Tag: church conflict

How to Handle Opposing Views

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
There are as many opinions, convictions, and beliefs as there are people.  Whether it is at the workplace, in the family, or in the family of God, the church, the differences among us are legion.  In New Testament times, Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus were very different from one another, and did not understand each other.  
 
Even though the Jewish Christians had come to embrace Jesus, they did not abandon their two-thousand year history of being with God.  They still held to their food laws and special days.  The Jewish believers thought the Gentiles should be like them, and they wanted the Gentiles to begin holding to the same ritualistic behavior that they had done for centuries.  The Gentiles did not comply.  So, the Jewish believers passed judgment on them and condemned them for the lack of sensitivity to the things of God (Romans 14:1-12).
 
On the other hand, the Gentile believers felt no reason to have such rules and regulations concerning their Christian lives, and they ate what they pleased and saw no need to hold to special Jewish days.  They could not understand why the Jewish Christians were so stuck in their traditions, and so the Gentiles looked down on the Jews as hopelessly misguided.  It was a potentially explosive situation.
 
It may not be the first-century, but the church has struggled with this teaching for its long two-thousand year history.  In fact, every church I have served has had their particular issues of “disputable matters” that they felt so strongly about that it crowded Jesus out of the center.  In my first pastorate, education was the big issue.  Some believed in Christian schools as the only real way to educate their kids.  Some felt that home-schooling was the only way to go because of the rottenness of the culture.  Others thought that public education needed the light of Christians participating and sent their kids to the local schools.  The problem was that each group sincerely believed they were right and everyone else was wrong.  It was a potentially explosive situation.
 
            In another church I served, there were hard feelings about the place of men and women in the church who had been divorced and remarried.  In yet another church, the issue was about whether church members could drink alcohol or not.  And yet another church’s issue dealt with how we dress and what our attire is at church.  I still remember vividly one lady in that church talking with a woman who had just two weeks before given her life to Christ out of a life of prostitution.  The woman was wearing jeans and a t-shirt.  The church lady was giving her a lecture about how she should be dressing up for Jesus.  And the whole time I am thinking to myself:  “Lady, I’m not sure you are going to like the woman’s idea of dressing up for Jesus….”
 
Whenever we want to place “disputable matters” on people’s must-do list, then there will be trouble. 
 
What is more, we will judge others who do not do as we do because we have the mistaken notion that our way of doing things is equal to the death and resurrection of Christ, as if not doing it our way will destroy the church.
 
 Is being right so important that we judge and condemn others who disagree with us?  
 
Here’s the deal:  we do not need to necessarily change our views on disputable matters; but we do need to change our attitude and our behavior toward those we disagree with.   
 
            For the Apostle Paul, the issues that divide Christians are very important, not because he championed one over the other, but because the church’s identitywas at stake.  For Paul, the really important question was this: 
 
Will the church be, at its center and core, a community of redeemed persons by the grace of God who center all their lives in the person and work of Jesus, or will the church be a community of opinionated individuals and groups all jockeying for power to have their way on how they think things should go?
 
            We need to use our freedom responsibly through basic human civility.  In a nation where we feel free to say whatever we want, we do.  In doing so, we elevate self-expression and our opinions over self-control and the mission of the church.  The need we have is for a “generous spaciousness” which allows room for us to discuss issues and disputable matters in an atmosphere of generosity, hospitality, and acceptance – seeking to first listen and understand before responding.  Our goal as Christians and followers of Jesus is not to win an argument or have our way; our goal is to uphold Jesus as Lord of everything and maintain our center in him, and him alone.  It is on this basis that we will be held accountable by God.  So, let us live wisely and well, knowing and pursuing Jesus with all heart, soul, mind, and strength.
 

 

Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God (Romans 15:7).

Church Conflict

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

 

 
 
            Conflict in inevitable.  Put a bunch of sinners together in one place (like in a church building), add a few grumpy old people and not a few know-it-alls and sit back and watch the fireworks happen.  I think every church is about one or two good fights away from being non-existent.  It’s a miracle that more congregations don’t call it quits every year, especially after their annual congregational meetings!  I myself have a long resume of handling ornery folks, family squabbles, and cantankerous curmudgeons that could make your head swim – or just get you down right angry.
 
            When we peek into the bible, the Apostle James is blunt about where the heart of conflict comes:  What causes fights and quarrels among you?  Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?  You want something but don’t get it.  You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want.  You quarrel and fight.  You do not have, because you do not ask God.  When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. 
 
            All people have things they want and desire.  When those desires go unmet it can begin to be a burr in our saddle that leads to a lack of satisfaction.  The focus then becomes not my own heart but another person or people that are standing in the way of my desire.  Within the church we have expectations, whether they are reasonable or not.  If those expectations are not fulfilled, we ourselves feel unfulfilled.  Someone has to pay.  Thus, passive-aggressive behavior, sins of the tongue, and bitterness begin to consume us.
 
            Let me entertain a question:  Are your desires and expectations so important to you that they have become your idols?  In other words, is your happiness dependent upon what another person does or does not do?  If so, you have crossed over into that arena of idolatry and conflict is not far behind.  In his fine book on conflict, The Peacemaker, Ken Sande describes the progression of an idol.  Conflict, he says, begins with some kind of desire, and if it is unmet, moves to being a demand.  Our idolatrous demands usually lead to judging other people.  After all, if you really care about me you will meet my desires.  Finally, the progression ends in punishment, typically by simply withdrawing from a relationship with the intent of hurting another.
 
