 2008
Last week, we considered five myths about church conflict. These summarize my former inadequate view of church conflict. Now, let’s turn our attention to some examples of church conflict in the Bible and what we can learn from them. These conflicts are examples of three of the most common occasions for conflict in the church today. Let’s begin by understanding:
Conflict happens between church members.
In Philippians 4:2-3, a conflict between two church women is reported. Euodia and Syntyche were having an open conflict. It had become so well-known Paul heard of it in Rome and wrote about it in his letter to the church. While the nature of the conflict is not revealed, what is recorded is very insightful.
First, these women were having open conflict. Paul often mentioned individuals in his letters. Usually, he speaks positively about his ministry partners. For him to specifically single out these women and this conflict reveals how public it must have been.
A few years ago, a pastor called me on the Monday after Easter about a conflict in his church. Just prior to the Easter morning worship service, two women, the choir director and the Sunday School director, had a shouting match on the sanctuary platform. The choir had a special musical program for Easter so the director told choir members to leave their Sunday School classes early. The Sunday School director was incensed at the disruption in classes as teachers tried to finish their lessons on the resurrection while people were filing out of their classrooms. Anger, resentment, and pride boiled over as these two women shouted at each other about the supposed damage to both of their ministries!
Sometimes, church member have quiet resentment with fellow believers. Other times, however, it boils over into public behavior. People shout their anger, speak their frustrations, and otherwise publicize their displeasure. Conflict between church members can be very open and disruptive.
Second, committed gospel workers can have significant conflict. Paul wrote, “…help these women who have contended for the gospel at my side.” Euodia and Syntyche were not casual church attendees. They were mature believers who had worked with Paul as partners in the gospel.
One of the myths I once believed is church conflict is always caused by immature, carnal believers. That is simply not the case. No believer is exempt from creating or participating in church conflict. Sometimes, in fact, pastors, deacons, or elders cause or intensify church conflict. This means every believer, especially those who are actively involved in ministry leadership, must be aware of their potential as conflict initiators or facilitators. No one is exempt from this.
Third, the conflict between these two women had hope for resolution. Paul reminded them to “agree in the Lord.” The amount of conflict in churches shouldn’t surprise us. Given the fallen nature of humanity, it should be much worse than it is. Our ground of unity is not our relational dexterity. It is our shared relationship with Jesus Christ. Conflict resolution, while there may be many steps in between, must begin and end with this spiritual reality.
Finally, these women needed help to resolve their conflict. The leaders who received this letter from Paul were encouraged to intervene when he wrote, “I also ask you, true partner, to help these women….” Church leaders, and members, have a shared responsibility to understand conflict, address it when it happens, and facilitate appropriate resolution. While this can be an unpleasant, onerous responsibility – it is still part of our leadership responsibility in the church.
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When Conflict Comes to Church-1
August 18, 2008
In almost 30 years as a minister, I have changed my perspective on many aspects of church life. One of the most significant changes is my perspective on conflict. When I first started out in ministry, my perspective was conflict is always bad, must be avoided, is a sign of sin in a church, and is always detrimental to God’s work. What changed my mind?
First, actually studying the Bible and learning what it says about church conflict. We often assume we know what the Bible says, but when we actually study it the results are surprising. Second, experiencing some church conflict and helping many other leaders through other conflicts. While experience must be interpreted in the context of Scripture, reflecting on and learning from experience is a valid method of understanding God’s works and ways. Over the next few weeks, I will share some insights about “when conflict comes to church” based both on insights from the Bible and my experience as a leader.
My early perspective on conflict can be summarized as follows, what I call my five myths of church conflict.
Myth 1 – Churches are supposed to be one big, happy family.
When we hear the “family of God” metaphor describing the church, we often sanitize the concept. We assume the family of God is like a “Leave it to Beaver” family – well-groomed, well-dressed, and perpetually happy. But is that what your family is like? Not mine. My extended family has pedophiles, alcoholics, convicted felons, and homosexuals. We have family members on their fourth and fifth marriages. We, me included, are a motley collection of dysfunctional sinners! That is what real family is like. So, if by “family of God” you mean “blood of Jesus” relatives who find a way to love each other and stick together in spite of our dysfunction, then I agree the church is the family of God. If you are still stuck on the 1950’s sit-com model, count me out.
Myth 2 – Really good churches don’t have open conflict.
The problem with this myth is the number of really good churches in the Bible and really good churches today that have had conflict and somehow continue to be effective in ministry. Next week, we will look at some Scriptural examples. My experience is sometimes, the best churches experience conflict because they are strong churches – not the opposite.
Myth 3 – Mature, committed believers don’t have open conflict.
Wrong again! In the Bible, some of the most dynamic spiritual leaders had open, intense conflict. Again, we will look at some Scriptural examples next week. While it sometimes bothers me when prominent Christians disagree about theology, strategy, or methodology, those disagreements are inevitable (and not necessarily bad for the church or the Church).
Myth 4 – Personnel decisions at church shouldn’t be divisive.
Why single out this particular kind of decision? Because personnel decisions – like demotions, discipline, or terminations – are often the stickiest decisions for churches. Relationships are involved. Church members often confuse likeability and with leadership effectiveness and resent any forced changes in a church’s leadership structure.
Myth 5 – When church conflict is resolved properly, everyone will be satisfied.
Pastors often believe, with enough prayer and careful ministry, every church conflict can be resolved so everyone is satisfied. Not so! Sometimes, people remain frustrated – no matter how much compromise was involved in the final decision.
These myths summarize some of my previously held wrong beliefs about church conflict. Have you believed these myths or something similar? Have you changed your mind? What do you now believe? Next week, we will look at some church conflict stories in the Bible and how they refute these myths.
