Nothing in this lost world bears the impress of the Son of God so surely as forgiveness.
Alice Carey1
Many conflicts, from the sublime to the petty, fall under the category of interpersonal. At times pastors must referee parties disputing issues of significance for the entire congregation. One pastor described his involvement this way:
“Right now one of the elders, a powerful man, is angry about the way one of our young people dresses for Communion. The elder is angry almost to the point of leaving. Since we serve Communion every week, it is not just an occasional problem. The boy in question has been on the verge of rebellion for a couple of years. His parents are not pleased with some of his friends. They wish he would spend more time with the church youth group.
“One expression of his rebellion is his dress — jeans, T-shirt, long hair. I think the boy, by dressing the way he does, is asking the church, ‘Am I acceptable to you, or do you want to put me in a tight box?’ In my judgment, it is more important for us to say, ‘Yes, you are acceptable,’ than to enforce a tight dress code. That’s the position I have taken.
“That position has created some fallout. This elder has had things pretty much his way for a long time. He may leave. I’ve taken steps to prevent that. I went to the father of the boy and said, ‘Here’s the situation, and this is the stand I’ve taken. Be aware that it is creating some hard feelings.’ It’s a way of asking him, when he hears his son criticized, to not lash out or overreact.
“I also had lunch with the elder. I told him this was the stand I’m taking because I want the church to send a good message to all the kids. I told him I knew he didn’t agree with my decision. Then I said, ‘Alex, what do you think God wants you to do in this situation?’
“I have also talked to the boy. I want him to know that although we are accepting him, his dress is the cause of controversy. His reaction is, ‘This is the way kids dress. It’s not immoral.’ He’s correct. But he’s also immature. If he were twenty-eight, I wouldn’t put up with it. But he’s not.
“I don’t know where this will end. The last couple of times he was served Communion, he wore a shirt with a collar. So it’s improving. Had we cut him off, would he be growing?
“This is a difficult decision, the kind I hate most — calling people to responsibility. It’s as if I’m pitting the comfort of one member against the comfort of another. How do you weigh something like that?”
Other times, pastors face interpersonal issues that can only be described as childish. One survey respondent wrote about a diaper controversy. A nursery worker refused to change a baby’s diaper because the woman who brought the baby was not the mother — only a baby sitter. The worker felt a baby sitter should not bring a child to a church service and have someone else do her baby-sitting. Therefore, the worker refused to change the diaper.
The nursery supervisor disagreed and asked the worker to change the diaper. A fight ensued. They took the issue to the pastor, undoubtedly because his seminary training qualified him to arbitrate diaper controversies. When he decided in favor of the nursery supervisor, the furious nursery worker and her entire family, including two married daughters, left the church.
Petty does not mean less intense. Interpersonal conflicts can escalate no matter what the issue, pulling the leader’s emotions into the mix.
One pastor remembers: “My toughest decision was confronting the music coordinator and his wife for not preparing Easter service music — after both of them had been informed. Their excuse? My wife had told them, but they wanted to hear it from me. And they never asked me. Since their son was a board member, this dispute easily could have cost me my job.”
Another pastor wrote: “I recommended the church help a family pay for a funeral. This infuriated another family. They began a series of accusations regarding my competency and criticized me publicly. They called for my resignation. After a month or so I was forced to leave.”
Because of their vitriolic nature, interpersonal conflicts require early pastoral action. One of the strongest correlations the survey revealed: the more interpersonal decisions a pastor makes, the more likely he or she is to remain at a church. Pastors who accurately identify the interpersonal base of problems, even when they are camouflaged by theological and institutional rationales, deal with risky situations most successfully (see Chart 4).
They not only spot the interpersonal dimensions, they confront them — head on and early. Writes one pastor: “Lately we’ve had a major lack of love here — biting comments, parking lot meetings, lost tempers at board meetings. I’ve been here nine years and have repeatedly taught love, reconciliation, and working out problems together. A few have heard, but most still want to whisper complaints and criticisms to committees while remaining safely anonymous. I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t put my sermons into practice; also, when I put off confronting problems, I usually suffer mild depression. So I confronted the people involved, and already a great deal of healing has taken place.”
