CONFLICT  IN  THE  CHURCH

"What is the cause of church conflicts? How can healing occur?"


Answer:  Attitudes that lead to church conflicts are a common occurrence in the body of Christ. The effects of a church conflict, regardless of the cause, can be devastating.

Church conflicts

1.    distress and dismay mature believers

2.    disillusion new believers

3.    cause havoc in the lives of pastors and their families

4.    bring reproach upon the name of Christ.

But there is hope; Christians can experience healing and restoration after a conflict.

Churches are like hospitals, full of wounded and sick people, but in the church the sickness is sin and the wounds are those we inflict upon ourselves and one another because of sin. One sin that causes multiple problems is a lack of forgiveness. No Christian is perfect, and no pastor or church leader is perfect. When all these imperfect people get together, disagreements, hurt feelings and misunderstandings are inevitable.

If our expectations of others are too high, disappointment is inevitable and can cause further feelings of hurt and resentment. Our response to one another should be to forgive one another in kindness and compassion…

Ephesians 4:32 “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

(And perhaps the most important reason to forgive)

Colossians 3:13 “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

Christian love, which covers a multitude of sins, is followed by an increased commitment to serve one another…

1 Peter 4:8-11:

^“8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.          ⁹Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. ¹⁰ Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. ¹¹ If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.”

Once we are committed to forgiving, loving and serving one another, we will see each other’s differences in a new light. But if we react to differences of opinion by taking sides and gossiping, the gash will widen, more harm will be done to the church members, and our message to the world will be further compromised.

A church conflict may happen when someone seeks to manipulate people or events for their own ends. It may be that there is:

1.    pride in rule-keeping and those who do not keep the same rules will be ill treated.  

2.    a pet interpretation of doctrine is emphasized and used as a special test for belonging to the “in” group.  

3.    someone wants to wrest leadership from the pastor or the leadership group and rallies a group of people around himself to accomplish a coup d'état  (rebellion or revolution).

James 4:1-3 says, "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."

Also to be considered is that not all who sit in church week after week are followers of Christ’s teachings though they bear the name “Christians”. Not all who name the name of Christ belong to Him, a truth Jesus made clear in Matthew 7:16-23

¹⁶ By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? ¹⁷ Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. ¹⁸ A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. ¹⁹ Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ²⁰ Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

    ²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ ²³ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

We can identify both the true and the false by the fruits they produce.

True Christians show forth the fruit of the Spirit who indwells them…

Galatians 5:22-23   ^“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

 …while the tares among the wheat sow discord and dissension. We need to be on guard for those the Enemy places among us and exercise both wisdom and discernment, utilizing church discipline when necessary (Matthew 18:15-20) and speaking the truth in love in all things…

Ephesians 4:15 “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”

Ultimately, the church is only as strong as its individual members, which is why Paul admonishes the church in Rome to behave decently “...not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy” Romans 13:13

Church members are influenced daily by an immoral culture, and one hour a week in church is wholly inadequate to counter the culture.  The church is so influenced by secular culture that we think, talk and act in its image, instead of in the image of our Head, the Lord Jesus.  This is why we have private devotions daily, to ask God to purge our mind and heart from the effects of the world that are displeasing to Him!

The world’s standard is one of self promotion, self esteem, and self worship, and other people have value only insofar as they are willing to idolize us the way we idolize ourselves. Such an attitude always leads to “dissension and jealousy,” the inevitable results of worshipping the god of self.

The cure is in Galatians 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

God’s grace, shed upon those who belong to Him through faith in Christ, enables us to deny worldly passions, put away immorality and live in godly humility toward one another:

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves” Philippians 2:3.

Church conflicts are healed through repentance and humility. If there is disagreement, the best would be for both sides to repent of anything said or done in an unloving manner during the disagreement. Repentance includes seeking forgiveness from the party offended by another’s behavior. In humility, each should accept the other’s apology, committing to go forward in the bonds of Christian love.

