Seminary PL30: Preventing Group Exit

This is the sixteenth post on church management in my "Seminary in a Nutshell" series. In this series, I first did a section on the Person and Calling of a Minister. Now this is the twenty-ninth post in a section on the Pastor as a Leader (see at the bottom).

The previous post in this series looked at Tillich's Protestant Principle and the tendency of Protestant churches to split over interpretations of the Bible. Bob Whitesel's book can be bought here.
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1. In a post on "Causes of Conflict," we mentioned four basic sources of conflict: 1) conflict that comes from the life cycle of a church, 2) conflict that comes from the pursuit of the church's goals, 3) interpersonal and interrelational conflict, and 4) conflict resulting from trends in the church's environment. Any of these conflicts can lead to "group exit," where some subset of the church decides to leave and go elsewhere. If the group leaving is large enough, we call it a church split.

2. Life cycle conflict is inevitable. When a church or organization is in decline, there will be conflict over diminished resources. If a church grows and new people begin to make the original core group feel less significant, there will be conflict. When a church is launching, there can be conflict over how and when to launch it. There is a good chance that people will leave at these pressure points.

As the leadership of a church sets goals and casts vision, the introduction of new ideas and directions almost inevitably leads to conflict. If the conflict is great enough, some will inevitably leave... or the pastoral leadership will be pushed out.

Interpersonal conflict is the stuff of humanity. People get their feathers ruffled, often over nothing. Often we say we are disagreeing over ideas or situations, but it is really just carnal human nature doing its thing. People will inevitably exit a church from time to time in a huff. Often, it is a relief to everyone when they go.

Pressures from the outside world can cause divisions in a church. The 2016 election was the most divisive election of my lifetime. Families and friends parted ways. No doubt there were individuals who left one church for another during this season as well.

3. It is important to acknowledge that groups can part company in peace. They can "agree to disagree." I happened to be in a church once where someone who had led a split returned to the original church and shared some of his reflections before moving out of the city. I thought his advice was uncanny: "Don't disagree for long," he said. "If you cannot come to an agreement, part as friends and double the effort for the kingdom."

So unification is not always the ideal outcome. When Paul and Barnabas parted ways, the gospel came to Greece. Just think of how much longer it would have taken if Paul and Barnabas had not agreed to disagree and gone their separate ways!

4. Bob Whitesel suggests that a church can limit group exit by counteracting the exit trajectory at key "trigger" points. [1] He lays out six stages of change that can either result in group exit or group harmony.

• He starts with relative harmony, assuming a church that is generally at peace at the start.
• Then a conflict trigger emerges. He focuses mostly on ideas ("Idea Development Stage") but the trigger could be any of the sort mentioned above. There may be tremors and rumblings of conflict at this point.
• The third stage is change. A change happens. Two possible trajectories often start here, one of which could end in group exit. There can be an "alarm event" that sets a course that, unless addressed in some way, will end in some group leaving the church.
• There will almost inevitably be resistance to change when it occurs. This is the most crucial stage because another event is coming, either a "polarizing event" or a "harmonizing event."
• If a harmonizing event takes place, then the next stage will be one of dissonent harmony, where there is disagreement within the context of unity. If rather a polarizing event takes place, then the next stage will be one of intense conflict.
• Finally, the conflict runs its course. The one trajectory leads to group exit, the other to group retention. 

Whitesel offers the advice of going slow and building consensus, as well as building in the expectation of resistance into the process.

5. The way you address conflict depends on the source of the conflict, remembering that not all group exit is bad. When an organization has to change or die, such changes do not have to be done offensively, but they must be done. When new goals are put in place for the good of the organization, they can be done in a way that tries to build consensus and get as many people on board as possible.

Opponents to a course of action ideally would feel like they are being heard. There is a point of course where a gripe session emerges that only is harmful. Most people resist change, often even when it is helpful. It's often helpful to separate opportunities for venting from moments of decision. And it's best to separate gripes so they don't poison the well.

Again, sometimes those gripes are right. Sometimes the pastor or leadership team is wrong. Good leadership gives a good listen to those who oppose change.

On the other hand, if people feel manipulated and shut out, there is a greater chance that group will eventually leave. But there is a time to go forward for the intended good of the organization even if some leave.

6. You cannot always convince those with objections. Human beings operate primarily on their intuitions and then come up with reasons to support their gut feeling. So while we have logical discussions over ideas, that is often not where the real opposition is coming from. The interpersonal dimension is more important if the goal is resolve the conflict.

There is a point where continued discussion is pointless. That point is when it is clear that neither side is going to convince the other. At this point, those who have the authority to move forward with their side will do so, and the other side can either stomach it or will leave.

From a Christian perspective, there shouldn't be sore winners or losers. The winning side has won and would ideally be gracious to the side that has lost. If the losing side cannot do anything more to change the outcome, it should resolve itself to the loss or leave. Of course there are less than ideal situations too.

7. Trending situations on the outside of the church can unify a church. They can also polarize it. If the church unifies against changes to which it needs to adjust, then the church is on a trjectory that will keep it together until it dies. Sometimes some in the church want to accommodate the world when it should be standing firm. Sometimes the church mistakes politics for religion and that causes divisions in the church.

Our citizenship is in heaven. Our loyalty is to God. Hopefully a church can sort out its priorities to where it knows what is central and what is not central when the outside world causes conflict within. But not all conflict can be resolved. If it becomes a cancer or interferes with the mission too much, then exit is not a bad thing.

Next Week: From Out Group to One Group

[1] Whitesel has two key books relating to this topic: Staying Power and Preparing for Change Reaction. See also his wiki articles on group exit.

Leadership in General

• Categories of Leadership
• Styles and Traits of Leaders
• How does God lead
• Leadership Pitfalls

Strategic Planning

• The Mission, Great and Small
• Identifying Mission
• Casting Vision
• Vision Statements
• Thinking Missionally
• Evaluating Strengths
• Identifying Core Values
• Setting Goals
• Leading Change
• Evaluating Progress/Resetting Goals

Church Management

• Managing the Church
• Leadership in the Early Church
• Leadership Structures in Church History
• Church Position Descriptions
• Leading Healthy Teams
• Good Communication
• Hiring, Recruiting, and Firing

Conflict Management

• Causes of Conflict
• The Third Mark of the Church
• Basic Conflict Resolution
• Leadership and the Gentile Mission
• Navigating Disputable Issues
• Athanasius: No Compromise!
• Zwingli: No Compromise?
• Tillich's Protestant Principle

Seminary PL29: Tillich's Protestant Principle

This is the fiftteenth post on church management in my "Seminary in a Nutshell" series. In this series, I first did a section on the Person and Calling of a Minister. Now this is the twenty-eighth post in a section on the Pastor as a Leader (see at the bottom).

The previous post in this series looked Zwingli as an example of a leader who didn't compromise on a number of issues that he might very well have. This week now shifts to think about church splits and their causes. Today, we look at one of the Protestant causes of church split--having a text as the medium of final authority.
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1. There were relatively few church splits prior to the Reformation of the 1500s, when Martin Luther inadvertently caused the separation of the Lutheran church from Catholicism. Until the 300s, Christianity was not legal and so did not have any real chance to centralize its organization. It was more of a network for the first two centuries.

But it would largely be one church for over a thousand years after that point. If you were a western Christian in the year 1000, you were part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. 1054 was the first really big organizational split, when the Orthodox East split officially from the Roman Catholic West. But for the next 500 years after that you were either one or the other.

2. That all changed after the year 1517. The Roman Catholic Church (RCC) of that moment was both spiritually empty and politically weak. It did not have the power to burn Luther at the stake as it had Jan Hus a hundred years earlier in 1415. He had political protectors who were strong enough to protect him.

