Churches Need to Grow Some Chest Hair

Last night was our monthly Deacon's Meeting. We have been going through Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology and wrestling with tough issues such as baptism, baptism in the Holy Spirit, the inerrancy of Scripture, etc. It has been a great time of learning, discussion, and stretching for all of us. But last night I changed things a bit. Last night we talked about conflict management.

We began by reading Matthew 18, which is the normal thing to do when talking about conflict management. It was a great discussion with many tough questions such as, "What does it mean to treat people who refuse to listen even to the church as pagans and tax collectors? Doesn't Christ call us to love even the tax collectors?" Great question that I didn't really have an answer for. But over the next hour-an-a-half discussion I began to realize that we are a typical church. Churches, in general, do not have the guts to deal with conflict in their midst. Their chest hair hasn't come in, yet. It seems so much easier to ignore a conflict and talk about people behind their back, which does nothing to help the situation. To be honest, no one wants to deal with conflict. But as a pastor I cannot avoid it.

I love to see the Deacons wrestling and being stretched. There is no major conflict right at this moment, but we can almost be guaranteed that it will come up. Are we ready as a leadership to deal with it? How can we change years or even decades of not dealing with conflict?

One final thought. One Deacon last night made the comment, "I have never seen anything positive come out of a church discipline issue." Which I immediately disagreed with. I began to tell him a few stories of conflict in my own experience and conflict that I know of in other churches that in the end turned positive. I closed with this comment, "Sometimes the church needs to be pruned by God in order to grow and become what God intends for it. People leaving the church is not always a bad thing."

What do you think? As pastors we must not run from conflict. There are some of us in conflict right now. All of us will be in a conflict some time in the future. Should we do anything in order to keep people in the church even if they are a cancer to the church? Is asking them to leave the church preventing the church from having a positive influence on them? Tough questions that have more difficult answers than the obvious.