Interpersonal conflict can be most destructive — and most surprising, since the precipitating issues can range so widely.
That’s why it is crucial to correctly identify an interpersonal conflict. Questions to help make that identification:
1. Are you certain there is no real theological issue at stake? The questions in chapter 5 help answer this.
2. Eliminate the institutional possibility by asking, “What is the worst that could happen if this problem would escalate drastically?” If the answer is “One of the parties might leave the church (even taking a few others with them), yet the church would probably recover its health rather quickly,” then the issue is most likely interpersonal. This doesn’t mean the problem is any less important than a theological or institutional one. It simply means we deal with it in a different way.
3. Can I go the extra mile (in counseling time and tolerating inappropriate behavior) with these people without endangering the church as a whole?
4. What is my motivation in giving extra time and tolerance to this person or persons? Ask this question to make sure your involvement isn’t fueled by inappropriate personal concerns.
In a sense, interpersonal problems move beyond both theological and institutional ones. They are truly matters of pastoral care. Apollodorus was a loyal disciple of Socrates. When Socrates ran afoul of the Athenian government and was sentenced to death on trumped-up charges, Apollodorus was angry. He said to Socrates, “What hurts me most is seeing you unjustly put to death.”
Socrates answered, “Would you rather see me justly than unjustly put to death, my friend?”
Interpersonal problems in the church are something like that. It makes little difference if the issue is just or unjust, right or wrong. The heart of the problem is brothers and sisters in Christ are in conflict and pain. Our vocation demands we help them.
The Principle: The Law of Mutual Benefit
The key to resolving interpersonal disputes is to look for a win/win solution. “I had to decide how to deal with the trustee chairman,” recalls one pastor who did this. “He had expressed total opposition to fulfilling our church’s financial obligation to the denomination. I had two choices: one, remove him from the board, or two, reorganize the board so he would not be involved in this decision. I chose number two, which led to a little conflict with him. In the long run, however, he saw the wisdom of what I did. He is now contributing to the church in his area of strength, and others are making the decisions for which he didn’t show much talent.”
To find the win/win situation demands creativity. Another pastor struggled with what to do with a Sunday school teacher with skewed doctrine: “His teaching was not entirely kosher. The class recognized that and asked me to stop him from teaching. I decided his slightly off-base teaching was the result of inexperience, not intentional error, and I thought he had good potential as a Bible teacher. I asked the class to stick with him while we paid for him to take a Bible correspondence course. Some class members left, but this teacher’s skills grew by leaps and bounds, and most who left have returned.”
Interpersonal disputes are solved neither by referring to an absolute standard of right and wrong nor by measuring the results against the effectiveness of the majority. When two people (or groups) are angry with one another in an interpersonal conflict, there is often no principle of right and wrong to follow. And just because some people have a larger family or following doesn’t mean they should be given the benefit of the doubt.
The arbiter’s role is to help the combatants see the value of making peace and then to discover a mutually beneficial resolution. This indeed is the nitty-gritty of church leadership. It’s the apostle Paul pleading with Euodia and Syntyche to “agree with each other in the Lord” (Phil. 4:2).
Perhaps the best analogy is a parent trying to settle a dispute between two children over a toy. Neither child has any absolute right to the toy. It doesn’t really make a difference to the parent (or even the children, in the long run) which one has it. But they have locked horns and are incapable of resolving the problem by themselves. The parent searches for the solution that will bring both a measure of happiness so the family can get on with things.
Some pastors have a knack for peacemaking. They intuitively sense others’ feelings and the steps needed to negotiate a cease-fire. For the rest of us, it is helpful to keep in mind the major principle of interpersonal negotiations.
The Motivation: The Law of Forgiveness
Counselors are aware of the importance of acceptance in dealing with counselees. Little progress is made until the counselee realizes the counselor accepts him or her as a person.
Similarly, little happens to heal the breach between two warring factions until each can accept the other, then truly forgive the offenders for real or perceived wrongs.
The pastor’s role is not so much to dispense forgiveness in a priestly fashion as to create an atmosphere in which forgiveness can take place. To create a forgiving atmosphere, the pastor must be a forgiving person and have preached forgiveness regularly. Pastors are seen as agents of forgiveness. They are considered both forgivers themselves and persons qualified to promote forgiveness among others.
