Peacemaking in the Church and Beyond - Lesson 5

That's all about introductions, so let me let me launch now into what I'd call conflict culture in the church. Every church has what we could call a culture for resolving conflict. Now, we talked about organizational church culture back a couple of courses ago. Every church also has a culture for resolving conflict, whether or not they're conscious of that culture. A church's conflict culture is usually inherited, and it tends to be either passive or aggressive, or alternating between the two. 

Now, you remember that we talked about culture being products and practices and values. Remember the iceberg and the products and practices being visible and then the values being underneath that and the assumptions being down below that, and we talked about these assumptions and these values are underneath the waterline. We're conditioned in our culture, in our church culture, to respond in certain ways, and so the behaviors that we act out are as a result of those assumptions and those values that are underneath the waterline that we don't pay attention to a lot, but they're there nonetheless. 

So, in the area of conflict, we do the same. We respond to conflict; we're conditioned to respond in ways that our culture shapes us and molds us to respond to that conflict. So, a very important step in learning to deal with conflict is to honestly discern what our church’s natural inclinations are, what our culture is when it comes to conflict. More specifically, how does the leadership in our church deal with conflict? Then we can learn to address those inclinations and develop more constructive ways in dealing with it. 

Now, here's how it works. There are three basic kinds of conflict resolution culture, basic. It's represented in what we call the slippery slope of conflict, and this comes from a specialist in the field. His name is Ken Sande. He's written a book called Peacemakers, and their organization’s called “Peacemakers.” If you look on our Freedom to Lead website, you'll find that they're partners with us. Actually, they are going to be presenting the next module in our program in India in November. So, we have a very close relationship with Peacemakers. This basic concept comes from them, although they may explain it a little bit differently, but this is where it comes from. 

Think of a semi-circle where it's easy to slip off one way or another. First you've got on the left side -- can you see that? you probably can't -- it's what we call a people-pleasing culture or escaping culture. Nobody wants to deal with conflict. That's kind of the nature of our value system within this kind of a church culture. The veneer of “nice” looks healthy on the surface. A visiting speaker of a church that I pastored came in one time, and he started his second message with a statement, “This is one fine congregation,” and he said, “You know how I know that?”  He said, “Everybody I've met, I've asked, How are you? And their answer is, ”Fine.” Now, that's a humorous way of saying that we are not really fine, but we put on our game face. In the same way, when it comes to conflict, things might look fine, but tension and criticism tends to linger just below the surface, so that's the people-pleasing culture. 

Then there is -- again, I'm sorry you can't see that so well -- but there is what we call the controlling culture. This is an attacking sort of a motif. People are ready to fight at the drop of a hat. They do lots of political maneuvering. The leadership creates coalitions and can even do all kinds of spiritual language to create that “touch not thine anointed” kind of stuff and play the martyr role, or whatever the case may be. That is what we call the controlling or the attacking culture. 

And then at the top, there's what we call the peacemaking culture. In a culture of peace, people seek to glorify God and serve each other as they work through their differences and their disagreements. Now, as I said, it's very easy to slide down the slippery slope one way or the other. It's harder to maintain the characteristics of a peacemaking culture. A church's culture will usually determine the outcome of its conflicts. So, in other words, the outcome is already decided, depending on where you are on that slippery slope. Does that make sense? Very important. 

Here's how you would differentiate these cultures. In the people-pleasing culture, which is here on the left, the motto of a people-pleasing culture would be “Fire? What fire?” And the motto of an attacking or controlling culture is “Fight fire with fire.” In a people-pleasing culture, folks prefer to avoid conflict at all costs; in a controlling culture, to attack conflict, and people. In a people-pleasing culture, people are very skilled at telling people what they want to hear. In an attacking culture, they're skilled at polarizing people. Success in a people-pleasing culture means keeping conflict hidden; that’s success, that's effectiveness. Success in a controlling culture means eliminating the opposition. In a people-pleasing culture, churches typically struggle with continual low-level conflict, steady turnover of dissatisfied people, even though it never comes quite to the surface. In a controlling culture, the church typically is pressured to maintain the appearance of unity, people fearful of voicing their differences. In a people-pleasing culture, conflicts build up like tinder that can eventually burst into a blaze. In a controlling culture, conflicts may be suppressed for years but eventually consume controlling leaders. So in other words, the leaders are the ones that drive this controlling culture. People live in fear, but eventually it will erupt. It may take a long time, it may take 20 years, but eventually it will erupt. 

