Follow Up to Sept. 27, 2008

Thanks for your responses to the questions about conflict. Our seminar in Fort Wayne tried to respond to all these questions directly or indirectly … my basic responses are inserted below. I can comment on other thoughts at the same time. Caution: this is a long post, so wait until you have time to digest it.

 

Tom Bandy

Currently Toronto

 

How do people who dislike confrontation deal with conflict?

            (Conflict Avoidance patterns)


Forum Comment: For me, this took coaching, mentoring, therapy, and setting up informal systems of accountability in my life, as well as a key formal accountablity. The coaching and mentoring was from more experienced leaders who knew how to productively engage in conflict. Counseling with a gifted pastoral counselor who was deeply familiar with the unique nature of church conflict. Together, those people comprised the informal systems of accountability. The formal accountability consists of clarifying and embedding the DNA and formal agreement that I m-u-s-t be accountable for attendant results — regardless of the conflict it might cause. Finally, and most importantly, a journey to a clearer centering on Jesus equips me for dealing with conflict (which I typically dislike). Ok…one more: I’m learning to like it.

 

My Response: The real issue is not personality, but mission focus and spiritual life. I don’t like conflict myself … and it is my nature to avoid it if I can. But it is the clarity and passion for mission (reaching the stranger, changing the world, sharing the Gospel) that demands confrontation. Either confront whatever blocks mission … or expect to be confronted by God. If someone threatened the well being of your family, the most timid person would become a warrior. Once we see even strangers as “brothers and sisters in Christ”, we stand up for them with equal courage. Now this mission focus doesn’t happen automatically. It only happens as we deepen our spiritual lives … experience the real presence of Jesus Christ. 

 

How can we lead change without alienating people?

            (Veterans vs. newcomers, olders vs youngers)


Forum Comment: You can always lead without alienating people by living deeply in the love and grace of Jesus. You can NEVER lead without people alienating themselves from you. So don’t even try to keep that from happening. Live filled with grace, truth, hope, faith, and love, and let aliens be aliens.

 

My Response: It is true that for a few people any kind of change is simply a threat to personal power. One cannot avoid alienating those few. But they are few. The diversity of membership, age, and perspective can get along together, and accept change, if three things are in place: credible spiritual leadership, a foundation of trust, and multiple options. I have talked about each of these three at great length, and won’t go into it here. But if you have respect for leaders (staff and board) as spiritual leaders … and a consensus about values, beliefs, vision, mission … and provide options for style, learning methodology, a relevancy … then most people will accept change. 

 

How do you change a church with a long history of control or conflict?

            (Overcoming controllers, fighting with shadows)


Forum Comment: By changing yourself. Get centered on Jesus, get clear on what you are called to be and do, and do it faithfully, authentically, lovingly. Never blink. The church will either follow and change or it won’t. Give up the need to know ahead of time. Just do the right things — always — give the rest to God — and realize that the worst that can happen is they throw you out. Not a big deal.

 

My Response: As a general rule, I think the “ratio of recovery” is about 1:5. A year of control requires 5 years of trust building to change corporate culture. You can accelerate that with more intense leadership development, rigorous accountability, and trust building. But it still takes several years to change corporate culture, liberate a church from corporate addictions, and develop reliable healthy habits. That’s why the “5 year mark” can be so important … controllers will try to drive out pastors within five years, so that corporate culture doesn’t change.

 

I think it is true enough that a history of conflict can be resolved by getting centered on Jesus. But I am not sure that the best advice is “don’t blink”. This is because negative corporate culture is not faced down by a “blink”, but by a long, intense, sweaty stare. It may take five years to “stare it down” … you experience all seven stages of control. In order to endure and persist, you need a pilgrim band and a spiritual life.

 

How do you build accountability?

            (Acquiring and firing volunteers)


Forum Comment: Clarify and embed the DNA. Claim authority. Invest authority in others. Be consistent. Be prayerful.

 

My Response: One the foundation of trust is laid, accountability is developed by the universality and consistency of the four basic accountable habits: mission attitude, high integrity, skill/competency, teamwork. You hire, train, evaluate, and fire everyone, and do it universally among all leaders of the church, and do it in a predictable routine. You establish consistent “fair practices” in which people are given reasonable time and coaching to change … and consistent “disciplinary practices” in which people are fired if they are unwilling or unable to change. One this is universal and consistent, you can fire people without it becoming a personal or political issue.

 

Churches should always start building accountability with staff, hospitality teams, and worship teams. This is where the new habit of accountability will be most visibly modeled for everyone … and reveal the greatest positive result. The expand that accountability to the board, education, outreach, and other leaders.

 

How do we lower stress in congregational transition?

            (Move beyond personal preferences)


Forum Comment: You lower stress in a transition by not being stressed. That takes prayer, fasting, journaling/meditating on Scripture, living from a posture of gratitude and joy.

