Unless an organization encourages regular and thorough internal challenge to what it has been doing, it’s unlikely to be able to keep up with the changing world.
—Speed Leas
One Presbyterian congregation of 150 members worried for years about its Sunday school program. Many members believed the church was losing potential members to two neighboring Presbyterian congregations (each of which had over a thousand members) because their church didn’t have a large enough Sunday school program to attract and hold young couples with children. They would often apologize to newcomers about the insufficient Sunday school, promising they were working on enlarging it.
When the church called a new pastor, the members began lobbying him about the need for a larger Sunday school program. So the pastor went to work.
He attended some church growth seminars, read literature, did some demographic studies, and finally came up with a plan. He presented it to the board.
“Within two miles of our church, in all directions,” he said, “we have a high proportion of young couples with small children. If we target these families with appropriate advertisements, special programs, and more contemporary worship services, I’m sure we can significantly increase our worship and Sunday school attendance.”
After explaining some of the details, the pastor invited discussion. The elders were uniformly disturbed.
“I don’t feel very comfortable ‘targeting’ one group,” said one. “It feels elitist.”
“I like the fact that our little congregation spans the generations,” said another in her early thirties. “I don’t know that I would have gotten to know some of the older members and some young people had there been more people my age.”
“Why do we have to compete with our sister churches anyway?” said another still. “If people want a huge program, let people go there. If they want a small, intimate fellowship, let them come to us.”
And on it went, until the pastor’s frustration became intolerable.
“Now wait a minute,” he interrupted. “You’ve been complaining for years about low Sunday school attendance. I present you with a plan for dealing with the problem, and you say you like things the way they are.”
There was silence.
“It seems to me we have a choice,” the pastor continued. “Either we make some changes to bring in some younger couples, or we accept the fact that we are the small, intimate, Presbyterian congregation in the area. But if we choose the latter, we need to stop complaining about our small Sunday school program.”
The elders opted for the latter, and the complaining about the Sunday school virtually ceased. In fact, they began to see some of its many advantages (lots of contact with teachers, for example, both in and out of the classroom), and began “selling” these to newcomers.
Without open conflict, though, this situation would not have worked out so well. Members would have harbored their frustration for years longer, or the pastor would have resented the board’s rejection of his proposal. In either case, people would have remained angry, and nothing would have been done to solve the problem.
It’s just one of many instances in which church conflict produces good.
The Benefits of Conflict
One of the major reasons businesses fail (or decline) is that they cannot readily adapt to their changing environments.
When an organization figures out what works, it’s tempted, naturally, to hold on to that wisdom. The problem is that what worked once may not work now: the competition has produced a better product, or financing is more difficult to obtain, or buyers are no longer interested in the product, or whatever.
Unless an organization encourages regular and thorough internal challenge to what it has been doing, it’s unlikely to keep up with the changing world. Richard Pascale, author of Managing on the Edge: How the Smartest Companies Use Conflict to Stay Ahead (Simon and Schuster, 1990), says:
“The essential activity for keeping our paradigm current is persistent questioning. I will use the term inquiry. Inquiry is the engine of vitality and self-renewal. … Contention fuels the ‘engine of inquiry’ and is a cheap and abundant fuel. Yet contention carries a stigma: managers are uncomfortable with it, and it is often misconstrued as a sign of organizational ill health. This need not be the case.”
Likewise, conflict in the church is not a sign of ill health. It produces, in fact, a great deal of good.
I’m not talking about a level of conflict in which there is bitterness and deep resentment (although even this level of conflict can turn out for good). To me, whenever people disagree, even if they disagree gracefully, that’s conflict. And conflict has a number of benefits, the more important of which are these:
• Issues get explored fully. The small Presbyterian congregation that worried about its Sunday school program needed to come to grips with its situation. It was a small congregation that was trying to compete with two sister churches, both with over a thousand members, each located not more than three miles away, in opposite directions.
The people who had joined the church had done so precisely because it wasn’t a large church. They liked the informal and intimate atmosphere. But they continued to feel intimidated by their “successful” sister churches.
When the conflict came to a head in the board meeting, they were able to see clearly the issues that troubled them. They recognized, as a result, what they really wanted in a church, and started acting accordingly.
• Better decisions are made. Without some tension, church leaders will not likely be motivated to get complete information on a problem. That lack of motivation, though, can cause its own problems.
One large congregation I worked with bought an expensive computer system. Since they bought it from a member of the congregation, whose business was computers, they bought it at a good price. Because of the man’s offer, they neither studied the computer system carefully nor looked at other systems.