As catalysts of forgiveness, they need not fear compromising themselves or their church. Acts of forgiveness do not diminish the theological integrity of a church nor its institutional strength. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”2
This is not a simple task. Forgiveness is foreign to human temperament, particularly to our modern temperament. We are taught to look out for number one, that turning the other cheek is foolish. In some sense modern society is like cultures where the concept of forgiveness doesn’t exist. Working among the Chin tribe of Burma, early missionary linguists found the concept of forgiveness untranslatable into the language. When the missionaries explained the biblical concept and asked what word would correspond, the Chin replied, “We never do that to one who wrongs us.” The missionaries eventually settled for a word that means “come face to face with” and then had to build on that concept the idea of truly forgiving a wrong.3
But just because the concept is foreign to our ears does not mean it cannot be accomplished. Pastors who intervene effectively can help bring about true forgiveness. David Seamands in his book Healing for Damaged Emotions offers five tests for forgiveness: First, can you thank God for the lessons learned in pain? Second, can you talk about the event without anger or feelings of revenge? Third, have you accepted your part of the blame for what happened? Fourth, can you revisit the scene without a negative reaction? Fifth, can you reward those who hurt you?4
These five tests represent the pastor’s goal when intervening in interpersonal difficulties in the church. The goal is well worth the risk.
Dangers
Confusing the interpersonal with the theological. It is easy to confuse an interpersonal dispute with a theological one. We sometimes hope to find theology in an interpersonal conflict, because it’s far easier to apply “law” than to reach a solution of mutual benefit. Law is clean and precise. Law does not demand the sticky problems of emotional involvement. Too rigid an application of the ethical may develop a few saints, but it leaves far more broken Christians along the way. Superimposing a theological answer on a problem that is at heart interpersonal may achieve a temporary truce, but the emotional rebellion will continue underground and eventually erupt in full-scale war.
For errors of doctrine, two steps are required:
1. Identify the error and point out the negative consequences;
2. Bring about reconciliation with God through the propositional application of Scripture.
For personal offenses, however, a three-step process is called for:
1. Identify the hurt and acknowledge the pain;
2. Forgive the offending party;
3. Bring about reconciliation through a face-to-face meeting between the two offended parties.
At times, people stop at step 2, saying they “forgive” the other person but not attempting true reconciliation. But an equal temptation for pastors is to bypass the second step, forgiveness, in the pell-mell race to reconciliation. Many a pastor, following the theological model, has brought together two warring factions before the groundwork of forgiveness was laid. The result is usually an emotional explosion.5
Confusing the interpersonal with the institutional. It is easier to say “This problem is a threat to our institution!” than to deal with the dynamics of interpersonal conflict. The first is the role of the professional manager, the second the role of the wounded healer.
One survey respondent began an anecdote by saying, “The pastor’s job is doing what’s best for the church.” As a partial job description, that’s correct; as the sum total, it falls far short. The pastor’s job is manifold: teaching the gospel, doing what is best for the church, doing what is best for the individuals within the church, etc. If the second part is confused with the third, the result is a business/management outlook that rarely solves interpersonal problems.
It’s not unusual for an interpersonal issue to be confused with an institutional one. Say a board chairman proposes a new program at a board meeting. Another member may strongly object, not so much because he doesn’t like the idea, but because he’s upset the chairman didn’t consult him. The conflict is interpersonal — a perceived snub by the chairman — but the chairman doesn’t realize it because the personal grievance is masked by concern for the institution: “But we’ve never done it that way before.” This clinging to church tradition may or may not be what’s best for the church, but no amount of clear-headed reasoning by the chairman will remove the objection. Interpersonal reconciliation is what’s needed. If the board member objects to the chairman’s ideas often enough, the chairman would be wise to first forgive him, and then sit down with him and explore what personal hurts may be driving the constant objections.
Confusing the interpersonal with the personal. It’s tempting to take on the emotional burden of church members’ arguments. That’s understandable; generally pastors are caring people, sensitive to hurts in others. The danger arises when pastors make others’ hurts their own; they sacrifice themselves (and unfortunately sometimes their families) to situations where they are supposed to be healers, not co-patients.
