Conflict within Congregations
Congregations Without Conflict Fail to Learn How Not to Escalate Conflict
In my book, Every Congregation Needs a Little Conflict, I share the following about congregations without a healthy intensity of conflict:
“Congregations without a healthy intensity of conflict do not learn how to keep conflict from escalating to an unhealthy intensity. Because they do not know how—or refuse—to deal with healthy intensities of conflict, significant conflict situations get out of hand too quickly.” [9]
I like this thought on conflict. However, I would add that it helps if the conflict/tension is about something important.
Too often I see conflict in Churches around unimportant things, usually associated with worship: music style etc.
How much better would it be if our disagreements and resulting conflict is about how we are engaging with our local community in mission?