The First Two Steps in a Church Conflict Both Point at You

Mark Clifton's instinct as a pastor was to avoid conflict. Ignore it, wait for it to dissipate. It does not dissipate.

He and Mark Hallock take the first two of Ron Edmondson's seven healthy ways to handle conflict among Christians on this episode of Revitalize & Replant. Part two is coming.

The first is to see conflict differently. The text is Acts 6, where the Greek-speaking widows were being shorted in the daily distribution. The complaint was probably true, and the church took it up in the open. What the city saw was two groups with no natural reason to get along working it out.

The second point lands on the pastor. Find the plank in your own eye before you catalogue the offense. Agreeing with the true part of a criticism is the fastest way to disarm a man who came looking for a fight. Clifton's picture of the wounded pastor is twenty dollars of accumulated hurt unloaded onto a ten-cent problem.

Neither point aims at the antagonist, which is the useful part if you are your church's only staff member with nowhere to stand during an argument in the kitchen that is not inside it. Read it next to Tuesday's post on readiness to lead a revitalization. The episode wants a wife who will tell you the truth and a plurality of elders in that conversation. Most of you have the first.