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Implementing Strategic Documents
August 11, 2008
Many people don’t want to participate in the process of creating strategic documents because they know what happens to them. The notebook goes on a shelf and is never seen again! That is a poor use of time and a tragic misuse of a strategic planning process. When the core commitments (mission, vision, and values) are concluded, they are ready to inform developing long and short range plans (including goals, objectives, task assignments, and budget allocations).
Here are some suggestions to help you implement your newly developed strategic documents and use them appropriately throughout your organization.
Live your mission, vision, and values. As the leader, you personify your church or organization. You will never be able to lead others to embrace what you don’t model. It is essential your time and money be invested in living your mission, accomplishing your vision, and modeling your values. Doing his means your schedule, priorities, money, and ministry involvement reflects your engagement with the core commitments you have corporately adopted.
For me, for example, this means giving generously to the seminary to model sacrifice and to empower me to ask others to support us financially. It also means being actively involved in evangelizing and discipling young men through my involvement with professional baseball. These are two examples of lifestyle choices that correlate to the seminary’s mission and vision. A leader must set the pace in shaping his or her lifestyle to reflect a passionate, sustained commitment to his or her organization’s mission, vision, and values.
Teach the mission, vision, and values (over and over again). After working through this process, you err if you believe everyone in your organization has affirmed or internalized your mission, vision, and values. You must teach, teach, and re-teach to communicate these core commitments over and over again.
As you have new members (in a church) or new employees (in a school or other organization), you will need to teach them these same things. This means you need a continuing strategy for communicating mission, vision, and values. This process never ends. As a pastor, for example, I taught the mission, vision, and values in our new members’ class at least 10 times per year for six years! That may sound boring but the power generated by keeping your entire church focused on the same core commitments was worth the investment.
Preach or speak about your mission, vision, and values often. This can take many forms depending the setting. Certainly, it does not mean you preach on your church’s mission, vision, and values every Sunday. But it does mean you preach on them from time to time. My pattern was to preach one message at the beginning of each year on these core commitments and then to mention them occasionally as sermon illustrations throughout the year.
In an organization with more employees and less members (compared to a church), the pattern will be different. Speaking to all employees is not that common so, when it happens, the message is perceived to be significant. Make sure you speak about your mission, vision, and values! Continue to hammer on these key themes. And, use other communication avenues to continually remind your employees of these key issues. Some CEOs of Christian organizations prefer title CVO (chief vision officer) to remind them of their primary responsibility of keeping their organization on mission and pursuing the stated vision.
Use the documents as a planning tool. Finally, use the documents! Bring your mission, vision, and values statements to every key meeting. Make sure your leaders have these documents and know how to use them in shaping goals, objectives, task assignments, and budget allocations.
One of my happiest memories as a pastor relates to training a budget committee. After spending about an hour training them how to create a church budget, the chairman said, “I thought it would be easier. I thought we would ask program leaders for budget requests, compare them to our mission and vision, and put the ones that contributed to its accomplishment in the budget.” He summarized a much better process in 30 seconds than I had taught in one hour. We used his process, created a budget that seemed far too large to be reasonably met by the church, and saw giving increase dramatically to meet it because the people saw its direct connection to our mission and vision. That was a good day of pastoral ministry!
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The Process for Creating Stragegic Documents
August 4, 2008
Developing strategic documents (mission, vision, and values) requires a commitment to engage your followers in a process of dialogue and discovery. It can be a ponderous process. It may involve some conflict. In fact, healthy dialogue with spirited disagreement can be a very positive step in this process. When people are engaged emotionally, that often means they have a commitment to the cause or organization. When mission, vision, and values are finally determined, they will take ownership and sacrifice to accomplish common dreams.
Here are some suggestions for engaging your followers in this process.
Dream about the possibilities. Many leaders start the vision process by announcing the vision. Not a good plan! It is far better to dream out loud about what can happen and get your followers to do the same with you. There are several questions you can use to get this dream process started. These include:
“If you had unlimited influence, time, money, and personnel, what would you have our church or organization do with it?”
“If the Great Commission were really fulfilled through us, what would it look like?”
“If our organization had never existed, and you were asked to design it from scratch, what would it look like?”
“When we celebrate our 10th (or 20th or whatever) anniversary, what do you envision we will be like?”
Talk about the possibilities. As people dream, they need to express their thoughts. Get them together to talk about what might happen and what the future might be like. Do this formally and informally. “Formally” means you organize discussion groups to facilitate these conversations, create ways for people to talk with one another, and perhaps ask for written responses you publish and distribute to all who are involved in the conversation. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we are in the middle of this process now at Golden Gate. We are using all these methods to facilitate formal conversations about our future.
You can also, as a leader, initiate informal conversations about the future – particularly with your key leaders. It is important while you are in more relaxed settings – while driving, drinking coffee, or watching a ball game – to have these same conversations. Sometimes, in my experience, an unguarded comment in more a relaxed setting reveals a person’s true dreams, hopes, feelings, and fears about the future. Listen formally and informally to your followers’ input about mission, vision, and values.
Write some possibilities. There is not good writing, only good rewriting. So, don’t be discouraged if your first attempts to put your organization’s mission, vision, and values in print are not immediately embraced. As you write, however, you will crystallize your thoughts (and those of others who are participating in the process). This is vital for three reasons. First, you will struggle to write what you really mean. Second, you will be amazed by what others read into what you have written. And third, you will eventually write what you really mean!
Another reason writing this document carefully is important is it becomes a permanent record. This creates accountability and demands commitment. A written record with a decadal commitment to its fulfillment can be an imposing goal. But it is worth it as you see the positive results of passionate, sustained commitment from your followers.
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