One of Luther's key battle cries was "Scripture only." If you could not prove it from Scripture, he could not be compelled to believe it.

Of course he was fooling himself. He continued to believe a number of legitimate theological positions that come as much from tradition as Scripture. The Bible might support infant baptism, but you cannot prove it from Scripture any more than you can prove from the Bible that you should only baptize those who are old enough to confess faith consciously. But Luther continued to believe in infant baptism. For communion, he believed in "consubstantiation," that Jesus was truly present in the bread and wine of communion. But where is that clearly stated in the Bible?

You probably cannot prove the Trinity from the New Testament, although the seeds of Trinitarian belief came from the Bible. The church answered questions like the relationship between Jesus' human and divine natures in the centuries following the New Testament, because the NT did not have explicit statements on questions of this sort. We are seeing a hint of the problem of Protestantism here.

3. The problem of Protestantism is this. Of course we would say that our final authority is God and Christ. But Protestants often operate as if the only access we have to that authority is through the words of the Bible. At the same time, we have no "magisterium" like the RCC--no authoritative teacher to give us the authoritative interpretation of the Bible. Therefore, Protestantism has as many de facto ("by the nature of the situation") authorities as it has interpreters of the biblical text.

So we have a final authority, as it were, that is inevitably co-opted by individual interpreters, individual churches, and by Christian denominations. We subtly substitute ourselves for the Bible and God without realizing it. We think we are simply reading the Bible and doing what it says, but we are as often as not bringing our own traditions, personalities, and situations to the text and reading it as a mirror of our own thoughts and desires.

4. An individual who wrestled with some of these issues was Paul Tillich (1886-1965). A German who struggled with the authoritarian context of his childhood and then Nazi Germany, he formulated what he called the Protestant Principle. In his mind, it was the extension of Luther's doctrine of justification by faith to all realms of human thought. "Justification by faith" is the idea that we cannot earn a right status with God. Rather, God accepts us on the basis of our trust in him.

Tillich applied this principle to our certainty of knowledge. We cannot know the truth with absolute certainty. Rather, as good protesters, we are justified by our doubt in any human authority that tries to establish itself as absolute, thus showing our faith in the transcendent beyond the human. We show our faith by our "ultimate concern" and our rejection of any human absolute.

He strongly resisted any attempt to set up an absolute authority over knowledge. He saw this dynamic as the problem with the Catholic system with the Pope as absolute authority, and he saw this problem with fundamentalism that sets up the Bible as an absolute authority. The heart of Protestantism for Tillich was an ongoing protest against such absolutes, including treating the Bible as an absolute.

The denominational landscape that has resulted from the Protestant Reformation is thus predictable. Tillich sees this fragmentation as a result of failed attempts to arrive at absolutes in the human realm, even in the Bible.  

5. Much of Tillich's thought seems dated now. Like all of us, he was a product of his time. But we can reformulate his insight in order to shed some light on the never-ending splits that Protestantism has experienced over the years. According to Martin Marty, there are well over 20,000 Protestant denominations or collections of churches in the world. The overwhelming majority of these claim to get their beliefs from the Bible as their absolute authority. What is going on here?

Church splits tend to feed on two key factors. The fundamental cause is of course fallen human nature. We are prone to peacock. We are prone to beat our chests and to fight to see who is the stronger or to back-stab to remove a rival. We say we are fighting for the truth. We say we are fighting for God. More often than not we are fighting for ourselves, our own needs and drives.

In Protestant churches, we often play out these fallen human games as if we are fighting over interpretations of the Bible. We say the Bible is clear and our opponents say the Bible is clear. But the Bible is really just the playing field for our fallen human urge to defeat anyone who does not submit to us or who stands in our way.

6. The "polyvalence" of words enables these cock-fights. Polyvalence is the potential of words to take on more than one meaning. Words can take on many different meanings and nuances, and the Bible has many, many words. So it is not only possible, it is virtually certain that there will be never-ending disagreements over what the Bible really means at multiple points.

Protestant church splits have often played themselves out on this playing field. First, there is the ambiguity of the words themselves. Then there is the fact that the Bible is made up of dozens of books written at different times and places. These books do not say exactly the same thing, so there is plenty of room for fitting them together differently. Lastly, they were written for audiences that lived thousands of years ago, so there is the matter of bridging the gap from their time to our time.

All these factors make the interpretation of the Bible a many-splendored wonder. It is no wonder at all that we have tens of thousands of groups who all disagree with each other. Do you baptize infants or only people old enough to know what they are doing? Do you baptize by immersion, sprinkling, or pouring? Is baptism necessary or only a symbolic ritual? Does it actually change you somehow? Can you be rebaptized? Whose baptism really counts? How soon after faith should you be baptized?

Welcome to dozens of denominations, all of whom think they are simply following the Bible.

7. Whether we admit it or not, tradition is also in play here. A non-denominational church is simply a church that isn't telling you what tradition it draws on. A few questions and you will quickly be able to tell whether it is basically Baptist, basically Pentecostal, or basically whatever. It's probably Baptist. There is no church that really only follows the Bible alone.

So one way to stop church splits is for us to become aware of ourselves, not only as fallen human beings but also as interpreters of the Bible. Not every hill is one to die on. We have been handed a historical situation in which we have countless little Christian groups. We start where we are.

There are times for Christians to agree to disagree and to go their separate ways. If we stop thinking of our denominations as the final answer on all matters of theology and practice and rather as communities who are in the same tradition and walking in the same direction, we will make great progress. We do not need to split even when we disagree on matters that are not essential to our identity--and we should not consider too much beyond common Christian faith in that bucket. [1]

The Anglican Church has found a way to exist together despite a wide range of differing beliefs. [2] Baptists of course are congregational in form, so find their unity in association rather than organization. In my tradition, the Wesleyan tradition, there are several sub-groups that could "easily" unite to form a common organization ideologically (Wesleyan, Nazarene, Free Methodist, etc). But it is just as well for us to walk together in unity as different denominations, since that is the hand history has dealt us. What we do not need is more Wesleyan denominations. [3]

So we would do well to know that we stand in Christian traditions. We are not simply reading the Bible unfiltered or without many, many influences at work on us. Much of what we think is essential Christian faith is really a matter of specific communities of faith who see faith and practice the same basic way. We can agree to disagree without dechristianizing each other. Our attitudes toward each other are more important to God than dotting our theological i's and crossing our theological t's.

Next Week: Avoiding Church Splits and Exits

[1] There are broad traditions that exist--Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Anabaptist, Reformed, Baptist, Wesleyan, Pentecostal. Each of them have general distinctives that locate a church in that tradition. Beyond these distinctives, belonging to a specific subgroup is surely more a matter of finding a community we feel at home with than a fight over absolute truth. A Christian would ideally be able to worship in any of these churches.

[2] The Anglican Church has everything from evangelical Anglicans to Anglo-Catholics to charismatic Anglicans to non-realist Anglicans. The liturgy and geography provides the unity.

[3] Although it is quite possible we will get a "Wesleyan" split if the United Methodist church splits in the next two years. The fight here is over homosexual practice, a key ethical question of the church in general these days and a key historical issue given the virtually unanimous position of the past that is under debate. It is certainly an issue that seems more worthy of "agreeing to disagree" than what color to paint the inside of the church.

