Baaad move.
Hoping to clarify issues in the strife-torn church, a visiting pastor, representing the conference, asked members of the congregation to seat themselves in three groups, indicating whether they preferred a traditional style of worship, a charismatic style of worship, or whether they were comfortable with both.
They followed orders. Looking suspiciously at one another from their new, clearly divided camps, their differences only crystallized. An awkward silence filled the room.
“Well, now we know where we stand,” the speaker said. After a few more words that did nothing to ease the tension, the speaker dismissed the now-skittish congregation.
The simmering conflict at Hidden Valley Church was now anything but hidden.
The Fault Line
Hidden Valley Church (in this article, names have been changed) prides itself in being the oldest church of its denomination in the state-more than 100 years old. Born and raised on nearby farms, many of its sixty members have never known any other church home. Roots grow deep in Hidden Valley, and change comes slowly for steadfast prairie farmers.
When Gary Fielding arrived as pastor, the congregation welcomed him. He, too, had been raised on a farm.
Young and enthusiastic, Gary set out to move the congregation into a more contemporary style. He talked about “reaching out beyond the church walls.” Into the low-key and predictable worship style, Gary introduced celebration and spontaneity. To its staid church council structure, Gary dreamed of adding an elder team-a small group of leaders with whom he could openly share his vision and concerns for the church, and who would prayerfully share with him the pastoral care of the congregation.
After the honeymoon year, division surfaced. Some members found the changes exciting-“At last, signs of new life!” Others found the changes frightening.
When, during a song, a half-dozen worshipers raised their hands in praises a half-dozen others glared at them. When a few responded eagerly to Gary’s suggestion of starting small groups, others countered with “We’re too small for small groups” and “We like the church the way it is.”
One Sunday, Gary invited those who wanted to recommit their lives to Christ to walk to the front of the church. One or two responded. But that week Gary got a phone call from a member who said, “I wasn’t there Sunday, but people are upset. Do you know what they’re saying? They told me it was a ‘pew-hopping, rolling-in-the-aisle fiasco.’ They said if they wanted a holy-roller service, they would’ve gone to one of those churches long ago.”
In the following months, hostilities intensified. An elder board was established, but it, too, became divided and eventually a nonfunctioning body. Church committee meetings became tense. Trust evaporated as people seemed to choose to misunderstand each other.
One Sunday, Gary mentioned in a sermon that “being Mennonite is not going to save you.”
Before he left that afternoon, a woman confronted him, her voice shaking with anger: “I resent your attacking our denomination. You’re just trying to get this church to leave the conference. But we’re not going to let you!”
Gary tried to assure her he was not attacking the denomination, that she had misinterpreted his words. But she was unconvinced.
How can people take one word, twist it, and use it as a weapon? Gary thought.
The fighting went on for three years with no end in sight. Church visitors sensed the tension and didn’t return.
A Call for Help
While most churches might have split or even dissolved by this point, the tenacious folk of Hidden Valley held their ground. They had outlasted other pastors, and they figured it was only a matter of time before Gary left and things could return to normal. And while other pastors might have bolted for greener pastures, Gary prayerfully considered other options but kept saying no.
The stress took its toll on Gary and his wife, Helen. Constantly tense, wondering where the next conflict would erupt, their family relationships and health were suffering. Something, they knew, had to change.
Then, a glimmer of hope. When the church council considered speakers for their annual fall meeting, the council chairman suggested, “How about bringing in someone to speak on conflict?”
“I have no interest in repeating the experience of our last two evaluations,” Gary had answered. “But if you want to bring in someone who will not only identify problems, but who will have the guts to work them through with us, I’m with you.”
The council was interested but didn’t know whom to invite. Gary told them about a ministry offered through the Mennonite Renewal Services. An experienced team in resolving church conflict would come in, assess the situation, then guide the congregation through a process toward resolution.
Gary had often dreamed of bringing in such a team, but he feared that coming from him, the suggestion would never fly. Only the council chairman’s suggestion could open the door. It did.
With the board’s go-ahead, Gary called MRS, and was put in touch with Virgil Vogt, a pastor from out of state, who was experienced in helping mediate church conflicts. After talking with the church chairman and Gary, Virgil agreed to emcee the conflict resolution process.
Though each church conflict is different, many aspects of the resolution process are similar. Here are the steps the team took to restore unity at Hidden Valley Church.