            The only legitimate and biblical answer to all this crud is grace.  Finding our true and lasting satisfaction in God alone is the only way to deal with the idols that we hanker to bow down to.  John Piper has said that “sin is what you do when you are not fully satisfied in God.”  Returning to the foot of the cross and receiving the grace of God’s forgiveness helps us to not only experience personal contentment, but frees us to give grace to the people for whom we think stand in the way of how we think things ought to be done.
 
            So, before we point the finger at another person let’s first take a good look at our own hearts.  
Before we jump to interpreting and misinterpreting another’s motives, let’s examine what is going on with our own desires.  A good place to start is looking in the mirror.  Maybe today is the day that you need to leave your religious offering on the altar and go reconcile with that person you have a problem with.  Or perhaps it has been too long since you cracked open your bible, and you need to be reminded again that it is the person who looks intently into God’s Word that experiences freedom and is blessed in what they do.
 
            May the peace of Christ overshadow us all as we seek grace in all things.

The Seven Deadly Words of the Church

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

“We’ve never done it that way before.”  Any church leader or board who has this as their mantra is on a one way road to death.  I know that’s a harsh statement, but sometimes we need eye-opening statements to shake us from our denial about how things are really going.  Jesus did not just change people’s lives; he changed the systems that kept people in bondage.  If we have no substantive spiritual growth, and no real evangelism occurring, our church system is giving us what it is set up to do.

 
When Jesus came to Jerusalem and took a whip to the existing system of buying and selling and money-changing, needy people came and filled-in the space where the vendors were.  Praise to Jesus by the children could now be heard.  Jesus, as he has done so many times before, healed the blind and the lame.  The Jewish religious establishment of Jesus’ time forbade anyone who was lame, blind, deaf, or mute from offering a sacrifice at the temple.  The picture here is one of needy people streaming to Jesus to be healed so that they can worship God along with everyone else.  By engaging in his healing ministry, Jesus was attacking the establishment by making the way clear for all to come to God, which was God’s design for all nations and peoples to do in the first place.  Jesus will not tolerate a system that practices profiling based on anything, whether it is age or disability, when it comes to worship.  He wants no obstacles to anyone who wants to come to God.
 
            Any time any existing system is challenged, there will be those who push back because they benefit from the way things are.  It is a myth to think that when a church changes something, whether it is a new program, cutting an existing one, or introducing different ways of doing worship or ministry that there ought to be 100% acceptance.  When the American Revolution began only about 25% of the people believed that a revolution ought to take place.  Most were either loyal to Britain or thought fighting wasn’t the way to go.  After the revolution, you would be hard pressed to find an American who didn’t rejoice over it.  The chief priests and the teachers of the law were incensed and angered by the systemic change Jesus brought.  They especially didn’t like the accolades that Jesus received for cleaning house.  At its core, the real reason the religious leaders didn’t like it is because it challenged their authority, and they were jealous and envious of the praise Jesus received.  They tried to dress up their indignation and hide their intense anger with a question that was designed to point toward the fact that Jesus ought not to be receiving such praise.  But Jesus sloughed it off, identifying himself as the promised Messiah.
 
            Jealousy and envy stand in direct opposition to the values of God’s kingdom, which prizes humility and mercy toward others.  Proverbs tells us that envy rots the bones (14:30), and the Apostle James tells us that envy and selfish ambition is unspiritual and of the devil and accompanies every evil practice (3:14-16).  The real culprit behind the religious establishment’s system, as well as our own conflicts and disagreements is sin.  But in order to try and appear better than we are, people often confront another with something that is not the real issue. 
 
            Back in the Old Testament, Numbers 12:1 says, “Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife.”  Miriam and Aaron were the siblings of Moses, and they had a problem with a black woman (Cushites were Africans) being a part of the assembly and of the family and worshiping along with the Israelites.  But the very next verse tells what they said to Moses.  Instead of coming clean about what their real problem was, they attacked Moses with a different issue which wasn’t the real issue for them:  “Has the LORD spoken only through Moses?  Hasn’t he also spoken through us?”  Even the issue they raised was really one of jealousy and envy.  They were acting like the chief priests and teachers of the law in Christ’s day, and Moses was a Christ-figure, exhibiting humility and trust through the situation.  God acted by making Miriam a leper, a person who would be excluded from the assembly, and left her to ponder how it feels to be treated as Moses’ wife was.
 
            Jesus was all about alleviating any and all obstacles for all people to the worship of God.  He cared about it enough to attack a system that fed on obscuring what real sacrifice was, and taking on the establishment that prevented certain persons from coming to God in prayer.
 
            The way for us has been made clear through the death of Jesus.  He has removed the old system and replaced it with the new.  Hebrews 8:13 says that “By calling this covenant ‘new’, he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.”  What is more, Christ’s death has made us clean, and as white as snow, having purified us from all unrighteousness.
 
            It is not our job to put limits on people on how they might serve or worship God according to race, ethnicity, class, disability, age, or gender.  The New Covenant demands it be so.  Jesus insists on it.  And, so, we ought to be a beacon of hope for all who are coming to God and desire to offer their sacrifice of service or praise to him by eliminating any system or rule or practice which conflicts with Jesus’ ministry.
 
            It is an act of grace to be the voice of the voiceless, to work for change that brings people closer to God.  It is the grace of humility that helps us to keep questioning what we do, and don’t do, so that others will be blessed through our church.  We must keep exploring the frontiers of church ministry because we do not exist for ourselves.  Ego and hunger for power can get left at the door.
 
            May we be like Jesus, and be active and proactive in making the way clear for others to come to God by first having God clean out our own hearts.  May the seven deadly words of the church be replaced with a new set of seven life-giving words:  “We are always changing to reach people.”