One pastor was counseling a woman whose husband constantly criticized her. He wanted the husband to come to a session so they could work through the issue, but he realized that deep down he just wanted to chew out the husband for being so cold and unfeeling. He had always liked the woman and found her attractive, so he had assumed her hurts. The pastor wisely waited several weeks before scheduling the session — until he could approach the situation more objectively.
An oxymoron, “caring objectivity,” is called for to adequately deal with interpersonal conflict in the congregation.
Conclusion
J. I. Packer, in his classic work Knowing God, summed up the attitude of the pastor dealing with interpersonal risk: “You are called to be a meek man not always standing up for your rights nor concerned to get your own back or troubled in your heart by ill treatment and personal slights. (Though if you are normally sensitive, these things are bound to hurt you at the top level of consciousness.) You are simply to commit your cause to God and leave it to Him to vindicate you if and when He sees fit. Your attitude toward your fellow men, good and bad, nice and nasty, Christian and unbeliever, is to be that of the good Samaritan toward the Jew in the gutter: Your eyes must be open to see others’ needs, both spiritual and material; your heart must be ready to care for needy souls when you find them; your mind must be alert to plan out the best way to help them; and your will must be set against the trick that we are all so good at — passing the buck, going by on the other side, and contracting out of situations of need where sacrificial help is called for.”6
I don’t believe I’ve read a better description of what can happen when that attitude is brought to situations involving people at odds in the church than this account from Jamie Buckingham’s book Coping with Criticism:
“Several years ago I led an interdenominational conference for missionaries in Thailand. It was the first time the various Protestant and evangelical missionaries had ever come together with Roman Catholic priests and nuns for a teaching retreat. The first day was tense as some of the evangelicals were forced to interface with the Roman Catholics. However, by the end of the second day the atmosphere had cleared and it seemed the groups were actually going to be able to flow together in unity.
“The final afternoon, meeting in a large screened pavilion overlooking the gulf, I spoke on forgiveness. At the close of my teaching session, even before I had left the speaker’s stand, a Roman Catholic nun stepped forward from the group. She was French and had been a missionary to the Thai people for a number of years. She knelt before me and crossed herself.
“‘For many years I have held deep grudges against the Protestants who came in to Thailand and built on the foundations built by the Catholic Church. I have been highly critical, and I need forgiveness. Will you pray for me?’ I started to respond, for it was the very subject I had been teaching about. But as I stepped forward to pray for her, I felt checked. I stepped back and heard myself saying, ‘No, sister, I am not the one to pray for you. You have made your confession and now you are absolved from your sin. I want to ask those here who have felt resentment or bitterness toward you to come and pray for you. In so doing, they will receive forgiveness themselves.’
“I stepped to one side and left her kneeling on the concrete floor of the screened pavilion where we were meeting. At once several people got to their feet and came forward. Then several others. In all there were almost a dozen men and women who stood around the kneeling nun. It was a touching moment. There were very few dry eyes in the room.”7
Forgiveness does indeed solve interpersonal problems. It only takes people willing to risk themselves, their feelings, and their time in order to see that it happens.
Matthew 5:9. As we noted in our examination of Matthew 18 (see chapter 4), Jesus taught that the place to start with an angry disciple was not hard nosed application of law but a soothing dose of loving-kindness. The major roadblocks to forgiveness usually turn out to be ego and pride. As Chrysostom noted four hundred years after Christ, if you wish your wife to love you as the church loves Christ, “then take care of her as Christ did of the church. If you see her despising you, scorning you, and treating you with contempt, you can win her love by spending care on her. No bonds are more despotic than these.”John Chrysostom, “Homilies on Colossians (II),” Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers XIII (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1979), 268.
Franklin O. Nelson, former missionary to Burma. Interview with author, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August, 1984.
David Seamands, Healing for Damaged Emotions (Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1981).
Doris Donnelly, “The Human Side of Forgiveness and What It Tells Us about How God Forgives,” New Catholic World (January/February 1984): 29.
J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1973), 245.
Jamie Buckingham, Coping With Criticism (South Plainfield, New Jersey: Bridge Publishing Company, 1978).
Copyright ©1987 by Christianity Today
