Peter Witkowski Discipleship

5 Ways To Resolve Conflict

Conflict-BlogIt finds us. Whether we stay at home, go to school, or commute to the office, conflict will find us. Kids will disobey us, coworkers will disagree with us, and friends will say hurtful things to us. And what often starts as a bright day full of hope quickly becomes rocked by thundering rain clouds of frustration. Conflict has arrived.

Now not all conflict is bad.  Often competing ideas can be used by God to promote godly change, to increase productivity and to develop godly character. As we learn to submit to another in love, the church wins. As Jesus said in John 13:35, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

But obviously many conflicts do not turn out this way. Instead of leading to unity, conflict often produces anger, bruised feelings, and broken relationships. Why does this happen? According to James 4 sinful conflict explodes in our lives because of what’s in our hearts. Notice what he says,

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

We fight, we get mad, and we quarrel with each other because we are not getting what we want. Think about some of these common responses to conflict: “I don’t care what he said, he has no right to talk to me that way; I deserve better; all I wanted was a little peace and quiet; who does she thinks she is; don’t they realize all my skills, abilities and years of service.” This is not to say that the other party is innocent. But the reason we get mad, the reason we respond to sin with more sin is that we love things more than God. We want respect, peace, ease, and love. When we don’t get them, we arm our passions and go out on the war path seeking to attack, humble, and destroy anyone who does not worship us like we worship us. Hence, we are involved in sinful conflict because our hearts are focused on things other than God.

So how do we resolve conflict and bring it to a conclusion?

1. Seek To Glorify God:

Conflict is not fun. But it is also not pointless. Conflict exists so that you and me can
become more like Christ. As we repent of sinful heart attitudes, practice forgiveness, and extend love, we will see our faith expand. Though trials are never enjoyable, they are not pointless. Conflict exists so that we will become perfect and complete. If we want to see our conflicts resolved and our relationships restored, we must seek to redeem the situation we find ourselves in. We must not fear conflict. We must see it as an opportunity for good and for kingdom expansion!

2. Repent:

We get mad not because of what someone else did or said. We get mad because we are peace maklerfinding satisfaction in something other than Christ. To disarm our hearts, we have to confess to God that we are prideful, selfish, and coveting. We have to set our minds on the things above. We must meditate on all that God has done for us through the cross. We must find our hope, joy, and validation in him. Before we can hope to solve human conflict, we must first get our hearts right with God.

3. Confess:

After we repent of our sins, we must seek out those whom we have offended and confess our sins to them. Even if the other person started the fight, even if they’ve done more wrong than us, we must go to them in love, confessing our sins. If we hope to win our brothers and sisters back, we must honestly tell them all our wrongs and ask them to forgive us. We must as Jesus says get the log out of our own eye (Matt 7:5). Many conflicts roll on year after year unresolved because no one is willing to confess their sins. We can’t make others change. But we can deal with our own sin. To begin the process of restoration, we must repent and confess our own sins to every person that we have wronged. As Proverbs 28:13 says,

Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.

4. Go In Love:

After we have confessed our sins and mistakes – then and only then- can we loving
express our concerns to others. Of course, we should only directly talk to those that have wronged us. Telling our friends what so and so did may validate our sinful heart attitudes, but those words will not lead the other person towards repentance. Rather, we go privately go to the person who has offended us, and tell them their sin (Matt 18). And we do not list every character flaw they have ever had. Instead, we tell them about specific sins, hoping that they will respond with repentance.

5. Forgive:

If someone has wronged us, we must be ready to forgive them. When a former enemy asks us to forgive them, we must say yes. We must remember all that God has done, forgiving others because God has forgiven us (Col. 3:13). Regardless of what someone did to us, we have done more to God and been forgiven. If we are God’s children, we can forgive others. This may not come easy. Our flesh will say, “No way.” But as we plead with God to help us, he will change our hearts. If we have been redeemed by God, we can love our enemies. Now forgiveness does not mean that consequences disappear. The child who ate a one-pound bag of Oreos by himself is still banded from the pantry. But his parents, no longer hold the crime against him. They no longer mention it or bring it up. They have forgiven him. As Ken Sande said,

Forgiveness is a radical decision not to hold an offense against the offender.

We must be ready to forgive.resovling conflict

Conflicts can get tricky in a hurry. But no conflict has to destroy. For Christians, there is always hope. For more info about how to deal with conflicts, I highly recommend that you checkout Resolving Every Day Conflict or The Peace Maker by Ken Sande.