Leadership in General

• Categories of Leadership
• Styles and Traits of Leaders
• How does God lead
• Leadership Pitfalls

Strategic Planning

• The Mission, Great and Small
• Identifying Mission
• Casting Vision
• Vision Statements
• Thinking Missionally
• Evaluating Strengths
• Identifying Core Values
• Setting Goals
• Leading Change
• Evaluating Progress/Resetting Goals

Church Management

• Managing the Church
• Leadership in the Early Church
• Leadership Structures in Church History
• Church Position Descriptions
• Leading Healthy Teams
• Good Communication
• Hiring, Recruiting, and Firing

Conflict Management

• Causes of Conflict
• The Third Mark of the Church
• Basic Conflict Resolution
• Leadership and the Gentile Mission
• Navigating Disputable Issues
• Athanasius: No Compromise!
• Zwingli: No Compromise?

Seminary PL27: Athanasius: No Compromise!

This is the thirteenth post on church management in my "Seminary in a Nutshell" series. In this series, I first did a section on the Person and Calling of a Minister. Now this is the twenty-sixth post in a section on the Pastor as a Leader (see at the bottom).

The previous post in this series looked at how to navigate issues where Christians disagree. This week continues with an example from church history: Athanasius. When do you stand firm no matter what?
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1. Almost all Christians have believed firmly in the Trinity now for 1600 years. The Trinity of course is the belief that, although there is only one God, God exists as three persons--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You cannot divide the substance of these three--they are one God. But they are distinct persons, three persons.

It is difficult for us to imagine, but the Trinity was a matter of strong debate in the 300s, during the fifty or so years after the emperor Constantine made Christianity a legal religion. Up till the year 313, Christianity was an illegal religion, so Christians did not really have the opportunity to meet together on a universal scale to hammer out theological debates like this one. [1] Every so often, there would be a time of persecution where the concern was more about survival than the precise nature of Christ.

2. Enter a man named Arius (256-336). Egypt at this point of history was Roman, with a vibrant Christian community including both mainstream believers and other groups. [2] Arius was part of the mainstream at that time--indeed he probably represented a majority position in Egypt then. Decisions on the precise nature of Christ in relation to God the Father had never been settled at large.

Arius argued that Jesus was the "firstborn of creation" (cf. Col. 1:15), meaning that God created Jesus first before any other being or thing in the creation. Accordingly, Jesus was the most exalted person and being in the whole creation. Arius used Scripture to argue for his sense that Jesus was not God in substance because there was a point before time when God created him: "There was a point when the Son was not."

The bishop of Egypt, Alexander (d. 328), did not agree. Alexander argued that Jesus was "of the same substance" (homoousios) as God the Father. The emperor Constantine, in the interest of unity, called the first "ecumenical council" at Nicaea (located today in northwest Turkey) for Christians to decide what they thought on this issue. He thought that Christianity might be able to unify the Roman Empire, an empire that was on the decline because of a sharply declining population spread out over such a large area that he scarcely had enough troops to defend it.

Constantine himself looked to some sort of a compromise position between Arius and Alexander. Eusebius (ca. 260-340), the first major church historian of Christianity, suggested that Christ was "of similar substance" (homoiousios, with an added i in the middle) to God the Father. But this was not far enough for Alexander, who had brought his assistant Athanasius (ca. 296-373) with him, still a deacon at that point. Athanasius argued strongly for the Trinity at the council.

3. The Trinitarians would win the vote at the Council of Nicaea. For the first time, the Trinity was the official position of Christianity. But they had only won on paper. The empire and the bishops of the church still favored unity over doctrine, and they had the power to enforce the continued acceptance of "Arians" within the church as Christians in good standing. Nor did the decision of some leaders at a council immediately change the popular positions of everyday Christians throughout the empire. If you had taken a poll in the year 350, it is quite possible that more Christians were still Arians than Athanasians.

We are trinitarians today largely because of the persistance of one man: Athanasius. There is a Latin expression, athanasius contra mundi, which means "Athanasius against the world." Athanasius would not accept compromise on this issue under any circumstances, and his long life kept his influence going for almost eighty years. Less than ten years after his death, The Council of Constantinople would issue the Nicene Creed as the official belief of Christianity and there would be little debate over the Trinity from that point on in history. [3]

In the year 380, the emperor Theodosius I would declare Nicene Christianity the only legal religion of the empire.

4. Athanasius was repeatedly exiled, not for his theology but because of his rigidity. After Alexander died in 328, Athansius became the bishop of Alexandria in Egypt. In 335, Athanasius was exiled for his treatment of Arians. Possibly, Athanasius was willing to go so far as to try to cut off grain supplies to Rome. [4]

After Constantine died, his son Constantine II banished him again, but his support was growing. Athansius was able to hide in Rome where there was now a parallel emperor to Constantine II. Constantine I had moved the center of the empire to Constantinople in what is now the northwestern tip of Turkey. So Athanasius was able to use political division in order to gain theological support in the western empire for his positions.

A third time he fled Alexandria for the desert monastic communities that had developed in southern Egypt. This allowed Athanasius to influence the thinkers of the church. He would be exiled a fourth and a fifth time before his death. In 368 a regional council of the church declared that a person could no longer become a bishop unless he held to Nicene Christianity.

5. So what can we learn from the uncompromising attitude of Athanasius? Hindsight is 20/20. We believe in the Trinity. It was the right position for him not to compromise on. His doggedness got us to where we are. Maybe we would have got there anyway... or maybe not.

So at the time, he probably seemed like a very, very annoying personality. Stubborn, unbending, willing to use his power to get what he thought was right. Normally such people are not helpful. Again, could the church have come to the same destination without this uncompromising person? Perhaps, but perhaps not.

The problem is that this personality type often thinks that everything they think is essential and not to be compromised on to the bitter end. This is the type of person that starts wars over his or her ideas. On the whole, we should probably consider Athanasius the exception, rather than the rule--at least in terms as what is ideal.

In fact, the unifying and conciliatory attitude of Athanasius' opponents was far more biblical and Christian than that of Athanasius. The theme of unity runs strongly throughout Paul's writings. There were matters that Paul was uncompromising on--the Gentiles being justified by faith, staying away from sexual immorality. His insistence on the first was actually an insistance on the unity of the church, particularly the unity between Jewish and Gentile Christian.

6. At the same time, it is usually those who are dogged like Athanasius that are the winners of history. When we think of how driven the ideology of Hitler was, how devastating it was to the world, it took the concerted, unified effort of a massive number of people, supported by the grace of God, to stop this stubborn, persistant force for evil. If you aren't willing to fight human personalities with such force, your cause is--at least from a human perspective--likely to lose. Arguably, God would have brought us to the Trinity some way, but God used this extremely uncompromising figure to do it.

7. There is a time to refuse to compromise. But a certain personality thinks almost every occasion is of this sort. Such individuals are not likely to be right--they enjoy fighting for its own sake. They are what we might call "contentious" people. When those who normally would find middle ground do not compromise, that is a time to take notice of.

In the end, there are very few Athanasius level issues. We should be very careful about identifying issues as "fight to the death" ones. There are especially few ideological issues that are on this level. We are so unaware of the forces that lead us to take certain positions that there is a high likelihood that much of what we think and how we think it is more a product of tradition and culture than God or the Bible. Standing up for others who are being harmed is a much more likely area where we should stand firm than on matters of ideas.

Next Week: Pastor as Leader 28: Zwingli: No Compromise?

[1] Christians who argue for contemporary political positions merely based on the idea of the rule of law should always consider the fact that Christians have always disobeyed civil law when they believed it to conflict with God's law (Acts 4:18-20). Civil disobedience follows as a possibility directly from the fact that the city of God never coincides exactly with the city of man. God's law wins.

[2] We are still 300 years away from the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 640.

[3] It is also around this point that the precise contents of the New Testament seem settled, first declared in an Easter Letter from Athanasius in 367.