So, what does a peacemaking culture look like? Well, the first issue is the motto, of course, “Let's use this fire for good. Let's see it as an opportunity.” In a peacemaking culture, leaders temper strength with humility. James chapter 3, verses 17 and 18, says, “But the wisdom that comes down from heaven is, first of all, pure, then peace loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace, raise a harvest of righteousness. Strength tempered by Christ-centered humility enables the leader to be approachable, to be adaptable and open to correction and differing ideas. I just read an amazing book that was written by an Australian named John Dickson. It's called Humilitas. It’s a study on humility. It's a very, very good book that I would recommend to you in that arena. 

So that's the first. In a peacemaking culture, there is strength that is tempered with humility, not one, not the other, but is a tempering sort of a model. Secondly, peacemaking cultures value diversity; they embrace diversity. They realize that God-given diversity in the church can promote healthy discussion, can promote creativity, can promote growth if people engage one another with respect. 

Thirdly, they see conflict as a potential opportunity. The key question is how do you and your church view conflict? Most churches that I've observed view conflict as a bad thing, maybe even sin, if you will. I was talking with one person the other day in Pennsylvania, and I asked, is there ever a situation that you can think of -- this is an elder in the church -- where conflict is not sin? He said -- matter of fact -- he said, “Conflict is always sin.” Well, it's tough to value diversity and diversity of opinion and diversity of thought, if indeed that's your view. Now some conflict can and should be avoided. There is no question about that. Peacemaking cultures know how to avoid unnecessary conflict and deal with conflict in a conciliatory way when it does occur because it will occur. Peacemaking cultures prefer to approach conflict as an opportunity to glorify God, to serve people, and to grow to be more like Christ. 

A page by page survey of the Bible, by the way, reveals about 142 interpersonal encounters with the potential for conflict, 142, according to one number. In this regard, one prominent pastor states that his congregation no longer uses the term unity to describe their relationships, since the popular concept typically conjures up images of fantasyland where disagreements never surface. This pastor chooses to use the word ‘community,’ and I think he's onto something there. The mark of community, he says true biblical unity, is not the absence of conflict; it is the presence of a reconciling spirit. 

If you remember, when we went through the issue of team building, we talked about the process of decision making. You remember the forming, the storming, the norming, and the performing. Well, that storming stage is so important in order to really see good decisions arise. Peacemaking leaders approach conflict as an opportunity to glorify God and serve people. 

The third is we measure success in our church by reconciliation. Sometimes we measure it by the numbers of people in the pew or the amount of bucks in the plate, or whatever we use, but when was the last time you heard a church measure its success? Remember, we talked about how cultures get embedded because of what we measure? Well, what if we began to measure our success by the kind of reconciliation that we saw within the congregation? A powerful thing. Communities that are growing in Christ-like character and arriving in agreements that they can all support: that's a powerful, powerful model for developing a culture of peace within the church.

Committed to building a culture of peace. That's kind of what this is all about, where people are trained and they're coached and they're their championed to respond to conflict biblically. And then finally, this kind of a culture develops peacemaking skills, everyone throughout; it's a value that is throughout the church. Peacemaking doesn't always come naturally, for sure. Both leaders and the people need to develop skills in coaching others and mediating conflicts. 

So, let's look at a scenario here. Here's a case study, if you will, of a conflict culture in practice. Peggy has made an appointment to see her pastor. “For months,” she said to her pastor, “My husband has been slipping out of bed late at night, says he can't sleep and wants to do some computer work. Well, earlier this week,” she said, “I needed to be on his computer to get an email address, and I tripped over a number of web pages he saved. Pastor, it's triple X stuff.” She said, “I'm shocked.” She said, “I'm hurt. What should I do? I feel I'm losing my husband. Please help me.” What will be that pastor's attitude? What will be his actions? And what will be the likely result if, number one, the pastor is a people-pleasing leader? Second, if the pastor is a controlling leader. And thirdly, if the pastor is a peacemaking leader. What will be the pastor's attitude? What will be the pastor's actions? And what will be the likely result?