“Redevelopment is synonymous with change,” Boyd said. “Whenever there’s change, there’s going to be conflict.” So, in a congregation seeking to discern its future — to open its arms to new opportunities — change and discomfort can sometimes be good.
Boyd’s congregation is typical of many in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.): small (membership of about 30), getting older (average age of the congregation, more than 80 years and of the session, more than 60 years) and struggling to figure out where to go next.
“It’s human nature that as you get older, you want to hold on to something you know and [that] you’re comfortable with and that gives you comfort,” Boyd said. “When the world is changing around you, you don’t want your church to change.”
But change and conflict are sometimes inevitable, even in places of faith. Disputes do break out, over everything from important doctrinal matters to whether the painting that’s been hanging in the hallway for the past 30 years can ever be taken down. Pastors working in their first jobs say that conflicts in the congregation are one of the most difficult professional challenges they face. And, during a recent workshop on managing conflict, a seminary professor said the goal should be not to stop disagreements in congregations, but to get the people involved to fight fair.
Hugh Halverstadt, a professor of ministry at McCormick Seminary in Chicago, said he started his career as a Presbyterian minister thinking, “I hate conflict.” But he quickly learned, at his first parish in Alabama, about 60 miles north of Selma in the early 1960s, that conflict wasn’t to be escaped. “All hell broke out and I was baptized in that moment into understanding that conflict is part of the life and the work of the church,” Halverstadt told about 50 people at a seminar recently at the George and Jean Edwards Lecture at Louisville Seminary.
Boyd was one of those who attended the workshop. In his congregation, “the primary conflict is they know what they should do, but they feel they want to hold on to what they know,” he said. “There’s a lot of fear, people are scared. They know what they need to do to be honest and faithful, but they also say, ‘I wish they could go back to the way it was when I was a kid.’”
In other congregations, the disagreements get so intense that people have a hard time communicating — even saying hello in the hallway feels like a risk.
Halverstadt said he’s been to churches where “there was nothing safe to talk about during the coffee hour except football and the weather. The place felt like a loaded gun, and it was” — the disputes ran so deep.
In some presbyteries, the Committee on Ministry tries to be alert for congregations in which the disputes threaten to reach the point of crisis — and to provide resources for working things through. In some denominations, internal mediation councils have been established within congregations and governing bodies to train people in conflict resolution techniques.
“Does it ever reach a point where it’s healthier to get a divorce?” asked one woman, a lay leader of a congregation that’s been fighting hard for two years now.
“I don’t mean to say don’t ever leave,” Halverstadt replied. But “don’t leave too soon. And don’t leave as a victim” — because chances are that everyone involved has contributed to the problem.
Duke University recently released the first findings of a major research project on pastoral leadership, called “Pulpit and Pew,” undertaken with funding from the Lilly Endowment. That research found that most people in ordained ministry find it to be deeply satisfying work — six in 10 said they’ve never doubted their call to the ministry and seven in 10 said they’d never considered leaving pastoral work.
But the survey also found that ministers reported significant levels of conflict in their congregations — two-thirds of those surveyed reported some level of conflict in their congregations over the past two years, and one in five reported that the conflict was “significant” or “major,” sometimes intense enough that people did leave the congregation over it.
And the research found that congregations fought about different kinds of issues than those that are dividing the denominations. While many denominations are battling over things such as homosexuality, the ordination of women or doctrinal debates, many congregations disagreed about matters such as the pastor’s leadership style or relationships among people in the church, priorities for spending money, or changes in the style of music during worship.
The Duke report states that “the issues about which congregations fight are often quite mundane and ordinary,” but “they are no less important by virtue of being mundane.”
Churches fight about almost anything — “it’s all over the map,” said David Sawyer, director of graduate studies and continuing and lay education at Louisville Seminary. “Sometimes it’s about the pastor, sometimes it’s about theology, sometimes worship styles. You drive a red car and we don’t believe our pastor should drive a red car.” But often, what’s on the surface “is not what it’s really about,” just as the argument in a marriage about why the husband is so messy or the wife is always late may not really be about those things at all. Underneath are deeper conflicts over power and control and trust and belief.
Some people assume that the role of leaders in the congregation is to avoid conflict altogether. But Halverstadt argues that the goal ought not to be tranquility and harmony — the lack of any disputes — but the idea of shalom, of wholeness, of a community of faith that is interdependent and willing fairly and honestly to address their differences. “We are all created in the image of God,” and are part of God’s community, he said. And “the first thing I can expect is that these people will fight dirty.”
Halverstadt urges those in conflicted churches to think of the participants as being in two groups — the stakeholders, who are advocating a particular point of view (sometimes at any cost), and the stockholders, whose view is that “I care more about the well-being of the body than about that particular matter.” Then, of course, there are the spectators — those who “see nothing, do nothing, but pass the gossip on for heaven’s sake, because it’s juicy.”
The way to handle conflict, he said, is not for one or two people at the top to try to calm everything down by themselves — that’s a recipe for stress and usually won’t work, he said — but to try to mobilize the stockholders, those who are interested in the well-being of the congregation, to insist that if the congregation is going to fight, people will have to promise to fight fair.
Among the rules of fair conflict, Halverstadt said, are being assertive rather than aggressive (or passive-aggressive); showing respect (meaning that someone who disagrees with you isn’t automatically stupid); being accountable for one’s actions and being willing to share control. Things that aren’t allowed include name-calling, gossip, interrupting, personal attacks, and the certainty that God’s on your side only.
Myrtle Bingham, an elder from Central church in Louisville who also attended the workshop, said that fighting fair often isn’t easy. “You’re dealing with at least two cultures — although you always assume people are the same” if they’re from the same church, Bingham said. What works best in her experience is “getting in the mind of Christ before you speak” and “listening, being present to what the other person is saying, and that’s really hard to do when you’re opposed to what they’re saying.”
Sometimes, when things get too bad, congregations have to turn to outside mediation or arbitration — which sometimes produces a result that’s not satisfying to any of the parties.
But when a church can come through a time of conflict with a measure of grace, the working through of differences can bring healing and even new growth, Halverstadt said. “Every congregation that I’ve had that has ended up fighting fair has been totally revitalized,” he said. After that, “they can talk about things that matter to them, beyond the conflict.” They’ve learned not to duck the hard questions and to deal with one another with respect.
