I always knew when it was going to happen.
When I was a kid, my family drove from Orange County to Whittier on holidays to visit my grandparents. Since they lived on a busy street, their ten grandkids were forbidden to play in the front yard but besides a swing, there wasn’t much to do in the backyard. As the oldest of all the grandchildren, I learned early on to sit with my grandfather in the den and watch sports – mainly football. That way, he could never yell at me for being disruptive.
But nearly every time all ten cousins congregated at that house, my grandfather would hear the racket the kids were making outside – and the incessant slamming of the kitchen door – and he’d get up, exclaim, “Yee, golly!”, and lock the kids out of the house. It got to the point where I could have gone to the door and locked it for him – he was that predictable.
Trouble occurs in churches at predictable times, too. According to conflict consultant Speed Leas in the book Mastering Conflict and Controversy, there are ten times when conflict is most likely to rear its ugly head in a local fellowship. Let’s do this in typical Top Ten fashion:
Number 10: Increase in church membership (or attendance). Why? Because the addition of new people changes the personality of the congregation.
Let’s say that a church has an average attendance on Sunday morning of 150 people, but over the next year, it swells to 275. That growth will alter its dynamics. Since the church has almost doubled in size, some people who used to enjoy regular access to the pastor will find he no longer has as much time for them – and that may hurt them. In addition, some people who served in two ministries will be asked to serve in only one so a newcomer can serve in the other – and sharing isn’t just difficult for toddlers. When veteran attendees end up in the hospital, they may want the head pastor to visit them, but find he is out-of-town at a conference – so they get the new staff member instead.
As a church grows, it will need to add new worship services, train new leaders, and produce more ministries – and all of this can be disconcerting to those who used to be “big fish in a smaller pond.” While everybody in a church claims they want the church to grow, some will actually sabotage the growth if their own star fades as a result.
The result? Conflict!
Number 9: Loss of church membership (or attendance). Why? Because as the number of people attending the church dwindles, so does the money.
Let’s reverse the attendance figures from the previous section. Suppose a church with an average attendance of 275 plunges to 150 over the course of a year. What will happen? The giving will drop, probably substantially. The leaders will have to institute cuts to ministries. They may have to lay off staff. The church may shift into maintenance mode. And all the while, morale takes a dive as people wonder if they’re on a sinking ship and whether it might be better to grab a lifeboat (and row to another church) while they still can. When a church experiences such drastic changes, some cast around for someone to blame, and their eyes usually rest on … the pastor.
The result? Conflict!
Number 8: Completion of a new building. Why? Because different skill sets are required to build a building as opposed to filling a building.
A little more than five years ago, a church I served as pastor built a new worship center. Before the project was completed, a former pastor quoted a statistic to me that seven out of ten pastors end up leaving their churches within a year of the completion of a building. While that did not happen in my case, I understand why it does.
The construction of any building is an enormous undertaking. While it’s very exciting, it’s also exhausting. You’re on call 24/7. In my case, I had to work with city bureaucracy, hostile neighbors (“We wish you’d go away for good”), the homeowners association, the project manager, the capital campaign leaders, the decorators (“Who chose that color?), the complainers (who thought the building would look differently than it did), the saboteurs (who talked down the capital campaign to others) and angry members (who left the church because they didn’t want to give). And while all this was going on, I was trying to run our normal ministry while everyone constantly tiptoed around the construction site.
In my case, by the time the building was dedicated, I was eligible to take a sabbatical (and needed one desperately), but I delayed it for an entire year because we didn’t want to lose momentum. While our church did grow, it didn’t grow at the rate everyone hoped – including me.
The result? Conflict!
Number 7: Introduction of Baby Boomers into the Church (or any new generation). Why? Because the generation currently in charge of the church must surrender some authority to reach the next generation – and they resist doing so.
The church I attend has a great band that rocks out every Sunday. While some from previous generations may take this style of music for granted, I appreciate it all the more because I was among the many pastors caught in the “worship wars” of the 1980’s.
It’s 1983. I’m the new pastor of a church of 100+ people in the heart of Silicon Valley. On Sunday morning, an older couple gets up to sing – but they really can’t. They warble Out of the Ivory Palaces, not in English, but in Swedish. I am not sure who was blessed, but I know I wasn’t. I wanted to stand up and say, “This isn’t 1950 – this is 1983!” But I didn’t – at least, not in public. (And I could never tell this story in my former church because they had relatives there.)
Two years later, our church had a worship band for our Sunday service. What they lacked in expertise they made up for in energy. We started singing newer praise songs, and before I knew it, twenty percent of the church had left. Guess who led them away? That’s right – the Ivory Palaces couple.
Now, of course, I go to my local CVS store in the 55+ community in which we currently live and they’re playing Bruce Springsteen and Journey songs in the store. And the church we attend has plenty of seniors, some in wheel chairs, and we sing edgy songs by Christian artists who weren’t even born in 1983. My, how times have changed!
While the boomers wanted the builders (the previous generation) to accommodate their tastes, the boomers haven’t been as accommodating to the busters (the next generation). But the churches that don’t reach the busters won’t last past 2025.
The result? Conflict!
Number 6: Changes in the Pastor’s Family. Why? Because alterations in the pastor’s family, health, schedule, and energy will throw some people off-balance.
I served 10 1/2 years at my last church, and during that time, my wife had multiple surgeries and medical procedures. Every time she came home from the hospital, I was not only her primary caregiver but her sole caregiver. Because I had to put my energies into nursing her back to health, I was affected both physically and emotionally and consequently didn’t have as much to give to the church. Whenever a pastor cannot operate at his normal level of energy, it affects the church because people have come to expect him operating at a certain level – and they get anxious when he can’t.
The result? Conflict!
What are some of the other predictable times of conflict in a church? See if you can guess what the Top Five are when I write my next article.
I enjoyed this one too, and look forward to Part II!
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Thanks, David. I could easily have written Part 2 today but it would have been too long. So look for it on Monday …
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I too looking forward to part 2. Have read each and every blog and you are so very clear and informative. I enjoy the readings but often times feel very sad that much of your expertise is from personal experience some of which I witnessed. Looking forward to Monday’s blog. Take good care, Karen
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Karen, thanks for writing! The truth is that most pastors with years of church experience have similar stories to tell. They usually reserve their war stories for times when pastors get together. But my goal is to educate lay people – through a variety of means – so they can stop conflicts from breaking out. As I’ve been reading the Gospels, I’ve been struck by how often the Jewish leaders wanted to arrest Jesus but didn’t because they were afraid of the PEOPLE. My prayer is that the potential perpetrators of pastoral attacks will think twice before pulling anything because they too are afraid of the PEOPLE.
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As a lay person, I truly wish to be educated! You are so very correct, had I been educated, I would have stood up that Sunday in church. Hopefully had more of us been educated that Sunday would have never happened.
As always, thank you my teacher. I so look forward to your writings which are food for this soul which has been starving in the wilderness.
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