However, the new computer could not handle the needs of their congregation. It could manage data bases well, but it couldn’t do the complex word processing needed for bulletins, newsletters, and other church mailings, nor could it handle the church’s financial accounting.
In order to remedy their problem, they had to buy an additional computer to do the accounting and word processing. That embarrassed the seller of the computer, the board, and the business manager. If people would have asked the tough questions at the beginning, risking the conflict that might have ensued, perhaps they could have saved themselves both money and embarrassment.
• People are more committed to decisions. Good church decisions are those in which most of the members are fully committed to the decisions. When a church board decides to build a new building, the people, not just the board, have to be interested in putting up money for the project. When a committee decides to offer a new Bible study at the church, the program is a success only when members are interested enough to actually participate.
Commitment to a decision is usually the result of (1) understanding the decision and (2) participation in the decision. If I believe that I’ve had something to do with the creation of an idea, I am more likely to help carry it out.
Paradoxically, the essence of helping with an idea can be to challenge it, adding to or subtracting from or altering significantly the proposal. Unless those hearing a proposal are able to ask questions (serious questions) and raise objections (sometimes serious objections) they are not likely to commit themselves to the decision finally made.
Fostering Healthy Conflict: Asking Questions
Someone brings a proposal up in a committee meeting, but no one criticizes it. Nobody is enthusiastic about the idea, but certainly no one is antagonistic either. Committee members say non-committal things like “I don’t think it would hurt anything” and “That certainly is an interesting concept you’ve got there, John.”
The potential for a disastrous decision is apparent. People aren’t discussing issues, they’re not exploring options, and they’re not participating in the decision.
Assuming that the proposal calls for a significant change, and therefore should engender some healthy conflict, what might be happening here?
• Members may think they know enough. I once worked with a congregation that was unhappy with the organist/choir director they had hired. The references of the person had been mixed; he apparently had had serious conflicts in previous positions.
But the committee was attracted to the candidate: he was married and had two children; he was handsome and presented himself well. He gave the impression that he had been misunderstood in the past.
So they hired him without a great deal of discussion. They hadn’t taken seriously the problems they knew about. They discussed and made a decision thinking they knew enough. Soon, however, they found he was causing staff problems at their church.
• Members may think they know what others want. Jerry Harvey, in his Abilene Paradox, tells about a family who takes a trip to Abilene, not because anyone wanted to, but because each thought the others wanted to. Everybody ended up unhappy.
In some churches, the pastor, against his better wishes, starts another morning Bible study because he thinks people want it, and people attend at first because they think the pastor wants them there. They all enter into the Bible study without realizing that no one wants to really be in this class.
But because of a mutual lack of interest, the pastor doesn’t put in his best efforts at preparing, and people don’t attend regularly. After a while the pastor resents people because they don’t come, and the people who do come are frustrated because the pastor doesn’t seem to care.
• Members may be unaware of changing conditions. George Barna talks about this phenomenon in his book. The Frog in the Kettle:
“Place a frog in boiling water, and it will jump out immediately because it can tell that it’s in a hostile environment. But place a frog in a kettle of room-temperature water, and it will stay there, content with those surroundings. Slowly, very slowly, increase the temperature of the water. This time, the frog doesn’t leap out but just stays there, unaware that the environment is changing. Continue to turn up the burner until the water is boiling. Our poor frog will be boiled, too—quite content, perhaps, but nevertheless dead.”
Sometimes church people don’t raise their voices to challenge what the church is doing or not doing because they simply don’t realize how different the church or community has become.
• Members may not see weaknesses of church traditions and myths. In one church I worked with, the women’s fellowship group insisted on meeting only on weekdays in the middle of the day. That’s the time the group had met for decades, and it continued to attract the women who had attended for years. So no one objected.
But they did notice that younger women weren’t attending. And they worried about that. But after much hand wringing, they decided that the younger generation simply wasn’t as committed to the church as they were.
The women were anxious, but they experienced no conflict because no one had made the connection that the tradition of the women’s group, which had worked well in another generation, was no longer a strength—in fact, it prevented younger women, most of whom worked during the day, from attending.
• Members may lack standards by which to evaluate. This is a problem especially when it comes to personnel issues. Congregations with no standards for their staff, their leaders, and their committees often don’t recognize when things aren’t going well—at least not until the problems become enormous.
These four reasons for lack of appropriate conflict can be dealt with simply. In the case of evaluation standards, it’s a matter of helping the congregation decide what they want the staff to do and determining how to evaluate them.
In terms of the other three, it’s a matter of helping people see that more is at stake than they think. And that means asking questions, even ones whose answers seem obvious.
