When Conflict Becomes a Group Problem (Part Two)
"And certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.’ Therefore, when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and dispute with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain others of them should go up to Jerusalem." Acts 15:1-2
The major theme of my book, When Church Conflict Happens, is summed up in the following sentence from the Introduction. “The good news is that conflict, as painful as it is, provides transformational opportunities like few others—both for church leaders, for their congregations and even for individual families.” As seen in the passage above, sometimes the most challenging conflicts in the New Testament were also the most critical to resolving and clarifying the Gospel’s message of grace!
Digging In
We previously looked at the four high-level steps of facilitating a group intervention. Let’s go a level deeper toward creating a safe and honest environment that allows the group to begin the collaborative, problem-solving process—all with sufficient structure to keep the discussion healthy and focused. In small groups and families, this can be done very informally. In larger groups, a more formal approach may be needed. So, what needs to be true for this process to have a chance at success?
The Preliminaries
Opening prayer and relevant Scripture reading can set the tone for calming hearts (e.g., Ephesians 4:32, Philippians 2:3, etc.).
Establishing agreement on ground rules will offer much help when emotions run high.
Create a safe, transparent environment for people to individually share their concerns, following the guidelines on creating ground rules and facilitating “storytelling”.
Create a collaborative problem-solving session with the group, utilizing a skilled facilitator.
These foundation-setting steps may seem unnecessary or might be questioned when people are anxious to quickly move to the issue, but to quote Benjamin Franklin, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”