Locate the Hot Spots
Reconciliation teams address a wide range of issues-clarifying the roles of men and women in the church, finding creative facilities solutions, agreeing on the place of spiritual gifts in worship. Virgil’s first task, then, when he met with Hidden Valley’s church council in July, was to determine the major areas of conflict.
To accomplish this, Virgil met with the whole council his first evening there. The next day he met with each council member individually. He listened to the differences of opinion on worship styles, decision making, and traditional Mennonite practices.
He reported to the full council the second evening. He identified two underlying needs: (1) the healing of relationships, and (2) the restructuring of leadership. It was important, Virgil advised, to work on both areas together; working on only one would hinder long-term progress in both.
Agreeing on a Process
Drawing on his experience, Virgil recommended two visits by a reconciliation team, each for three days. The first would focus primarily on reconciliation; the second on restructuring. Team members would follow up as needed for up to a year. To Gary’s surprise, the council approved the proposal unanimously.
As Virgil left Hidden Valley for Illinois, his parting words to Gary were, “Hang in there. We’re going to see this through.” Those encouraging words coupled with the council’s unanimous vote convinced Gary that God was at work to bring healing to Hidden Valley. He knew then he would be staying. As he told Helen one night, “I don’t want to miss what God might have for me in this pain.”
Next, the council presented their proposal to the whole congregation. Not everyone shared the council’s enthusiasm.
“We’re spiritual enough to handle these problems ourselves,” some said. “How can these guys help us when they don’t even know us?”
Perhaps the strongest objection was directed at allowing outsiders to “affirm or appoint elders as discerned and directed by the Lord”-part of the council’s proposal-without specifying what voice the congregation would have in the process.
But in the end, everyone knew that three years of trying to “do it themselves” had not brought healing. And the confidence the council had developed in Virgil during their July meeting outweighed their fears. The congregation decided to proceed with at least the first team visit scheduled for late September.
Recruiting the Right Team
Perhaps no other factor is more crucial than the composition of the team. The strongest team members are people with considerable church experience-either as pastors or as members of elder teams-whose churches have been through the fire and emerged refined and ready to move on.
The team leader, whose responsibilities include assembling the team, can be the district superintendent, someone chosen by the superintendent, or, as in Hidden Valley’s case, a person chosen by the local church based on the recommendation of others.
Hidden Valley specifically asked that their district superintendent be on the team. Some church members questioned Gary’s loyalty to the denomination. If they felt the visiting team was in competition with the denomination, they wouldn’t trust the team, and the process would fail.
Besides Roland Schmidt, the district superintendent, Virgil also recruited Keith Yoder and Bill Ream, two other pastors with whom he had worked on other visiting teams. Keith was from out of state, but Bill was included because he lived near Hidden Valley. The church had specifically asked that the team include a local person they could call on after the team visits.
Loading Your Greatest Weapon
In finding the right team chemistry, Bill Ream observed, you also look for “someone who can pray.”
“Listening and mediation skills are great,” he says, “and understanding personalities and social systems is also helpful. However, skills are not enough.
“I once was part of a team that had excellent skills, but we couldn’t pray together. That visit produced the least satisfactory outcome of my experience with conflict-resolution teams.” Even before the first meeting, Virgil wrote the other team members: “Let’s be sure to make this ministry a matter of fervent prayer. This may be our most important contribution.”
During the actual team visits, the group made good on their commitment to prayer.
“Hidden Valley’s problems were so complicated,” Bill recalls. “We had a clear sense that if anything was going to be resolved, it would be the Lord’s work.” On the eve of the meetings, the team gathered to pray and plan the day’s work. They spent forty-five minutes in prayer before each congregational meeting.
Roland Schmidt commented at the time, “I’ve never been part of a group that spent as much time praying for the meetings as they did planning them.”
Earn Credibility the Hard Way
Because the visits are short and most team members are unknown to the congregation, the team must move quickly to win the people’s trust. The Hidden Valley team did this in several ways.
First, the team included one insider the people already knew and trusted-their district superintendent, Roland. By publicly expressing his confidence in the other team members, Roland helped the congregation to trust them more quickly.
Second, in the public meetings, the team members made their first order of business making themselves known. When Virgil preached the first Sunday morning message, he did not address the reconciliation agenda, but rather preached a sermon intended to help the people get to know him and to encourage the congregation not to underestimate what God could do. Other members of the team also took time during the Sunday services to tell about their church experiences.
