October 29, 2001

Face church conflict, pastor advises
___CAVE CITY, Ky. (ABP)--Church leaders can steer congregations in a healthy direction by honestly facing conflict instead of running from it or turning a dispute into a personal battle, according to a former pastor and noted conference leader.
___Too many church members treat the biblical mandate of reconciliation as an opportunity to argue their case, said Ken Schmitt, keynote speaker at a recent deacon-pastor-spouse retreat sponsored by the Kentucky Baptist Convention.
___Schmitt said many people misunderstand Jesus' three-step process on resolving conflicts recorded in Matthew 18:15-17. The passage calls for private reproof, then intervention by a small group and as a last resort taking the matter before the whole congregation.
___"We see this as one-two-three strikes and you're out," Schmitt said. Instead, he added, "We are to work toward reconciliation for the common good."
___The retreat was titled "Never Call Them Jerks: Healthy Responses to Difficult Behavior." That is the name of a book by Arthur Paul Boers.
___Although this was the first time Schmitt had led a seminar based on the material, the St. Louis-based speaker has done extensive studies in "systems" theory.
___He described this philosophy as thinking about the world and each person's part in it as a whole. When people appreciate how all members contribute to the congregation, they develop respect for others, he said.
___"Systems thinking changes our focus from the speck in our brother's eye to the beam in our own," he said. "The most significant thing we can do to change behavior is to deal with the beam in our eye."
___Too often, members focus on the problems they think others pose, said Schmitt, an assistant director in charge of pastoral care for Wycliffe Bible translators.
___That creates the potential for intense battles, he said. To illustrate, he referred to a past lawsuit in Knoxville, Tenn., where he was pastor of a non-denominational church from 1977 to 1991.
___A woman sued for $20,000 for injuries she received during a contentious business meeting, when she fell over a pew and banged her hand. In addition to her alleged attacker, she named the church as a defendant for allowing the incident to occur.
___Schmitt said the episode was an extreme example of a common ailment in churches, where people avoid confronting others until simmering problems explode.
___"Avoidance isn't love," he said. "We want to avoid discomfort. It isn't dealing out of love. We aren't really turning the other cheek. "
___One solution is to develop what he called Christian assertiveness. This calls for working on the system that leads to problems instead of fretting over them, he said.
___Healing the system often eliminates the problem and helps members develop respect for others' roles, he said.
___Changing a system is also more valuable than concentrating on symptoms, he said.
___He told a story about a high school where girls were kissing bathroom mirrors to leave lipstick marks, despite threats of suspension and other punishment.
___A cleaning woman solved the problem. She walked into the bathroom while females were putting on lipstick, dipped a sponge in a toilet and wiped the mirrors.
___Likewise, when church members get upset with a pastor or other staff member, the perceived grievances against the staff member may be only symptoms of a larger problem, added David Stancil, a workshop leader.
___Stancil, associate pastor at St. Matthews Baptist Church in Louisville, said congregations need to face what they are doing wrong instead of blaming everything on their leader.
___He recalled a time about 10 years ago when he was a layman and deacon chairman in a Baptist church plagued by squabbling and division.
___"I got up and said, 'The last four pastors have left without our blessing, and they were good people,'" he recalled. "'The problem is not the pastor, the problem is us.' It took us about a year and a half to work through that."

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