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I recently heard some training on conflict. And while it was good in and of itself, I realised that the trainer had made an assumption that there was only one kind of conflict – the personal kind. And that the way we deal with conflict is through meeting people face to face, talking through the issues with a mediator, etc. 

 

However I believe personal conflict is just one of three kinds of conflict you might find yourself facing in a church setting – and we need to be ready to face the right kind of conflict in the right kind of way…

 

 

In the following diagram you can see that I think that there is (a) personal conflict, (b) strategic conflict, and (c) theological conflict. And the way you would deal with each of these is different!

 

 

 

Personal conflict is when one person has issues with another in terms of their personal relationship. Perhaps one feels slighted by the other, having received some perceived injury in the past. The way you deal with this is outlined in Matthew 18 – you should go to the other person and make your peace with them, and if necessary bring someone along. The aim should be reconciliation through forgiveness.

 

Strategic conflict is when one group has a difference of conviction to another, not about the truth of the Bible nor about personal relationships, but in how to live out the broad imperatives of the Bible given the particularities of our time, location and limitations. Perhaps one group feels that we should start up a ministry to people from the sub-continent now, while others feel that we should wait another ten years. Perhaps one group feels we should focus on reaching the Chinese, and another group feels we should reach out to everyone in the local community. The way we deal with this is to allow elected, godly leaders to decide after appropriate consultation. This is what church governance structures are for.

 

Theological conflict is when one group challenges the exegesis or theological assumptions of the other. Perhaps this might be on the issue of the place of spiritual gifts today, or women preaching, or the nature of Jesus’ resurrection. You would hope that the way this kind of conflict is dealt with is with everyone coming together to humbly sit under God’s word, to see whether one is a more accurate interpretation of God’s word than the other. And in this regard you would hope that even if one small child raises a valid issue, the whole church would be willing to study the Scriptures to see if it is true. Because of our conviction that God now speaks to his church through his word.

 

You may be able to see from this that it is not appropriate to employ the resolution methods for one kind of conflict, to solve a different kind of conflict. How dodgy would it be if questions of theological truth were decided by an elected group of people! How strange for personal conflict to be sorted out by a group of leaders! Or for theological truth to be sorted out through compromise!

 

No: we must carefully discern what kind of conflict is present, and employ the appropriate means for resolving that conflict. 

 

 

Now in all this be aware that there is a tendency for things to slide from one category to another. Someone who is against focussing on the Chinese may claim that it is not just a strategic question, but a theological question (because of what it says about our doctrine of church). Someone who finds that their ministry proposal is being rejected by another party may find themselves becoming distant from the other party and distrusting them at the relational level.

 

This is why it can sometimes be tricky to negotiate conflict – because after a while more than one kind of conflict is involved! And in that case we wouldn’t ignore the secondary personal conflict in order to focus on the primary strategic conflict - we would now also have to deal with that personal conflcit, using appropriate means.

 

[ PS: ever found yourself sliding from one conflict into another? ]