Third, the team began giving the congregation feedback about the strengths they saw in the church.
“At Hidden Valley,” Bill recalls, “we noted how the people had hung in there through problems so tough that many other churches would have already given up. We mentioned how people seemed to enjoy staying around after the services to visit with each other, which suggested that their relationships were important to them. We talked about how the church was full of gifted people who had a lot to offer.
“This kind of affirmation is crucial for building trust and laying the groundwork for healing. If people feel loved along the way, then when correction is needed, they can receive it.”
Guarding the Pastor
Gary remembers, “In previous pastoral evaluations, I was held responsible for my mistakes, but other church members were not held responsible for theirs.”
Not this time. The team defined what the congregation’s responsibility was and helped Gary become sensitive to phrases that were inflammatory to the congregation. “They were objective and evenhanded,” said Gary. “From the very beginning, I felt safe with this team.”
Because of their prior relationship, Gary trusted Virgil even before the visit. He trusted the organization he represented, and he trusted their approach to conflict resolution.
“But even if I hadn’t known Virgil before the visits,” Gary says, “he would have won my trust. He shared with me many of the mistakes he had made in his first pastorate and the lessons learned. Since this is my first pastorate, I identified with a lot of what he said. Virgil’s sharing of his own failures laid the groundwork for confronting me with my mistakes.”
Briefing the Troops, and Listening
Each team should include one or more members with the gift of teaching because biblical teaching is essential to the healing process. The first team visit-focused on reconciliation-included three sermons (Sunday, Monday night, Tuesday night) on that subject. These were both motivational and practical.
Similarly, the second team visit included two sermons on church leadership. These teachings helped everyone use more of the same language as they discussed decisions about leadership.
On the first visit following the Sunday evening sermon, Virgil explained what the team would be doing during the next two days, then extended an invitation. “If you’d like to talk to a team member, let us know. If we can’t get to everyone on this visit, we’ll get to the rest of you next time.”
Throughout the day on Monday and Tuesday, team members met with those who requested visits. They also made it a point to meet with all the leaders of the congregation, both official and unofficial, to ask them about the church: What’s working well? What are the problems?
They would conclude by saying, “These are deep issues. We’ll be thinking about the next step. We may want to meet with you and Gary together. Let’s remain open and keep talking.” They always prayed before they left.
One of the team’s most important listening times took place Tuesday afternoon.
“In every church in crisis I’ve visited,” Keith Yoder says, “the member of the congregation carrying the most hurt is the pastor’s wife.” Because of this the entire team made it a priority to spend two hours with Helen, inviting her to share the many deep hurts she could not share with anyone in the church. They concluded by praying for her.
Setting Up Peace Talks
In conversations with the team, often someone would describe an unresolved conflict. When that happened, the team member would often ask, “Would you be willing to meet with that person with a couple of us present and talk about the problem?”
If the person said something like, “Maybe sometime, but I’m not ready,” the team members wouldn’t push but would say, “Well, we’re going to be back in two months. Why don’t you think about it and see if you can prepare to do it then.” To make the meeting feel safer, they might say, “How about if we limited the session to just this one incident you’ve mentioned and left other issues for a later time?”
In this way, a host of one-on-one reconciliation meetings in the spirit of Matthew 18, what the team called “listening sessions,” were set up. In these sessions with two team members present, each party to the conflict described the most hurtful exchanges that had taken place between them, while the other person listened. This process opened the door to offering and receiving forgiveness. Several of these sessions involved the pastor as one of the parties to the conflict.
After the team left, more listening sessions took place with Bill and Roland involved as facilitators.
One member, who before the team visit wouldn’t even shake Gary’s hand, met with Gary for a listening session.
“Since then,” Gary says, “not a Sunday has gone by without him quietly coming up to shake my hand.”
Pacing the Help
From the beginning Virgil had sensed how important it was to have a waiting period between the congregation’s work on reconciliation and their tackling the issue of leadership, so the second visit had been scheduled for November.
But after the first visit, the congregation wanted more time between visits. “Let’s not have the team come back too soon,” one woman counseled at a congregational meeting in October. “Let’s take time to work on what they’ve taught us.” That seemed good to the whole group, so they rescheduled the second visit for January.
