Handling Conflict

If this is your first visit to this "book blog" on Dennis Bickers' The Healthy Small Church, welcome! Each week you'll find a posting that intends to stimulate thought and discussion.  You're welcome to join in at any time.  This week's comments are on chapter 7, "The Ability to Handle Conflict."

To me, the key thought is, "Healthy Churches are able to normalize conflict and address it in positive ways."  A necessary first step toward this facet of health is knowing your own natural bent when faced with conflict. Mine is avoidance.  That was confirmed again by the survey I've linked you to below.  The upside to that tendency is that I usually don't stir up unnecessary conflict.  I tend to bring stability to organizations rather than unrest.  But I also like to see organizations change and grow and become what God has called them to be.  I imagine you can see the built in personal tension.  Change (see last week's posting) brings conflict, and even though I'd like to avoid it, I can't.  We who tend to avoid conflict and are in leadership positions have the opportunity to allow God to stretch us and to rely on him for grace and strength.  Most of us who lean naturally toward the "cult of harmony" (p. 67) have learned along the way that that sweeping conflict under the rug only results in monstrous dust bunnies coming out the other side.

Normalizing conflict means realizing that conflict is normal.  People and groups of people, even when they have the same basic convictions, still don't see eye to eye.  Not everyone in our churches is particularly likeable (present readers excepted, of course).  The problem is not the presence of conflict, it's the unhealthy ways we deal with conflict.  We can keep conflict at a lower level by working smarter, and by not hanging on so tightly to our own plans and ways of doing things. Normalizing conflict means knowing our people and anticipating how they will respond as we make our ministry plans.  It means getting key people (even the natural resistors if possible) on board and owning the new plans before they are implemented.  Normalizing conflict means recognizing it early and dealing with it before it escalates.  Normalizing conflict means we appreciate each other's differences and see them as part of the refining process God uses for our personal and corporate growth.  A good sense of humor - being able to laugh easiy and well together - goes a long way in keeping conflict from becoming cancerous.  A key for me as a pastor in a small church setting was to create and work out of an atmosphere of mutual trust and love.  That's something earned and cultivated over time.  Ironically, it makes handling conflict both easier and harder.  It's easier to work through differences and, when needed, to humbly repent when there's mutual respect and trust.  It's harder because conflict hurts more when it's with people you love.  It's the family dynamic of the smaller congregation at work.

For your reflection and comment --
For a brief and interesting self diagnosis of your preferred conflict management style, click here.  What are the strengths and weaknesses of your own preferred style?

Dennis Bickers has some excellent "checkup" questions at the end of the book (p. 135).  Try working them through with your leaders:

• How does your church handle conflict?
• Has your church ever split over an issue?  What was the issue?  Could the split have been avoided?
• Does your church have controllers who are keeping the church from moving forward?

If you're in the midst of conflict, you may want to add these two questions to your discussion (pp. 70-71 may be of help):

• What are some healthy ways forward in our current conflict?  Could a third party be of help?
• What would it take to "normalize" conflict in our congregation?

If you're contemplating or in the midst of making a significant change, it would be helpful to ask some "navigation" questions (p. 63):

• What potential obstacles/conflicts should we be expecting?
• What are some healthy ways through those obstacles/conflicts?

If you've found some ways to normalize conflict in your ministry, click "comments" and let us know about them.