[4] Barnes, Timothy D., Athanasius and Constantius: Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1993), 23.

Leadership in General

• Categories of Leadership
• Styles and Traits of Leaders
• How does God lead
• Leadership Pitfalls

Strategic Planning

• The Mission, Great and Small
• Identifying Mission
• Casting Vision
• Vision Statements
• Thinking Missionally
• Evaluating Strengths
• Identifying Core Values
• Setting Goals
• Leading Change
• Evaluating Progress/Resetting Goals

Church Management

• Managing the Church
• Leadership in the Early Church
• Leadership Structures in Church History
• Church Position Descriptions
• Leading Healthy Teams
• Good Communication
• Hiring, Recruiting, and Firing

Conflict Management

• Causes of Conflict
• The Third Mark of the Church
• Basic Conflict Resolution
• Leadership and the Gentile Mission
• Navigating Disputable Issues

Seminary PL26: Navigating Disputable Issues

This is the twelfth post on church management in my "Seminary in a Nutshell" series. In this series, I first did a section on the Person and Calling of a Minister. Now this is the twenty-fifth post in a section on the Pastor as a Leader (see at the bottom).

The previous post in this series looked at certain conflicts in the New Testament church as an example of conflict resolution and management. This week continues with Paul's approach to debated issues in his churches.
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1. The earliest church had the Old Testament, but the Old Testament did not directly address all the issues of the day. It is the same today, where new issues arise and Christians have to "work out their salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12) to discern what would most glorify God in our living. What kinds of things should Christians look at on the internet? How should Christians vote in relation to national debt? The Bible has no direct verses on such matters. We have to figure out God's will together.

In the New Testament church, there was also the matter of new revelation--or might we say final revelation. Jesus was the "last Word" from God in a way. God used the apostles and prophets of the early church to unfold the significance of Christ for the "last days" (cf. Eph. 2:20). It even took a few centuries more for the church to clarify issues like the nature of Christ and the Trinity, as well as which books actually belonged in the New Testament (e.g., Nicaea. Chalcedon).

2. Last week we saw some of the main fault lines of conflict in the early church. Most of them had to do with the inclusion of non-Jews, Gentiles, within the people of God. Ephesians 3:3-6 indicates that this inclusion came as a complete surprise to the Jews. No one saw this coming, that God would tear down the wall of the Jewish Law that separated Jew and Gentile (Eph. 2:14-16).

As we saw in the previous post, one of the most controversial issues had to do with table fellowship--Jew and Gentile believer eating with each other. Acts 15:28-29 sets out purity rules that made it possible for them to eat together. One of these stipulations had to do with meat that had been sacrificed to an idol. There were many, many sacrifices in the ancient world. The meat was not totally consumed in the vast majority of cases. The god got some. The priests got some. The person bringing the sacrifice got some of the meat.

But there were so many sacrifices that a great deal of meat ended up left over, and much of this meat made its way to the marketplace. This created a crisis of conscience for Jews and then for some Gentile Christians in turn. Do you buy meat from the marketplace or not? Is it important to find out where the meat you are being offered in a meal somewhere came from? Maybe we should all just become vegetarians (Rom. 14:2)?

3. In Romans 14 (as well as in 1 Cor. 8-10), Paul develops some fundamental principles for dealing with issues of debate in his churches. He did not treat all issues as "disputable" as "adiaphora" that was mostly a matter of individual conscience. One of the problems in applying his principles is that those who take the restrictive side of an argument often see their position as part of the essentials rather than the disputables.

And they may be right! When he gets to the end of Romans 14, he seems to recognize that a person can condemn him or herself by approving something they really shouldn't approve. So those who say a particular issue is essential rather than disputable can be right that an issue isn't truly a matter of individual conscience.

Such individuals can also be wrong. In Romans 14:5, Paul seems to consider Sabbath observance a disputable matter for Gentiles (cf. Col. 2:16). Think about it. He treats one of the Ten Commandments as a matter of personal conscience! [1]

4. What should we do in practice then? Probably we should treat issues as disputable where large numbers of believers consider an issue a matter of debate. That is not to say that we as an individuals should not be fully convinced that it is essential. It does not even mean that we cannot insist that members of our denomination treat an issue as essential. What it means is that we behave with love toward other individuals and groups who have a different understanding of that issue but who seem otherwise to be walking in love, faith, and hope. We agree to disagree.

5. So if there is serious disagreement among Christians on an issue of conscience, we should put that issue into the category of disputable matters in the vast scheme of things. Again, individual denominations can have their "convictions" about the right answer, even believing it essential.

But how are we to behave toward one another in such cases? Paul lays down three principles:

• Be fully convinced in your own mind. Faith is the ultimate justification.
• Do not let your freedom hurt the faith of others. Love is the ultimate ethic.
• Remember that a person can be wrong. Our understanding is fallen.

So, first, be fully convinced in your own mind (Rom. 14:5). On many issues, Paul says, the action itself is neither clean or unclean. "nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean" (14:14). And so Paul concludes this chapter with a basic understanding of what sin is: "Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" (14:23).

Sin is not primarily "missing the mark" of perfection. Where is that idea found in the New Testament? Sin is anything we do that is out of sync with our faith in God. Whenever we act in some way that does not glorify God in our intent, we have sinned.

So the first order of business in any conflict is for us to make sure that our own heart is right with God. Am I pursuing a stubborn course for selfish reasons? Am I really convinced I am acting from faith or am I only saying that so I can do what I want to do in my flesh?

6. In other words, we can be wrong. Before we pursue a course of conflict as a matter of principle, we should make sure our own heart is right. Similarly, before we pursue a course of freedom, we should make sure we are not deceiving ourselves. "Those who have doubts are condemned if they eat, because they do not act from faith" (14:23). Paul does not mean merely passing thoughts here--that's doubting in our hyper-introspective world.

Doubts here and in James 1:6 are not passing thoughts but divided loyalties. If you claim to have freedom of conscience to pursue a certain course of action but really are acting from a divided loyalty--half serving God and half serving your flesh--then you will condemn yourself with a freedom that is not real.

God of course is the judge. We cannot read other people's intentions, which is why we are not to judge others (Matt. 7:1). In conflict leaders must keep this fact in mind. We are sometimes required to be the gatekeepers of the identity of our church. But we can so so in love.

Is a person fully convinced? If there are agreed boundaries for my church, it may not matter. There are plenty of churches. Someone who disagrees with the covenant of my group can find another that has freedom on that issue. We do not have to unchristianize a person who chooses not to submit to our community convictions.

7. So let's say that an issue is disputed but our conscience is clear. We are acting from faith and in freedom of conscience. Should we proceed to do what we are free in conscience to do?

It depends. Love is the fundamental criterion of Christian ethic and action. So we must ask the question of how acting upon our freedom will impact others. Will my freedom negatively impact the faith of others?

Paul puts it like this: "It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother [or sister] stumble" (14:21). So it is not just about my freedom or rights. I can be free in my individual conscience to do something and yet it be wrong for me to do it because of the negative effect in would have on someone else.

Paul does not mean, of course, ticking people off. We will no doubt anger some people when we act freely yet not hurt their faith. It is possible that my wedding ring would have offended some people at a particular point in time. Certainly I should not wear it in the desire to "get their goat."

But there is a big difference between people getting angry because they have a problem and causing someone to stumble. If I anger someone because I wear jewelry, but I'm not trying to anger them, then they are the one with the issue. But if I convince someone to drink because my conscience is clear and then they come to have a problem as a result, then my freedom has hurt a brother or sister.

So the question is one of hurting the faith of someone else, not offending someone in the angering kind of way. You can hurt someone because you are asking questions you can handle but they cannot. You can hurt someone by getting them to do something you are free to do but they are not.