“We needed those extra two months to solidify the reconciliation started by the first visit,” Gary says. “During that time the church developed new patterns of relating. During sermons, the expressions on faces were more open. Before the visit, when I got into the pulpit, I had to bust through a wall to get to the people. After the visit, that was no longer true.”
Encouraging Group Decision-Making
Because the goal of the second visit was to restructure congregational leadership, it called for corporate decision-making not a part of the first visit.
Keith preached a message on Sunday evening on biblical leadership. Then Virgil passed out blank sheets of paper and invited the congregation to share their counsel concerning the selection of elders. From their responses, he hoped, it would be clear how best to put together a new elder team.
After the service Gary and the team met to review the responses.
“Why change the system we have now?” one said.
“Why do we even need elders anyway?” some wondered.
“Why do we have outsiders coming in to tell us what to do?” others wanted to know.
By the time the last paper was read, the air was heavy with discouragement. “This is terrible!” Virgil said. “Let’s go home.”
None of the five who reassembled Monday morning to pray and plan the day’s work was in good spirits-except for Bill. He, too, had left discouraged Sunday night, but the more he thought and prayed about what the people had written, the more excited he’d gotten.
“Last night’s responses brought out five important roadblocks to the process of restructuring leadership,” he explained.
“1. Some people are upset that they had no voice in choosing the present elders and feel that the selection process needs to be reviewed.
“2. It’s not clear to the elders or the congregation what the elders’ responsibilities are.
“3. The elders don’t feel they have the church’s support in their tasks. Some members feel the elders haven’t had a fair shot at being elders.
“4. Some people question whether the church should even have elders.
“5. Others who support the idea of elders feel this isn’t the right time.
“If these roadblocks hadn’t come out now, any one of them could have sabotaged the whole process of restructuring leadership. No plan we proposed would have worked. These responses tell us what to do next.”
As the team prayed together, it was a time of self-emptying for some. Having had positive experiences with eldership, Virgil and Gary in particular had come into the team visits expecting to confirm the present elders or appoint new ones. But in that time of listening to the Lord, they let go of those expectations. In talking to the elders, all agreed that the eldership as it existed was a dead horse, and they wanted off the board. The group united around the next steps they should recommend to the church.
In Monday evening’s congregational meeting, Bill reported his excitement about the people’s responses the previous evening. He then spoke to each of the five concerns. He emphasized the team members were not interested in imposing solutions. They heard and deeply respected what the people said, and they wanted any decisions to be truly the congregation’s decisions.
Proposing a New Treaty
After Monday’s congregational meeting, the council met with the team. The team proposed that the council accept the resignation of the elders and that the church function for a while without elders-with the pastor working closely with the council chairman. The council would then, over the coming months, clarify the roles of the pastor, council, and elders, and, when they sensed the time was right, move ahead with selecting elders.
As disappointed as Gary was about giving up his dream of an elder team, he supported the plan. The council adopted the proposal unanimously.
On Tuesday night at the last meeting of the visit, the team presented the proposal to the congregation. Once again they distributed blank papers. This time they tallied responses while the congregation waited.
To the team’s surprise, the congregation approved the proposal unanimously.
“Unlike earlier leadership decisions,” Gary says, “in this process the people felt their voices had been heard.”
Afterward one member commented, “This is the most unity our church has had on anything in a long time.”
Since the team’s visits, Hidden Valley’s climate has changed.
“I’ve really relaxed,” Gary says. “I’m more free to be who I sense God is calling me to be. I find myself wanting to love the people more, visit them, spend time with them. I’m feeling more equipped to do that because of what I learned from the team.”
Members of the congregation also give good reports. “Gary’s preaching is warmer and more compassionate,” one member says.
Although the visiting team devoted little attention to the issue of worship styles, the previous polarization on this issue has softened into flexibility. A new worship style that combines elements of both the charismatic and traditional styles is evolving, one that all seem to find comfortable and meaningful.
Since the team’s ministry, Virgil has come back to visit, and Gary has kept in touch with Bill. While Hidden Valley doesn’t anticipate needing another team visit, just knowing of their availability makes the congregation feel more secure about the new course they’ve taken.
Though Gary probably won’t stay at Hidden Valley forever, with all the healing that’s taken place, he’s in no hurry to move on.
“If more of these team visits were going on, pastors could stay in their churches longer,” he says. “They wouldn’t feel a need to leave.”
Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