There is one particular case where leaving a group would be appropriate. If the leadership of a church abandons scriptural stands on key issues like the deity of Jesus Christ, the virgin birth, God as Creator, the inspiration and authority of Scripture, or other foundational doctrines, then it is appropriate to leave that group.

The causes of divisions in the church are many, but ultimately the main reason for a church conflict is that someone has taken their focus off of Jesus Christ and begun to use the church organization for their own ends. The church is to be more organism (living thing) than organization. The Apostle Paul uses the analogy of the body to describe the church. In 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12, he calls the Church the body of Christ. We are to be the body which does the will of the Head, Jesus Christ.

If everyone in the body is focused on doing the will of God and on worshipping Jesus Christ in love and humility, then there may be disagreement, but the disagreement will be worked out in a loving and appropriate manner.

Author Unknown

"Freedom to Not Defend Myself" - Part 1
A Devotional Thought from Dr. Dennis Kinlaw,
Holiness Author of "This Day with the Master"

Isaiah 53:7

He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth;  He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth.  Isaiah 53:7

There exists a glorious freedom for the few souls brave enough to entrust their reputations, futures, and lives to Christ.  Have you ever been in a situation where someone attacked or criticized you?  Perhaps you were misunderstood or perhaps you did something wrong, and someone pounced on your error.  How quickly an alibi rises to our lips, or maybe even a good excuse. 

What a magnificent thing when we don't have to defend ourselves.

Let me ask you, Who is freer?  The person who has an uncontrollable impluse to speak to defend himself and does so, or the person who also has an impulse to defend himself but is free enough to stay quiet? 

Declining to speak on your own behalf requires much greater freedom and power than merely acting on the impulse to defend myself.

How much richer some of our marriages would be if we had that kind of freedom? 
How much richer our parent-child relationships? 
Our professional relationships? 
Are you as  free as God wants you to be?"
~~

Freedom to Not Defend Myself (Part 2) 
Isaiah 53:7-12  
from "This Day with the Master" by Dennis Kinlaw

I had a philosophy professor at Princeton who had a profound influence on my life.  Dr. Emile Cailliet was a devout and godly man as well as an astute thinker.  He had published a little book for laypeople called "The Life of the Mind".  One day in a course on Christian living he told us about an experience he had with a Princeton student who confronted him about this little book. 

"Dr. Cailliet, you're a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, one of the most prestigious seminaries in the world.  You have two Ph.D.'s, and you are an internationally known scholar.  How is it that you could write something as simplistic as that book on the life of the mind and publish it under your name when you're as famous and as important as you are?  It ought to be beneath your dignity."

The student continued, "Above all, it isn't psychologically sound.  I really don't understand how you could put anything like that in print without dealing with the recent psychological work of one of your own countryman, Foucault."

Dr.  Cailliet said to us, "It's interesting to have one of your students deride you," then he continued his story:  "There was that first flush within me, that first impulse to defend myself.  But the Spirit of God checked me and I said, simply, 'Thank you.' And I finished the class.  After class I decided to walk down the street to cool off.  As I walked, I remembered the three years I had spend working with Foucault and actually doing his research experiments.  In fact, I knew as much about Foucault's work as Foucault did.  But that student never knew that."

As Dr. Cailliet walked, a car pulled up by the curb and stopped, and a man jumped out and came running up and said, "Are you Dr. Cailliet?"

He said, "Yes, I am."

"Well," siad the young man, "I just wanted to see you.  I couldn't leave town without meeting you.  I want to tell you about that little book you published called The Life of the Mind.  It was like a light to me in a dark place.  It gave me insights about myself and about life that I had never found anywhere else.  And because of that little book, life's been richer and freer ever since.  Thank you, Dr. Cailliet."

Dr. Cailliet said, "I walked on down the street and lifted my heart in gratitude to God that I hadn't defended myself.  That I had been free enough that I didn't have to.  God Himself had become my defense."