3 Instances When Mediating Church Conflict Does Not Work

Conflict in churches is as common as it is in the families that make up those churches. However, there are cases where a traditional mediation approach to church conflict will fail to gain the desired result of peace. In such instances, it is like treating someone in cardiac arrest with a change of diet or giving a patient who needs by-pass surgery a colonoscopy instead. It will not help and may make things worse.

In our ministry to churches in crisis, we have discovered that MANY churches are beyond the scope of a traditional arbitration/mediation ministry. Such churches are so sick in heart that if they do not address the source of their pain at a root level – they may be closer to “resting in peace” than enjoying the peace and unity Christ intended for His churches.

Let me offer three instances when your church needs more than a traditional approach to Christian conflict resolution:

• Your current crisis is a manifestation of unresolved/unhealed incidents of previous church woundings. In such cases, a Christian mediation approach will address your most recent conflict without recognizing the historical pattern of pain and what Jesus may be trying to teach your church through it. If you simply address the current crisis, you may make things better in the short term, but your church will be fraught with conflict in the future because, in all likelihood, Jesus is not willing to overlook something in your ministry’s history that offends Him.
• Your current crisis impacts the entire congregation rather than individuals within the congregation. If your church crisis has escalated to the point where the entire church is negatively impacted, a traditional Christian conciliation approach will not suffice. Most mediation ministries lack a corporate component, one which address the impact of sin and wounds on the body as a whole. You need more than mediation or arbitration; you need deep healing on a congregational level.
• Your church’s crisis is related to Divine discipline rather than church discipline. The conflict resolution process laid out in Matthew 18 and championed by several mediation ministries overs a valuable path for handling situations that require church discipline. Unfortunately, it does not recognize that church pain is often an expression of Divine discipline. God allows many church conflicts as chastisement of a ministry when it has unconfessed sin or unhealed wounds in its past. Putting out the latest fire simply will not quench the glowing embers of Divine discipline.

There are many conflicts in churches that present as a “one-off” crisis, say between staff and the senior pastor, or divisions over vision or theology, or the color of the church carpet, but are really symptoms of a ministry that has a weak pulse or erratic heartbeat. In such cases, reaching for an arbitration/mediation approach will not relieve the root of your church conflict.

We recommend you have your leaders take the free online ChurchScan Inventory to discover if your church is facing an interpersonal conflict in an otherwise healthy church or if it is suffering the impact of something deeper. The latter can only be healed by discerning what God is saying to your church through its pain and addressing the root cause of His issue with your ministry.

Rev. Mark Barnard serves with Blessing Point Ministries which works to help ministries experience healing from painful crises. For more on Divine discipline read, Body Aches: Experiencing and Responding to God’s Discipline of Your Church by Dr. Kenneth Quick.