08 Jul Dealing with Church Conflict

Ron Ramsey: One common problem I’ve seen in our churches involves conflict resolution. They’re not good at dealing with conflict.

Pat Jones: We have hammered the Matthew 18 principles of conflict resolution. Sinful conflict is a major hindrance in our churches. We’ve seen and experienced that for years. Ron and I committed, at the beginning, to address sinful situations. In churches, how you disagree and address your grievances is vital.

Ron: I think you manage conflict, not resolve it. If it resolves, that’s good. But sometimes you can’t resolve it, yet can manage it so it doesn’t hinder what God wants to do in that place. Some conflict is just difference of opinion. Some conflicts are more substantive, issues between sin and righteousness. You would like to think that people not approaching it from a righteousness standpoint would be conflicted by the Spirit, but sometimes they hang in there, and it becomes a power struggle.

Too often, it’s a matter of power, of who gets to call the shots. People want to sit in the big seat and make decisions. Sometimes this stems from seeing pastors come and go, come and go. They figure the current pastor will only be there for a while, so they’ll run the church how they want. The pastor will just be a chaplain. We’ve tried to break up some of that thought. People forget that there is only one power source, one power seat, and that’s the seat that Christ sits in, and we’re all servants of him.

Pat: We have helped address the alligators, and I’m not afraid of addressing them. But we do that by opening up the scriptures and saying, “This is how God says it should be handled.” I don’t say you must agree with me, but here is what the Bible says about how you disagree with me. Here’s what Titus says about divisive people. You’re not battling me; you’re battling a scriptural truth.