8. So as leaders, we keep these principles in mind as we face conflicts. The faith of our congregations is the most important thing. I don't want my freedom or the freedom of certain people in my congregation to harm the faith of others. Paul sounds somewhat condescending, but he speaks of the strong as those whose consciences are clear and the weak as those who worry about certain issues.

As leaders, we need to work to keep the freedoms of the "strong" from hurting the faith of the "weak." This affects the way we speak about certain issues. Like God, we try to meet our people where they are. If they cannot eat meat, then we go vegetarian, so to speak.

When we believe some are wrongly convinced, we might carefully, lovingly, and tactfully try to prompt their conscience toward the Spirit. But the Spirit must do the work in the end. We cannot force a person toward conviction, and we ourselves may turn out to be wrong.

Everything must be done in love. Our corrective must be done in love. The freedoms of the congregation must be done in love. Those who think certain matters are essential often should restrain themselves in love.

Next Week: Pastor as Leader 27: Athanasius against the World

[1] The Jewish Sabbath was from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday.

Leadership in General

• Categories of Leadership
• Styles and Traits of Leaders
• How does God lead
• Leadership Pitfalls

Strategic Planning

• The Mission, Great and Small
• Identifying Mission
• Casting Vision
• Vision Statements
• Thinking Missionally
• Evaluating Strengths
• Identifying Core Values
• Setting Goals
• Leading Change
• Evaluating Progress/Resetting Goals

Church Management

• Managing the Church
• Leadership in the Early Church
• Leadership Structures in Church History
• Church Position Descriptions
• Leading Healthy Teams
• Good Communication
• Hiring, Recruiting, and Firing

Conflict Management

• Causes of Conflict
• The Third Mark of the Church
• Basic Conflict Resolution
• Leadership and the Gentile Mission

Seminary PL25: Leadership and the Gentile Mission

This is the eleventh post on church management in my "Seminary in a Nutshell" series. In this series, I first did a section on the Person and Calling of a Minister. Now this is the twenty-fourth post in a section on the Pastor as a Leader (see at the bottom).

The previous post in this series was on basic conflict resolution. This week continues with a case study from the New Testament church.
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1. At times the New Testament church is held up as the ideal church, as if all we need to do is get back to the way things were at the very beginning. There is probably a sense in which the book of Acts does give us somewhat of an idealized picture of the earliest church. Although Acts does mention some of the conflicts of the earliest Christian community, we know more details from elsewhere, giving us a sense that at times matters were messier than we might think if we only had the book of Acts. Acts, after all, was written as a certain "apologetic" for the true nature of the "Way," and indeed it reveals that true nature.

There were thus different groups in the early church, not quite denominations, but with a similar flavor. There was the Jewish leadership of Jerusalem, with fairly "conservative" figures like James and Peter. There was also a "more conservative" group in the church that we might call Judaizers. They believed that Gentile converts to faith needed to go the whole way and become Jews. Paul was far more "liberal" than these groups, teaching that Gentiles did not need to keep the parts of the Jewish Law that distinguished Jew from Gentile. Finally, there was a group "more liberal" than Paul who felt free to eat at pagan temples and perhaps did not consider the sexual legislation of the Old Testament to still be in force.

2. These varying positions were conflicts waiting to happen. Paul certainly came into continual conflict with the Corinthian church over various matters. He tries to resolve the conflicts with varying degrees of firmness. He was usually quite confrontational when it came to sexual issues, such as when he commands the Corinthians to hand over to Satan a man who was sleeping with his step-mother.

He was more tactful when it came to the question of food offered to idols. He believes that the food itself is morally neutral, that the issue of morality relates to the conscience of the person eating. If you believe such food to be unclean, then it is unclean to you and you should not eat it. Do not ask where meat comes from. Eat it with thanksgiving. If it is going to cause someone else's faith problems, do not eat it for their sake. And do not go to a pagan temple because that is a bad witness and there are demons there.

However, this was not, as we will see, the position of the Jerusalem church, especially James, the Lord's brother. What we learn from Paul here is that some issues are non-negotiable, while others require us to navigate differing understandings within the church. We find common ground and then respectfully act in accordance with our consciences on matters of disagreement.

3. On the other end of the spectrum, Paul came into conflict with Judaizers who tried to get Gentiles to convert fully to Judaism. On his own turf, he was quite firmly against this group, because he saw them as undermining his churches. It is important to realize that the individuals in Galatia who were urging circumcision were Christians. It was not non-believing Jews that were the target of Paul's attack in his letter to the Galatians, but people who believed Jesus was the Messiah.

As Paul's mission got fully underway, he stood rather strongly against this potential influence on his churches. In Philippians 3:2, he calls these Christians "dogs" and the "mutilation" (katatome), mocking them for not truly being the "circumcision" (peritome). In Galatians, he warns that those who get circumcised will "fall from grace" (Gal. 5:4). Once again, we see that there are some non-negotiables for Paul. On other matters he urges a freedom of conscience.

He was apparently more tentative at the very beginning. After his first missionary journey, on which his ministry to non-Jews seems to have gained full steam, he consulted with the church leadership in Jerusalem (Gal. 2:1-5). With great cleverness, he took his uncircumcised co-worker Titus. This tactic made the issue real--are you going to tell this young man, this God-fearer, that God will condemn him on the Day of Judgment? Look at his faith!

Paul wins this battle. James and Peter agree that Titus does not have to become a Jew. They did not "force" him to get circumcised (Gal. 2:3). However, the wording suggests that James at least thought it would be ideal for him to convert fully. A win for Paul. His theology is allowed. Therefore, he can do his mission work accordingly.

This is a reminder that different pastors reach different audiences, often with slightly different teaching and approaches. Sometimes we do this under the same organizational umbrella. Sometimes we do so under differing denominations. But the gospel is often enriched by this diversity. As Paul says in Philippians 1:15-17, Christ is still being preached, and that is a good thing.

Acts 15 gives us a picture of this issue being officially settled. We know from Paul's letter that not everyone agreed. But the Jerusalem leadership--James and Peter especially--agreed that Gentiles did not have to become Jews to be part of the church. There was an official position, despite some continuing individual disagreement. The church could move forward.

4. But Paul and the Jerusalem leadership would part company soon enough. The blow up would take place at Antioch, one of the most exciting churches of the second decade of Christianity (40s). By the late 40s, there were numerous Gentile believers there. They were fellowshipping freely with the Jewish believers at Antioch. It is from this church that Paul and Barnabas launched the first missionary journey.

Jerusalem hears about this vibrant church, and Peter comes up to visit. At first, he fully participates in the Jew-Gentile fellowship of believers. But James is worried about a slippery slope. They had decided that Gentiles did not need to keep the Jewish Law to be saved, but he was concerned that Jews would now think that they also no longer needed to keep it.

He seemed particularly concerned about the purity laws. Was the food prepared correctly? Where did the meat come from?

5. So Peter stops eating with Gentile Christians, and the other Jews at Antioch are pressured to do so as well. Paul vehemently disagrees. We are all justified by faith, not by these sorts of "works of Law." He comes into direct conflict with the church leadership, and calls what Peter is doing hypocrisy (Gal. 2:14). The unity of the body of Christ trumps the purity laws.

Paul may or may not have handled this situation well. On the other hand, perhaps it was important for him to stand up for Gentile believers publicly. Sometimes public confrontation is necessary to defend others, to keep them from being discouraged or demoralized.

On the other hand, Barnabas took a more conciliatory tact. Although he may have agreed with Paul theologically, he did not agree with Paul procedurally. Perhaps he was thinking that they would get together and talk the issue through. They could come to some compromise or arrangement. They just needed to slow things down and work things out.