My wife is one of those people who, when she takes a class, asks questions of the professor to clarify what he’s saying. Sometimes she ends up asking questions to which the answers may seem obvious, but often after class, other students will come up and say to her, “Thanks for asking that question; I didn’t know what he was saying either” or “I thought I knew what he was saying, but by your asking the question, it made things clearer.”
As a consultant, I ask churches some of the questions they should be asking themselves. And because such questions usually reveal something significant, churches begin getting the idea, and they soon get in the habit of asking questions themselves, even about things that seem obvious.
Fostering Healthy Conflict: Overcoming Denial
Actually, I think Richard Pascale understates organizations’ feelings about conflict. Especially in churches, conflict not only carries a stigma, it also scares people. It scares me, even though I’m convinced that conflict, in appropriate doses, can be of great value to a church.
This to me is the greater problem to overcome. Lack of information is one thing. Lack of courage to confront problems is another.
When I enter a church situation, I look for a number of signals—actually signs of denial—that tell me the congregation is afraid of dealing with conflict. Here are a few and how I respond to them.
• What differences? When I enter a congregation, I first gather information about the conflict that people have invited me to help with. At that point, they give me the straight story about the problems because they don’t really believe they’ll have to do anything about it—they think others in the church, those who are “wrong,” will have to make changes.
When I finally tell people what I have learned and make recommendations about how they might proceed, suddenly they can’t remember why they asked me to work there! Just when they should be getting serious about addressing the conflict, I often hear the words, “We don’t really know why we invited you. It’s really not that big of a deal.” Strange but true.
I also see it when a pastor leaves a church under adverse circumstances. At that point, some people say, “Well, that conflict is over. We’ve gotten rid of that problem!” But they are simply denying the pain and frustration of those who feel lost without a pastor or the fact that conflict still exists between members.
Sometimes churches, in an effort to deny real differences, will put problems in a different light. That happens commonly in dysfunctional families: Uncle Bill abuses alcohol, and everyone knows it, but the family continues to say things like “Uncle Bill had to go to bed early because he isn’t feeling well.”
In churches I hear things like “The Pastor has other gifts besides administration” (but underneath lies a tremendous frustration about his poor planning) or “The treasurer is just fiscally conservative” (but underneath lies a deep resentment brewing about inadequate staff salaries).
• Certain topics are off-limits. Another sign of fear of conflict is a church’s avoiding certain issues or topics.
For example, some congregations establish rules, written or not, that only the board can discuss controversial topics, like the church’s stand on divorce and remarriage, or abortion, or local politics. People are strongly encouraged (from the pulpit or church newsletter or by general consent) not to discuss such issues with other church people—for the sake of unity, for the building up of the body, for many a good purpose.
I have seen congregational meetings deliberately structured so that nothing of interest or importance comes up. And when such matters do arise, they are efficiently tabled or referred to committee: “This is really not the time or place to discuss such a complex issue.”
Such rules may have sound reasons supporting them, but when disagreements are always shunted off to small corners of the church’s life, it tells me that an unhealthy fear of conflict infects the congregation.
• Disgruntled people are encouraged to leave. Over and over, I hear a similar speech in many churches: “If you don’t like it here, there are plenty of other churches in town; consider going to one of them” or “Either get with the program or get out!”
Even when the speech is not spoken by a member of the congregation, an inner voice often tells people: “I shouldn’t make waves here. If things don’t go well for me, the best thing is to drop out.”
• A staff member’s feelings are being protected. I have worked with a number of congregations in which one problem has been the organist. Usually the person has been the church organist for many, many years. But age has caught up with the person, and everybody is painfully aware of it: her playing is too slow, she misses her cues, and her performance is excruciatingly imprecise.
But does anybody do anything about it? No. Everyone assumes it isn’t polite to give people such bad news; it would hurt their feelings terribly. So they let it go on, to the embarrassment of the congregation, pastor, visitors, leaders, and sometimes the organist herself.
One or more of these signs of denial are likely to surface just after a church has faced a serious conflict. Members often go into a type of depression, and they are nervous about “it” happening again. Church leaders seem to be extra vigilant to suppress any sign of challenge to the general sense of peace and order. People are especially wary of bringing up certain subjects.
It is difficult to deal with denial. Usually it takes someone from the outside to point out what’s going on. Such a person might be a consultant, a denominational executive, a pastor from another congregation, or an interim minister. In addition, as with all conflict, it takes a leader skilled and trained in conflict management to deal fruitfully with denial and conflict.
