If they can quit fighting, anyone can

Posted: 7/21/06

If they can quit fighting, anyone can

By Trennis Henderson

Kentucky Western Recorder

MEXICO CITY—Acknowled-ging Christians “will always have conflict,” Paul Msiza of South Africa advocated for conflict resolution during the Baptist World Alliance annual gathering in Mexico City.

Msiza, general secretary of the Baptist Convention of South Africa, recounted how his convention broke away from the Baptist Union of South Africa almost two decades ago.

Amid escalating tensions between the two Baptist organizations, “there was not sheep stealing but congregation stealing,” Msiza noted. “We ended up as Baptists hating each other’s guts.”

Repeated efforts to reconcile failed as Baptist leaders “kept on blaming one another,” he recalled.

But during a dialogue session in 2000, participants wrote down all the hurts they had experienced and affixed them to a wall.

“The wall was full of all these bad things Christians were doing to one another,” Msiza reported. The leaders then agreed to celebrate the Lord’s Supper together the next day, but “they began to realize they couldn’t have communion without confession.”

“It was kind of like a breakthrough,” he said. “We put this under the blood of Jesus. We started to be able to talk to one another.”

Lessons learned during the conflict resolution-process include:

• Leaders are a key to resolving conflict.

• Leaders must realize the need to resolve conflict.

• Leaders must be willing to extend a hand of reconciliation to one another.

• Leaders must be prepared to pay the price for reconciliation. “The big price you pay is to swallow your pride,” he pointed out.

• The church has the spiritual means available to bring about reconciliation.

• Avoid the temptation to celebrate reconciliation too early.

During reconciliation efforts in South Africa, “we could have made more progress,” Msiza said. “We embrace, but sometimes we don’t go to the root of what makes us fight.”

Anne Wilkinson-Hayes, a regional minister for the Baptist Union of Victoria in Australia, also spoke on conflict resolution.

Noting church conflict often begins with minor differences, she said one key to reducing conflict is to “help our churches strengthen their conflict-resolution skills in peacetime.”

Some of the primary causes of church conflict include individuals not feeling listened to, people harboring hidden agendas, poor skills in handling differences, gossip and unclear or unrealistic expectations of roles, she said.

“In any growing church, there will be change and disagreements,” Wilkinson-Hayes said. “The whole congregation needs to be listening to God together to discern his will.”

Urging Christians to seek to resolve differences based on Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 18:15-18, she added, “Try and go directly to the person concerned.” Encouraging churches to adopt a covenant for church health, she said local congregations should strive to become “communities of Christians who are resolved to act differently—to act Christianly.”