Paul was presumably long gone before that happened. The letter of Acts 15:23-29 may give us the compromise. As long as Gentiles will not prepare meat by strangling, as long as there will be no blood in the meat, as long as the meat has not been sacrificed at a temple to some god, as long as the Gentiles themselves are not sexually immoral, then Jewish and Gentile believer can eat together.

Paul only agreed on the matter of sexual immorality. On the other issues he has a "Don't ask" policy. Do not ask where the meat came from. Eat it with thanksgiving. He and Barnabas would part ways when it came time for a second missionary journey.

6. But the gospel would benefit greatly from this split! Paul and Barnabas agree to disagree and they part ways. As a result, Paul ends up in Greece, writing the first books of the New Testament. Barnabas has a much less significant ministry close to home. So we see that this conflict vastly expanded early Christianity. The heart of Paul's mission took place outside of what was then the mainstream.

It is important to recognize that Paul and the Jerusalem church probably did not come to agreement on these points. In some ways they agreed to disagree. Acts 21 pictures James still trying to reel Paul in on the matter of his own keeping of the Jewish Law. Paul probably did continue to keep the Jewish Law in general, except when he thought it hindered the mission.

But Paul did not win the argument at Antioch. When he won the argument, he told us (e.g., Gal. 2:9-10). He says nothing of the sort about the blow up between him and Peter (Gal. 2:11-14). Paul does the bulk of his ministry presumably without the full support of the church's leadership.

Next Week: Pastor as Leader 26: Navigating Disputable Issues

Leadership in General

• Categories of Leadership
• Styles and Traits of Leaders
• How does God lead
• Leadership Pitfalls

Strategic Planning

• The Mission, Great and Small
• Identifying Mission
• Casting Vision
• Vision Statements
• Thinking Missionally
• Evaluating Strengths
• Identifying Core Values
• Setting Goals
• Leading Change
• Evaluating Progress/Resetting Goals

Church Management

• Managing the Church
• Leadership in the Early Church
• Leadership Structures in Church History
• Church Position Descriptions
• Leading Healthy Teams
• Good Communication
• Hiring, Recruiting, and Firing

Conflict Management

• Causes of Conflict
• The Third Mark of the Church
• Basic Conflict Resolution

Seminary PL24: Basic Conflict Resolution

This is the tenth post on church management in my "Seminary in a Nutshell" series. In this series, I first did a section on the Person and Calling of a Minister. Now this is the twenty-third post in a section on the Pastor as a Leader (see at the bottom).

The previous post in this series was on the third mark of the church conflict. This week continues posts on conflict management with a post on basic conflict resolution.
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1. There are many different reasons for conflict. In People Smart, Mel Silberman mentions four different categories of conflict: conflicts over 1) facts, 2) methods, 3) purposes, and 4) values. [1] The first is a conflict over data--what is the truth? The second kind of conflict agrees on the facts and even agrees on the goals. It just doesn't agree on how to get there. The third kind of conflict has to do with the goals and purposes. Where are we trying to go? Finally, conflicts in values disagree on what is important. What are the non-negotiables? When will we have failed?

I might add that some people like conflict for its own sake. If an argument always seems to erupt when a certain person is around or in a discussion on social media, then there is a fair chance that you have someone around who just likes conflict. This type of person should not be put in any kind of leadership and, like a cancer, should be marginalized from most processes that matter.

We still care for their souls. We are still called to minister to them. But they are one of the fools of Proverbs (e.g., Prov. 10:8; 15:2; 26:4-5).

2. We often think of conflict as bad, as something to avoid. If we are talking about war or about conflict that inflicts serious damage or harm on another person, then certainly it is much to be avoided. War always indicates moral failure on someone's part. Genuine harm to another person is always sin. Harmful conflict needs to be resolved, at times with the use of force or power.

However, conflict between individuals who are aiming for the good can be a great boon. If you are in conflict over the facts, it is in your best interest to resolve the conflict by discovering what the facts are. Disagreement over values and purposes can lead to greater clarity, which will only help you achieve better goals. Conflict over methods can result in a better method being found than might have otherwise. And when two parties can't come to an agreement, going your separate ways can actually multiply the mission, as we will see next week.

So conflict need not be bad. Bad conflict should be resolved. But good conflict can be very healthy and productive. It should rather be managed.

Of course we should not assume that we can reach agreement. Human nature being what it is, we are not primarily creatures of reason. If we think that conflicts can be resolved merely by rational argument, we will probably lose most of our arguments. We are far more creatures of affect than we are creatures of reason.

Let me suggest the following seven principles for managing conflict:

1. First, be aware of it.
Conflict often lurks in the shadows, under the surface. It can percolate and boil without you realizing it. This sort of lurking tension probably won't just go away without being addressed. It needs to be addressed before it explodes.

I know of a situation at a college where someone was hired although some on the campus had serious questions about the person. The leadership felt that those questions were unjustified from the standpoint of the facts. However, it would have been wrong to think that all that needed to be done was to explain rationally the reasons for the hire.

There needed to be opportunities for release, to bring the hurt and the questions out of the shadows and into the open, not in a way that escalated the tension but that relieved it. Revolutions happen in part when those in leadership have been ignoring the underlying tensions--or when leaders try to use force to squelch it.

Hidden conflict usually needs to be addressed, especially if it is a matter of genuine concern. People need to feel like they are being heard.

2. De-escalate the situation.
I did some substitute teaching in the public schools the year before I came to teach at Indiana Wesleyan University. One day I came into conflict with a sixth grader who insisted on leaving the portable in which I was subbing before he was supposed to at the end of the day. I got in his way at the door. I kept him from leaving with my size advantage.

He went crazy. He said he would go home and get a gun and come back for me.

Now it would be easy for me to pontificate about how bad kids are these days or about the moral degeneration of our society. But I know that there are plenty of teachers and social workers--including my wife--who wouldn't have let the situation escalate to that level. I failed at conflict resolution because my words and actions escalated the situation.

I think I have become better at conflict. I don't just give in to avoid it (which was particularly typical of my personality when I was younger). I don't fight back to make sure I win (which has been typical of some of my friends from time to time). Rather, I have deeply come to appreciate the proverb that says, "A soft answer turns away wrath" (Prov. 15:1).

The person who yells back only escalates the situation. If you respond in kind, the situation will only escalate unnecessarily. If you respond calmly and keep your cool, you have a key characteristic of a good leader, one who can de-escalate conflict.

It is important to show respect to the person with whom you are in conflict if you expect to resolve the conflict by anything but force. When you are the mediator, you must try your best to be unbiased and not take sides. This is true in parenting. It is true in pastoring. As an aside, this is a good reason for a pastor not to take sides too obviously in an election too.

Most important, the sides at odds must know that you care for both of them, that you truly want what is best for them and for the kingdom.

3. Know yourself.
Someone once said that when you point your finger at someone, you have three fingers pointing back at yourself. This is what Jesus was saying when he said to be careful about judging others because we will be examined according to the same standard. In psychology, we talk about projection, which is when you accuse someone else of something you yourself are guilty of. It is Hypocrisy 101.

It is important as a pastor to examine yourself before you go accusing your congregation of something. And it is important when you are in a conflict to stop and ask yourself, "Am I really in the right here?" It takes two to tango, and so most conflict is not really one-sided. Usually, we have some blame in a conflict that has gotten out of hand.

Pastors often like to assume themselves a persecuted prophet. "I'm trying to do the will of God and the congregation doesn't see what I see" or "Satan is using the congregation to fight against God's direction for the church." Maybe. Or maybe it is you who don't see or that Satan is trying to use.

