By Editor Bob Terry
Intuitively we know it is true. If a church gets in a fight, attendance will inevitably decline. All of us have seen it time and time again.
Now a study by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Conn., documents that fact. After studying nearly 900 congregations, the report released in December 2006 declared, “[W]hether or not a congregation finds itself mired in serious conflict is the number one predictor of congregational decline.”
Another study by Leadership magazine is more specific. The study, published in Leadership’s sister publication Your Church, found that four out of 10 times when a church experiences serious conflict, the pastor leaves the church. One-third of the time, lay leaders in the church leave. Few (only 16 percent) are the times that church attendance actually grows as a result of conflict.
The impact of conflict on churches is a major issue for Baptists. Recently LifeWay Christian Resources reported that across the Southern Baptist Convention, at least 1,302 church staff members were terminated in 2005, the last year of record. Specifically 655 were full-time pastors, 333 were full-time staff and 314 were bivocational.
If lay leaders leave the church when conflict occurs in almost the same percentages as pastors and staff members, that means that nearly 2,500 Baptist churches had major conflict in 2005, resulting in declines in church attendance.
The Leadership study also found that nearly every pastor contacted recalled serious conflict in his church, and 25 percent reported being in the midst of conflict at the time of the survey. That is frightening. It is hard to pursue people lost and dying without Jesus Christ when the church is absorbed in internal struggle.
Some people, including some pastors and staff members, anticipate that a church will be exempt from conflict. Instead they find that conflict in the church is almost inevitable. Part of the reason conflict is practically inevitable is precisely because faith and spiritual issues are vital to believers.
How many times have you heard a person say words like “Next time, I won’t get so involved”? Such words are spoken by individuals who have been hurt in church conflicts because they cared, because they were involved, because the issues were important to them.
Differences over visions for the church and spiritual values do not remain properties of the mind alone. They work themselves out in actions. They become driving forces propelling people, sometimes propelling people into others holding different visions and values. The result can be conflict and confusion.
Acts 15 records the story of the confrontation between Paul and Barnabas and those who taught that believers had to be circumcised in order to be saved. Verse 2 says, “Paul and Barnabas had great dissension and debate with them.”
The “dissension and debate” were over different visions for the church and different spiritual values, between the sufficiency of grace and the importance of works. The differences produced conflict so great that outside help was sought. It would be a mistake to underestimate the powerful and intensely personal emotions that differences over spiritual issues can cause in the church.
Some believe conflict is a sign that God is not behind the direction of the leader. That may be the case, but it may also be true that conflict exists precisely because the leader is doing the right things. In Exodus 5, one reads about the children of Israel turning on Moses for his efforts to gain their freedom. But the conflict was not because Moses was doing something wrong. It was because he was doing something right.
Conflict can serve as a vehicle for change. As such, it may be difficult but it is not always bad.
“Hypocrite” is a word often hurled at those who become embroiled in church conflict.
Pastor and church member alike are subject to this charge. Each can act in sinful, hypocritical ways at times. But just because one’s actions do not always match one’s confession does not mean one is hypocritical. It may be evidence of a struggle with spiritual discipline in the quest to grow in the likeness of our Lord and Savior.
Conflict in the church is inevitable. That is why one writer observed, “A decision to serve as a spiritual leader signs one up for conflict.” And conflict, if not properly handled, can harm individuals as well as the body of Christ as a whole. A Chinese proverb says, “If we do not pay attention to problems while they are still far off, we will be confounded by them when they are close at hand.”
There are ways to keep conflict in the church from escalating to the point where it becomes destructive to the unity of the body. There are ways to turn conflict into opportunities for all to make positive strides for the kingdom of God. The stakes are too high for Baptists not to take conflict resolution in the church as a most serious matter.
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