A technique I use when I’m in a denying church is to interview people in small groups, building an atmosphere of trust, so that people will be honest with me. Then I present my findings to the whole congregation. Talking about conflict in public often breaks through the strong denial patterns, which usually make conflict more difficult than it needs to be.
If the denial centers around written or unwritten rules, I encourage people to break the rules! I invite members to talk about their concerns. I help them know what others in the congregation are struggling with. I design meetings so that people are encouraged to participate, and when they do, I make sure their ideas are taken seriously.
Encouraging Good Conflict
When healthy conflict is not present, it is often due to a lack of information or the presence of fear, among other things. But in the ongoing life of a congregation, low-level conflict can be encouraged in a number of simple ways:
• Preach about low-level conflict. I encourage pastors to mention in sermons that by articulating differences in committees and groups, congregations can grow and mature.
• Praise disagreement. When people disagree with you or others in the congregation, affirm them for raising their concerns. Let them know that differences are appreciated, and that, in the long mn, such disagreement enhances the church’s life.
• Mix up committees. Encourage chairpersons to put people with different perspectives on their committees. Then encourage them to allow those differences to emerge in discussion so that the committee can come to stronger decisions.
• Put newcomers on leadership boards. Newcomers see things differently than long-standing members. What old timers have taken for granted, they will question. What the board sees as satisfactory, they will wish was better. A newcomer’s fresh perspective will likely generate conflict, although newcomers, reticent as they are, will need to be encouraged to speak out.
• Set standards for the work of the church. Once a year, have committees and boards look at what has happened in the church and ask “How did we do?” and “What can we do better?” If not the first year, certainly by the second and third, members will start getting the idea that disagreement and challenge is genuinely being sought.
• Make clear the rules of healthy conflict. Often congregations are worried that low-level conflict will escalate and become destructive. That fear and possibility can be alleviated if at least three rules of conflict are mentioned from time to time:
—No hitting!
—No personal attacks.
—No talking about people behind their backs.
In encouraging conflict, of course, the pastor has to be prepared to handle it appropriately. That takes training and practice. But it is not beyond the abilities of those who work with people day in and day out.
It Works
Saint Paul’s, a church in a New York City suburb, had conducted a thorough, nationwide search and eventually called Dennis Roberts as their new pastor. The search committee had represented all voices in the church, including the trustees (the financial board) and the session (the administrative board), which had for a few years been in conflict. The committee, however, had done such a thorough and careful job, that in the end, the leadership of the church was unanimous about the selection.
Pastor Roberts had met with a sub-committee of the search committee (made up of three men, one of whom was an active trustee at that time) to discuss his salary, perquisites, housing, and moving costs. They easily came to an agreement, and a contract was drawn up.
As part of the negotiations. Pastor Roberts had asked if, instead of using the church’s parsonage, he could purchase his own home. He had owned his home in the Midwest, from where he had come, and he knew he would make a tidy sum in capital gains when he sold it. He thought real estate a good, safe place to invest his money, and he liked owning his own home.
The sub-committee assured him this would be no problem. Another of the pastoral staff could live in the parsonage, or the church could rent it, or perhaps even sell it to Roberts, if he decided he liked the house. In any case, they suggested Roberts first move into the parsonage and live there while he and the church explored various alternatives for his housing. Pastor Roberts agreed with this plan, understanding that the details would be worked out later.
Roberts’s first year at Saint Paul’s was a smash hit. He hired a music director, who within six months increased the choir from fourteen to thirty. The church also called an associate who was an excellent pastor and administrator.
Roberts averaged seventy people in his Sunday Bible class, and members were astounded that he could speak knowledgeably about the Bible and Israel for forty-five minutes without a note before him. In addition, attendance was up at both of the services on Sunday, and a substantial number of new, young families joined the church. Most people gave the credit for all this to Pastor Roberts.
About nine months after he arrived, Roberts became increasingly concerned about his living arrangements. Soon he would owe $50,000 in capital gains taxes. He didn’t want to take his one-time capital gains tax deferment because he felt he might need it more in the future.
Certainly he and his wife liked the parsonage: it was a beautiful home on the edge of a prestigious golf course; it was large enough to entertain church groups and close to the church; it had a beautiful study in which he enjoyed working. But he needed to buy a home.
So he started to bring up regularly with the trustees and the session the subject of his housing. This annoyed the trustees, most of whom were long-time members of the church. They told him, “Don’t you have a perfectly adequate arrangement now? What would we do with the parsonage if you moved out? If you owned your own house, we’d have to pay you a housing allowance—we don’t know if we can afford that.”