We must always ask ourselves the question in a conflict: "Am I entirely in the right here?" "Are my motives entirely pure here?" "Could my opposition actually be right about something?!"

4. Find common ground, "win-win" strategies.
Compromise is a dirty word. Except it isn't. Sure, we don't compromise on core values. But most of the things we fight about aren't core values. They're about better and worse methods. They're about better and worse priorities. They're about which value is most crucial at this particular moment.

The balance of powers in Washington is part of the brilliance of our Constitution, and it also ensures that very little will get done in Washington unless politicians learn to compromise, to seek common ground and "win-win" strategies where opposing parties both get something but rarely get everything they want.

There is gridlock in Washington because no one will compromise. From a Constitutional perspective, we don't need "stronger" leaders. We need leaders who can give and take. The only way for it not to be that way is to set up a dictatorship. But dictators are not good leaders.

And so it is that good leaders will often meet opposing sides half-way. They will give and take. They will try to meet in the middle. Occasionally, an issue may be important enough for a leader to use his or her power to go against the will of the majority or without any compromise. But leaders cannot do so too often, or else they will cease being leaders.

To resolve conflict, it is important to find common ground in a way that creates "win-win" situations for both sides.

5. You don't have to be right even when you're right.
When the Corinthians were taking each other to court, Paul suggests the radical Christian teaching that it's better sometimes to lose than to be right. That is to say, Paul tells them it would better for them to lose their court battle, even though they think they are in the right, for the greater good of being a good witness to the world (1 Cor. 6:1-8).

Arguably, the evangelical witness in America right now is largely burnt over ground with younger non-believers because a certain segment just has to win, even at a horrendous cost for our witness.

This way of thinking is incomprehensible to some of us. "But I'm right!" someone might protest. Who cares, if it is not a matter of the utmost importance? It is an all too easy confusion of facts with values. The value of harmony at times is more important than the value of truth, at least when we are just talking about facts.

I was on a committee once with someone who had the personality that, if he was convinced he was right, he felt that his perspective had to prevail, no matter what. Sometimes I agreed with him, but we would still lose the vote. He couldn't handle that. "But I'm right," he would reassert. "Let me explain it better."

But it wasn't a matter of the others not understanding him. They just didn't agree. There are much more important things than winning, and there is a time to lose even though you are right. There is a time to submit willingly to authority that is wrong. 1 Peter 2-3 say as much to slaves and wives in such a situation.

6. Submit to the verdict.
Represent your position strongly in debate. "Iron sharpens iron." The outcome won't be as sharp if you have not fully represented the strength of your argument with a good attitude.

Then comes time for the decision. Perhaps there is a leader who makes the final decision. Perhaps there is a vote. Then it is time to submit to authority. It is time to agree to disagree. If it is a matter of principle, then you should go your separate ways, as Paul and Barnabas did.

In the 2000 election, Al Gore did not agree with the conclusion of the Supreme Court as to who had won the election. But he conceded the election with honor. He agreed to disagree and submitted to defeat for the greater good. This is the Christian way.

So it is that we should not continue rehearsing the old argument, replaying the old debate, re-opening the old wounds once the debate is over. We agree to disagree and move on.

7. Be reconciled.
Finally, agreeing to disagree means that we continue without hatred toward each other in our hearts. Although Paul disagreed with Barnabas over John Mark and other things, we find Paul commending Mark in Colossians 4:10. No grudge was held. They were reconciled.

We will not always be able to get the other side to shake hands. We will not always get an apology when we think we deserve it. Wisdom may say that we do not re-engage some people.

But we can give it to God. We can move on. We can forgive even when we cannot forget. We show that by the way we act toward the other party. We show that by praying for them, by asking God to help them.

Next Week: Pastor as Leader 25: Leadership and the Gentile Mission

[1] People Smart: Developing Your Interpersonal Intelligence (San Fransisco: Berrett & Koehler, 2000), 150. They themselves were following Jean Lebedun, Managing Workplace Conflict (West Des Moines, IA: American Media Publishing, 1998).

Leadership in General

• Categories of Leadership
• Styles and Traits of Leaders
• How does God lead
• Leadership Pitfalls

Strategic Planning

• The Mission, Great and Small
• Identifying Mission
• Casting Vision
• Vision Statements
• Thinking Missionally
• Evaluating Strengths
• Identifying Core Values
• Setting Goals
• Leading Change
• Evaluating Progress/Resetting Goals

Church Management

• Managing the Church
• Leadership in the Early Church
• Leadership Structures in Church History
• Church Position Descriptions
• Leading Healthy Teams
• Good Communication
• Hiring, Recruiting, and Firing

Conflict Management

• Causes of Conflict
• The Third Mark of the Church

Seminary PL23: The Third Mark of the Church

This is the ninth post on church management in my "Seminary in a Nutshell" series. In this series, I first did a section on the Person and Calling of a Minister. Now this is the twenty-second post in a section on the Pastor as a Leader (see at the bottom).

Last week I talked about the causes of church conflict. This week continues some posts on conflict management with a theological/historical post on the "third mark of the church."
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1. For the most part, if you were a Christian for the first thousand years of Christianity, you were part of the same church, the church catholic. There was a bishop structure held in common everywhere and, after about the year 600, the bishop of Rome held the most power, considering himself the "Pope." In 1054, the eastern and western church officially split, with the eastern church becoming the "Orthodox" church with the Patriarch of Constantinople as its highest ranking authority. The Pope then was the head of the Roman Catholic Church in the west.

Despite this split, both sides considered themselves "catholic" and held far more in common than distinct. The "marks" or key characteristics of the true church were found in the Nicene Creed of AD381. "We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church."

2. The Protestant Reformation of the 1500s predictably raised the question of what a legitimate church actually was. It was no longer "one" at least in terms of visible structure or organization. It did not look "catholic" or universal. It looked more like the schismatic groups that led Cyprian in around 251 to say that "there is no salvation outside the Church" (extra ecclesiam nulla salus). How do you tell which group is part of the true Church and what is just a bunch of people hanging out or worse?

John Calvin was the first one to tackle this question in depth. What are the marks of a true church given this new situation where you cannot identify the true church with any one visible organization? He and Luther quickly identified the first two Protestant marks of the church. A true church is a place where 1) the word is rightly preached and 2) the sacraments are duly administered.

Protestants soon added a third mark. A church is an organization that is "rightly ordered." It is, in other words, a place where there is accountability and discipline for its fellowship. This usually implies organization, authority, and structure of some kind.

3. When someone in a Christian fellowship gets off track and goes down a path contrary to Christ, is there any accountability? Is there anyone responsible to care for his or her soul? Is there anyone with the authority to protect the body of Christ by removing a corrupting influence or a rogue leader?

Church discipline has been a part of Christianity since its very beginning to today. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul ousts a man sleeping with his step-mother from the church both to protect the church and in hope of the person's redemption. While some in the church today may confuse love with non-confrontation, there is no true church without accountability.

4. The classic church discipline text is Matthew 18:15-20. If a brother or sister in the church family wrongs you, go to them first privately. Then if they refuse to make appropriate changes, go again to them with one or two others, with "two or three witnesses." Finally it may become a matter of the whole congregation.

On the one hand, no one should take this pattern as a law. Matthew was written for a Jewish Christian community in the late first century AD. Different cultures and situations require us to take the basic principles and incarnate them in new times and places. Similarly, such biblical instructions were never meant to be exceptionless in the first place. They are guidelines to be implemented with common sense. Let us banish from church operations the immature application of Scripture!

