Church Conflict

Q: Through the years we've attended a handful of churches. Inevitably, each of them seems to hit periods of turbulence. I mean, there are nasty political situations in the church. People get wounded. Some get mad and leave. You keep thinking you'll find another church where they don't have the conflict or the drama. But then it happens again. Is it me? Am I a magnet for conflict? What is it about churches that make so many of them dysfunctional?

A: The real problem is simply that the churches are full of sinners who are in desperate need of a Savior. They're broken, flawed people with incomplete and impure thinking. This may be one of the most misunderstood truths in all of Christianity. People look at the problems in a church and conclude that they mean something about the authenticity or legitimacy of that church. They don't. They simply mean that the church is human.

If you set out to find the perfect church, I daresay you would never find it. For even if it looks perfect now, you're not seeing everything and/or it won't look that way for long. Everyone in a church must yield to a higher authority than mankind. It's the only way that everything can be made right. The fact is that not many churches or church leaders, including lay leaders, recognize that conflict is inevitable and therefore must be dealt with.

Churches, leaders and even the lay people in them need to acquire a "black belt in conflict." Seriously, because conflict is so natural to our flawed nature, we can only honor God when we learn to deal with it successfully. And for what it's worth, we honor God most when we walk through the conflict instead of around it.

I teach a course on conflict resolution. The Bible is chock full of advice and tools to help us deal with conflict successfully.