Are you ready to biblically resolve your conflict?

 

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/28842017@N00/26326972123″>street portrait</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

 

Peter Witkowski Children's Ministry

3 Ways To Prevent Ministry Collisions

conflict pictureI wobbled around the yard with the ball in my glove. My older brother was lying on the ground with a bloodied nose. We were both a little fuzzy (a complication of being knocked silly) on how we got to this point. We think the general story went like this: In an effort to work on catching pop-flies my brother and I would toss a ball as high as possible and then run underneath it to catch. On this occasion, I had tossed the ball and doggedly charged after it. My brother did the same. And seconds later, the ground shook as two skyward gazing grade-schoolers ran into each other at full speed.

Often church people do exactly the same thing. With eyes fixated on expanding the church, people smash into each other seeking resources for their specific ministry, projects, or ideas. And when they do collide over how the budget will be spent and on who gets to reserve the fellowship hall, things can get messy in a hurry. People in the church start complaining, start rooting for programs to fail, and start stressing how much more important X Ministry is than B Ministry. I.e. the same team starts competing against itself. When this happens, the ministry game comes to the stretching halt.

When I was playing high school baseball, my team was blessed with enough talent to thoroughly thrash a couple of our lower quality opponents. During one such thrashing, we geared up to start of the 4th inning. As we slide on our gloves, the other team decided that they had had enough. They had enough of the errors, the poor pitch selections, and the bad calls. Their gloves came off and a full out brawl began…in their dugout. We watched passively in amazement as a tornado of gloves, hats, and punches whipped around the visitors’ dugout. Needless to say, the team forfeited that game and the rest of their season. They were done.

And when the church turns in on itself, it is done.  Once we exchange the liberating hope of the gospel for the despair of personal opinions, we become bring all real ministry to a halt. Humility evaporates. Relationships break down. And, God is forgotten. What’s left? A bunch of squabbling teammates that can’t even live up to the world’s standards of friendship.

What the solution?

1.      Be Thankful

We begin with thankfulness. Instead of being angry, instead of clinging to our own ideas as if they descended from heaven, we stop and thank God for our brothers and sisters in Christ. Notice what Paul say in Philippians 1:3-4,

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy.

Paul is thankful because they are all on the same team. They are all servants of Christ united together through the gospel. The next time we are tempted to get upset, to lash out at a fellow believer over some program, we need to stop and pray for that person. We need to be thankful that the same God working in us in working in them. We need to praise God that he saved both of us.  We need to teach our hearts to love others. We may have different ideas. But we have the same God and savior. Instead of attacking our fellow teammates, let’s be thankful for them and for their ministries.

1.      Be Thankful Again

Ok, now some of you may be thinking that I can be thankful for most people. But then there is that special class of people who always get on our nerves, who do things out of spite, or who do things to advance themselves. Surely we can fight against those people. And if these people are getting the gospel wrong, then yes would should address them in love. We should speak truth. But if they are preaching truth from wrong motives, Paul says rejoice. “What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.” I.E. if the ministry you deem to be most important is being trampled by another ministry that’s growing (even with bad leadership) we should rejoice. Why? Why is Paul rejoicing? We can rejoice with Paul because ministry is not about making much of us and our ideas. It’s about making much of Jesus and his church. Let’s rejoice and praise everything that moves the gospel forward!

2.      Check Your Heart

In addition to being thankful, we also need to be honest with ourselves. Ultimately, the reason we turn on other church members is that we have messed up hearts. We are worshiping our ideas and programs. When we don’t get them, we sin. Notice in Philippians 2:3-4 Paul says,

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

The reason we get mad, the reason we attack ministries, and the reason we complain about our fellow church members is that we are motivated by ambition and conceit. If our main complaints about programs and the church are focused around the pronouns “I” and “me,” we have a problem. We are not looking to the interest of others. We are being selfish. We need to stop and start putting others first. Why? Because this is what Jesus does. He humbled himself to save us. If we are going to be like Christ, we must humble ourselves so that Christ and his church can flourish. Friends, we need to be honest with ourselves. If we are fighting with people in our church, if we are always critical, if we have competing ministries, we have hearts out of line. Before we fix or change any program of ministry focus, we need to repent.

It’s natural for there to be competition, complaints, and attacks in the church. After all it is a hospital for the spiritual sick. But instead of blooding each other, let’s humbly put others first. Let’s keep our gaze on Christ. Let’s be thankful for our fellow Christians, and let’s be honest with each other. Together, we can keep the church moving forward!