The principles of the passage are accountability, respect, and final authority. Individuals cannot wrong others or corrupt the church and continue in the church's fellowship. This should not be a matter of punishment. It is a matter of protecting the church and working for that individual's redemption.

Respect is shown for the offending party. The first confrontation is private. There is no need for a repentant individual to experience shame before the whole body. The second confrontation is limited. There are witnesses, but the whole church need not get involved. Only as a last resort is the whole church involved.

5. We should still use common sense in various situations. The litigious nature of contemporary culture might suggest that two or three should be present in the very first interaction. Given the way churches are structured today, a pastor might profitably be involved in the first group confrontation. Perhaps the first confrontation might be with the pastor rather than completely alone.

Of course people often accuse others wrongly. We think we have been wronged when the problem is actually ours. Bullies often consider themselves the persecuted when they are called on their abusiveness. They may not even realize the trail of hurt they leave behind them.

Human nature often gossips about the wrongs done it and avoids even talking to the offender. This is the beauty of Matthew's instruction to approach the person in the wrong first. This is discretion. The gossip approach is cowardly and destructive.

6. It is best for a church to have specified who has the final authority to remove from office, expel, or take disciplinary action in the church. Such specifics should be in place long before a crisis. Denominations usually have such structures in place. Churches that are more congregational in structure should draft such policies as well, probably in consultation with legal advice.

In our world, a church needs to keep an eye to legal considerations. Our litigious society does not afford us the freedom to be "righteously indignant" in an irresponsible way. More than one church or Christian organization has come into legal trouble from reckless discipline.

This situation is not all bad because it helps remind us what the purpose of church discipline is. The purpose of church discipline is not to punish the wrongdoer. That is a less mature form of moral development, common though it is.

The purpose of church discipline is two-fold. It is to protect the church and to work for the redemption of the sinner. It is to protect the church because sin corrupts the church. Sin is contagious if left unchecked, not to mention the specific damage that can be done to individuals in the church.

But sin is damaging to the sinner, and not only eternally damaging. Sin is not wrong because it is the violation of law--again, a less mature moral perspective. Sin is wrong because it is damaging to self and others. Unchecked sin unravels the person doing the sin. Discipline has as one of its principal functions the redemption of the one in the wrong.

Next Sunday: Pastor as Leader 24: Basic Conflict Resolution

Leadership in General

• Categories of Leadership
• Styles and Traits of Leaders
• How does God lead
• Leadership Pitfalls

Strategic Planning

• The Mission, Great and Small
• Identifying Mission
• Casting Vision
• Vision Statements
• Thinking Missionally
• Evaluating Strengths
• Identifying Core Values
• Setting Goals
• Leading Change
• Evaluating Progress/Resetting Goals

Church Management

• Managing the Church
• Leadership in the Early Church
• Leadership Structures in Church History
• Church Position Descriptions
• Leading Healthy Teams
• Good Communication
• Hiring, Recruiting, and Firing

Conflict Management

• Causes of Conflict

Seminary PL22: Causes of Conflict

This is the eighth post on church management in my "Seminary in a Nutshell" series. In this series, I first did a section on the Person and Calling of a Minister. Now this is the twenty-first post in a section on the Pastor as a Leader (see at the bottom).

Last week I talked about hiring, recruiting, and firing in the church. This week begins some posts on conflict management.
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1. In article he titles, "Understanding the Four Forces That Control Church Change," Bob Whitesel enumerates four key causes of change: 1) life cycle forces, 2) goal-oriented forces, 3) conflict-oriented forces, and 4) trend-oriented forces. [1] Today I want to look at these four forces of change as sources of potential conflict.

2. The first driver of change has to do with the life-cycle of a church or organization. David Moberg and others have talked about five stages in a stereotypical church's life. [2] The first is the initializing, birth stage. The second is an organizational phase of high vitality. A third is a kind of equilibrium or peak phase. Then there is often a decline phase, sometimes thought of as an "institutional" or "bureaucratic" phase. Finally there is death.

When a church starts, it usually has plenty of enthusiasm but perhaps not a lot of organization and it may not have many resources. There can be the kinds of conflicts that come from ambiguity, contrasting visions, even conflict from the physical, mental, and emotional stress that comes from what inevitably will require work that goes well beyond the norm.

As the church grows, there will probably be stress from the need to organize and create systems. People will need to let go of controlling things that they could control when the church was a smaller size. More staff will need to be hired. More people will mean more potential for conflict among the church leadership. [3]

There will be the fewest life-cycle conflicts in the peak or equilibrium phase. Things are going well. The church seems to be running smoothly.

But this stage often leads to a period of bureaucracy and institutionalization. The church or organization has begun to decline but not everyone realizes it. There may be a "hubris born of past success," an undisciplined expansion that assumes resources will always be there, a denial of risk or peril. [4] Those who see where things are going (and where they have been) may try to get things going but may face resistance by the status quo. Conflict is inevitable.

The disintegration/death phase may involve conflict over scarcity of resources. On the other hand, some are quite content to be in control of less and less until the end.

3. Goal-oriented conflict results when the leadership of a church, perhaps even significantly informed by the congregation, comes against others who do not like change or do not like the direction of the goals. Some may leave the church if they are disgruntled enough. Others may agree with the goal but be frustrated by the execution or movement toward the goal. Some may like the goal in theory but not realize the cost of getting there.

4. What Van den Ven and Poole call "dialectic" forces of change are tensions between different parties within the church or organization. They use the terms "thesis" and "antithesis," alluding to the philosopher Hegel's sense that our stories are often a series of conflicts between new ideas and their opposition. In a body, the significance of such conflict depends on its intensity, the level at which the conflict is taking place, and the percentage of the church involved.

So if two key leaders are feuding over ideas or direction, that conflict is going to have an immense affect on the rest of the church. If two members of the congregation are in series conflict but the conflict takes place outside the church, it may not have a great impact. But if their conflict spreads to others and begins to affect the worship and functioning of the church, then it becomes more and more significant.

5. Finally, there are what Whitesel calls "trend" and Van den Ven and Poole call "evolution" forces of change. These have to do with external pressures and forces on the church/organization. If the demographic of the church's neighborhood changes significantly, then it will begin to exert pressures on the church. Should the church change its goals and style to minister better to its changing environment? Should it consider changing locations?

City laws and codes can create tension and conflict. The government can impose laws that create stress on the church's finances to conform. These are sources of change a church has to deal with and thus potential sources of conflict.

Next Sunday: Pastor as Leader 23: The Third Mark of the Church

[1] Whitesel here is drawing on Andrew van de Ven and Marshall Poole, Handbook of Organizational Change and Innovation (Oxford: Oxford University, 2004). They give more technical names for these forces: 1) life-cycle, 2) evolution (environment), 3) dialectic (thesis-antithesis), and 4) teleology (7).

[2] For how to pull out of the cycle, see my good friend Charles Arn's book, How to Start a New Service (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997). See especially p. 34.

[3] Although I believe that petty conflicts among members of the congregation decrease as the church size increases--or at least those conflicts cease to have much impact on the church as a whole.

[4] See Jim Collins, How the Mighty Fall (2009).

Leadership in General

• Categories of Leadership
• Styles and Traits of Leaders
• How does God lead
• Leadership Pitfalls

Strategic Planning

• The Mission, Great and Small
• Identifying Mission
• Casting Vision
• Vision Statements
• Thinking Missionally
• Evaluating Strengths
• Identifying Core Values
• Setting Goals
• Leading Change
• Evaluating Progress/Resetting Goals

Church Management

• Managing the Church
• Leadership in the Early Church
• Leadership Structures in Church History
• Church Position Descriptions
• Leading Healthy Teams
• Good Communication
• Hiring, Recruiting, and Firing