Can we handle conflict like Jesus?
Mark Woods writes: Conflict in churches can exist horrible. Nosotros are, after all, supposed to be able to get on with each other, and virtually of the time we do. Relationships can be shut, friendships warm, trust absolute. When that'due south broken, it'south really hard to bargain with.
Sometimes these conflicts ascend because of human cussedness, otherwise known as original sin. At other times, though, in that location are deeper-rooted issues virtually the nature of the gospel and the mission of the church in a particular place. Inevitably, the minister becomes the focus of disagreement as he or she is tasked (as the congregation sees information technology) with keeping the show on the road.
How to cope? Even the title of Colin Patterson's Grove booklet, Embracing Disharmonize: Jesus equally a Model for Church Leaders, is a claiming: many pastors would rather run from conflict than embrace it.
But Patterson – who before retirement this year specialised in arbitration, consultancy and training church leaders in how to handle disharmonize – uses the life of Jesus to reflect on how we tin can practise conflict amend. He writes from personal experience and is honest nigh the cost of this side of ministry.
What makes information technology particularly difficult is the emotional pressure that I feel under, peradventure that others deliberately exert upon me every bit a leader….I know lots of relevant principles, just what will they look like worked out in sleepless nights, sweat and tears, here and at present?
Nosotros hear you. It's easy to theorise, but as von Moltke remarked, no program survives contact with the enemy. But Patterson's hard-won experience has a lot to offer those who are in the middle of that fray.
He suggests iv different models of leadership style – the standard-bearer who prizes passion, the enabler who prizes gentleness, the teacher who prizes wisdom and the managing director who prizes courage. He has more to say nearly them all and acknowledges that we'll depict on any of these in different contexts, but says we'll tend to default to ane. Each of the gospels, he says, speaks to one of these four types, and he suggests reading through the i that corresponds to our ain leadership way and putting ourselves in the shoes of Jesus as he appears in information technology.
Patterson notes that Jesus has no elementary pattern in his approach to conflict, and this is the most interesting office of his statement.
In Jesus I run across someone whose inner question seems e'er to exist, "What is needed at this moment?" This suggests I should resist any approach to conflict that smacks of simply having a few expert tricks upwardly my sleeve.
But that's not to say we tin can't learn from what Jesus does.
Nosotros run into him navigating 'everyday tensions', resisting the 'scripts' he'due south presented with. He resists existence blamed when his parents lose him in Jerusalem as a 12-year-erstwhile; he resists the instantaneous urge to help at the wedding in Cana; he declines the 'alliance' script where he's invited to take sides in a dispute about inheritance. Reflecting on these provides with with tools that we too can use for resisting conventional scripts – though, Patterson says, 'they may not avail much without also having something of the underlying poise that Jesus brings to the encounters'.
Also as everyday tensions, though, we'll sometimes meet real concerted hostility – and hither likewise we can learn from Jesus. The central, Patterson says, is to run across how he engages with the 'spider web of power' with which he'due south confronted. Sometimes it'southward appropriate to competition the space; sometimes it's appropriate to brand more than room. And ultimately, he surrenders to the 'spider web'. This, says Patterson,
…has a shocking significance for us. For we have no example of Jesus deliberately bringing concerted hostility to a head, except in the example where he intended to behave the hurting himself…If I wish to take Jesus as a model of pointed rebuke to the powerful, then I should expect to do then sparingly, with a specific sense of call, and set up to exist a loser by all conventional scripts.
He does non, mayhap, make equally much of this insight as he might; after all, leaders, in the (secular) narrative that's infected so much Christian soapbox nearly this subject, are winners; Jesus, at the crucial point of his ministry, was not.
One of the strengths of this short volume is its stress on existence rather than doing. The inner life is the fundamental to the external. So, 'beingness similar Jesus ways attending to things of the heart', says the author. Among these are open, trusting relationships, confront to face encounters and honesty well-nigh issues. At that place's too to exist an awareness of the shadow side of leadership – destructive traits like bitterness, timidity, contempt and strength. 'Seek the corresponding constructive traits regularly in prayer, if you are to abound more like Jesus,' says Patterson.
I acknowledge to non being a fan of Christian books about leadership. All too often they're thoroughly secular, with a veneer of Christianity to appeal to the worried clergy market. But there'due south real wisdom in much of what Patterson says – and all of united states of america, clergy or not, will confront conflicts in church sometimes. Perhaps we can learn to encompass it.
Marker Woods is Editor at Christian Today, where this review was originally published.
You lot can buy the bookletEmbracing Conflict: Jesus as a model for church building leaders from the Grove website for £iii.95, mail service-free in the Great britain or as an e-volume PDF.
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