 

At the same time, you can’t control the stress in others. Don’t even try. Moving beyond personal preferences means raising the bar to focus people on the authentic mission of the body of Christ and, along with that, clarifying and embedding faithful DNA. The very act and process of doing this will evoke stress. So you just do what the nurse does before she sticks the needle in your arm. She says, “This is going to sting for a minute.” So — we know, in broad strokes, what will happen, and what could happen — both positively and negatively. Tell everybody what you know. Seth Godin (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/) said it perfectly yesterday: “It’s easy to be against something you’re afraid of. And it’s easy to be afraid of something you don’t understand.”

 

My Response: The one way you do not lower stress is be reducing mission urgency. However, you can lower stress by expanding mentoring relationships. Stress is not really the result of “changed programming”. Stress is really the result of programming change that has outstripped leadership development. Therefore, if you (and the staff or key leaders you coach) invest more time mentoring leaders, overall stress goes down. There is a great deal more to be said about who, how, and what you mentor … but for now I will leave it at that. 

 

How do deal with special situations:

(Staff conflict, external community conflict, conflicting churches)?


Forum Response: Staff conflict: You taught me this Tom. Have a clear grievance procedure. Also, have a clear leadership procedure. I hire, fire, run my staff. Other than claims of moral or ethical transgression, they have to work all conflict out with me directly, and I with them. The final call belongs to me. If I’m smart, I’ll give the final call to them in non-critical situations. But it’s mine to give or not give.

External community conflict - Build a high flying team to address it. As lead pastor, lead. There is no more important arena for a lead pastor to lead effectively than in the commuity.

Conflicting churches: I haven’t experienced this as ever being worth the energy. You go your way, we’ll go ours. Perhaps we’ll meet again. We don’t need to be clones, just drawing from the same source.

 

My Response: The background to this question is that external community, denominational, or competitive church disputes can “spill over” into the congregational life. This may happen because of family ties, or small town gossip, or members wearing many other external “hats” of responsibility. Even in churches that think they have a clear DNA, this “spill over” reveals that the reputation of the church in the community is actually more vague, ambivalent, or sullied that the church leaders think. They may have clarified DNA … but they have not embedded DNA. So look carefully at how rigorously or carefully you train members, nominate or appoint officers, train emerging leaders, and design external communications.

 

How do I take care of myself?

            (Maintaining integrity, spiritual strength, and emotional stability)?


Forum Comment: Clarify and embed your own DNA in yourself. Stay true to who you are called to be and what you are called to do. Read Cloud and Townsend over and over again (the “Boundaries” guys). Live a life of spiritual discipline (Foster and Willard are helpful for me).

 

My Response: Many leaders manage time to build in family time, physical exercise, intellectual stimulation, and so on … and discover that in the “business” of leading God’s mission a merely “balanced life” is not enough. I cannot stress enough the importance of three things: you have to enjoy the “real presence” of Christ; you have be really, really clear about your personal mission in life; and you have to participate in a pilgrim band. Again, I talk about these things often, and won’t repeat things unless you ask me to. Suffice it to say that I find most clergy spiritually unhealthy because they are so caught up in ego, career, or management (the antithesis of each of the three positive things above) that they burn out or give up.
 

What is the right timing for intervention?

            (Healthy and unhealthy conflict, taking sides as a pastor)


Forum Comment: Only if I feel deeply and assuredly called to be in this church and fight the good fight with all my might — and — if I was clearly not making it happen through the normal course of leadership. Otherwise, I’d just move on.

 

My Response: In my new soon-to-be-released book “The Planning Guide”, I talk about evaluating ministries and ministry leaders in two ways: Acceleration and Impact. Acceleration has to do with the speed of mission; impact has to do with the result of mission. Leaders should be monitoring acceleration and impact all the time. Sometimes there are statistical measurements; sometimes you rely on intuition. But whenever you see the speed of mission decelerating, or the results of mission declining, then the faster you intervene, the better. When a pastor uses these things as a guideline for intervention, then it is clear (s)he is intervening because of concern for the mission, and is not just “taking sides” or protecting a faction. 

 

Do I ever give up hope?

            (Taking conflict personally, controllers and money, moving on)

 

Forum Comment: Nope. I might give up a position…a role…a location. But never hope. There is always a way to lead, serve, love, and live in service of the Kingdom of God. Never let a specific church, group, person, situation…rob you of your hope. Follow Jesus. There’s always hope in that.

 

My Response: Church leaders are sinners (i.e. trapped by the fundamental existential anxieties of life) like everyone else, and I suspect that the more successful clergy become, the more susceptible the are to suddenly losing hope. Always remember that the response to feelings of hopelessness is never continuing education … it is always courage. There are three basic acts of courage. The courage to participate (engage, build relationships, and throw yourself into the fray) always comes from your experience with Jesus the Spiritual Guide and Perfect Human. The courage to separate (stand out, risk all, and withdraw from the expectations of the world) always comes from your experience with Jesus the Promise Keeper and New Being. The courage to accept acceptance (own your own forgiveness, radical humility) always comes from your experience with Jesus the healer and vindicator.

 

So if you are hopeless … get courage. Get courageous by connecting with one of these six experiences of Christ.

 

I apologize for the length of this post … please feel free to ask further questions about any piece of it.

 

Tom Bandy

Currently Toronto

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