But Roberts reminded them, “The search committee made a deal with me. I’ll admit it was informal, but you did agree that I would be able to buy my own home when I moved to New York.”
Reluctantly, the trustees set up a sub-committee to look into the situation and make a recommendation.
The sub-committee and pastor finally agreed that he would buy the parsonage, and they settled on a fair price. While the trustees were not all in favor of the sale, they voted eight to five to recommend to the congregation the sale of the parsonage to the pastor.
In the State of New York, though, the sale of any property must be approved by a two-thirds congregational vote. When the session announced a congregational meeting to vote on the sale, the trustees who voted against the sale talked with their friends about “Rev. Roberts’s maneuvering” to get the parsonage. They weren’t sure it was wise to sell the parsonage—they might need it down the road. And besides, said one trustee, “The way these people (meaning the session) spend money around here, the cash from this capital asset will be spent before you know it, and we won’t have two nickels to rub together ten years from now when we’re really going to need it.”
At the congregational meeting, the chairwoman of the trustees spoke for the motion, but she was less than enthusiastic, though she said nothing clearly against it. Two trustees spoke against the motion. One of them, who had been on the search committee, said, “In fact, I don’t remember any agreement to sell the parsonage to Rev. Roberts.”
When the vote was finally taken, it lacked the necessary two-thirds majority by ten votes.
The session members, most of whom were younger members, were appalled. They spent their entire next meeting discussing the trustees’ sabotaging of the new pastor.
One of the session members visited the home of the trustee who had been on the search committee. “You lied to the congregation!” he said. “If you can’t support the leadership you helped call to the church, then you ought to leave!”
This confrontation so infuriated this trustee and others that a group began meeting to discuss the problems at the church. At their second meeting, they made a list of the difficulties now being faced by Saint Paul’s. Among their charges, they said that the pastor was trying to stack the nominating committee and that he wanted to “get rid of” the trustees by restructuring the church boards.
When the session heard about these meetings, they decided to send session members to the trustees’ meetings to monitor their discussions. The trustees tried to declare their meetings closed, but the session members present refused to leave.
Here were all the elements of formidable church conflict. Are we to conclude that this was “good” for the church? It was and it wasn’t.
Clearly the tension was high, and the pain was real. But the church had been avoiding a number of issues over its history that were presenting themselves, in particular the tension between the session (representing newer members) and the trustees (representing older members). This issue, which had been brewing for years, was not worked through until a significant amount of tension arose.
The congregation dealt with this problem at several levels. First, with the help of an outside consultant, the trustees and session each agreed to send six representatives to a meeting in which the issue of the parsonage could be discussed openly and fairly. The representatives met for nine hours over two days, and the representatives became increasingly aware of the deeper concerns of each other. They were finally able to come to an agreement: the congregation would pay the pastor’s capital gain taxes, and the congregation would retain the parsonage. The Robertses would continue to live in the parsonage and invest their money elsewhere.
Next, the church worked on the dissension between the newcomers and long-time members. The congregation had a meeting, which lasted all day Saturday, at which members were asked to assess how they had traditionally handled their differences. Then they drew up a list of guidelines and agreed to follow them when differences arose or people voiced concerns. Some of the guidelines were
1. Conflict can be healthy and useful for our church. It is okay for people to differ with one another.
2. Resolutions for the sake of quick agreement are often worse than agreements that are carefully worked out over time.
3. Fair conflict management includes
— Dealing with one issue at a time,
— If more than one issue is presented, agreeing on the order in which the issues will be addressed,
— Exploring all the dimensions of the problem(s),
— Exploring several alternative solutions to the problem(s).
4. If any party is uncomfortable with the forum in which the conflict is raised, it is legitimate to request and discuss what the most appropriate forum might be.
5. Inappropriate behavior in conflict includes, but is not limited to
— Name calling,
— Mind reading (attributing evil motives to others),
— Inducing guilt (“Look how you’ve made me feel”),
— Rejecting, deprecating, or discrediting another person,
— Using information from confidential sources or indicating that such information exists.
6. Fair conflict always allows people who are charged with poor performance or inappropriate behavior
— to know who their accusers are,
— to learn what their accusers’ concerns are,
— to respond to those who accuse.
With these and other agreements in place, the congregation, especially the trustees and session, were able to work through a variety of conflicts. That, in turn, brought them closer together and allowed them, instead of getting mired in disagreements, to move forward.
And that’s the point: conflict isn’t all bad. When handled well, the seemingly bad situation can blossom into a greater good.
Copyright © 1992 by Christianity Today
