Musings about congregational conflict resolution, ADR, and sources of inspiration

Is there a need for conflict resolution ministries?

There is no doubt in my mind that there is a profound need for such support. Methodist congregations are voluntary associations of people organized around founding principles. They embrace a difficult tension between staying faithful to tradition versus being advocates for social justice and change. This balancing act is not easy. Differences of opinion…conflicts…abound in church life. Until recently, this challenge was minimized or even ignored. Even today, I estimate about 25% of all UMC congregations are so conflicted that they suffer major structural problems in achieving their goals.

Getting started building a new ministry: three steps

Before you start, you need to accept that this will be a long journey. No one is sitting around thinking they need your services except the occasional DS or UMC General Counsel. Seminary still downplays this field. Many clergy are conflict-adverse. Most congregants will respond to you like “deer in the headlights”…unsure of what you are taking about. Many will be uneasy about the subject.

As a first step, you need to develop an internal ministry team. At our church, we created a diverse group of twelve members, including a young clergy member and a retired clergy member. We met every six weeks for the first year. Over the year, some members dropped off, and other members joined.

As a second step, you need to define your mission. At our church, we crafted a mission and four phase approach to frame our vision. We felt that we needed to present a concrete concept to others before we could expect their support. We decided to initially focus on education, prevention and consulting, rather than mediation of disputes. This was a crucial decision to our future.

As a third step, you need to obtain clergy support.  At our church, our goal was to obtain support from the clergy, especially the Senior Pastor. We presented our vision to the clergy and stayed connected with them over time. Ultimately, the clergy endorsed our work.

Crafting the mission

A mission is simply a definition of your direction…who you are and who you hope to become. Some churches start with a highly visible mediation program, while others start more behind the scenes. Our approach was to start slowly and evolve to a more visible status.

At our church, the original mission was:

1. To promote the healthy resolution of differences among the congregation.
2. To build a more consistently respectful culture in the congregation.
3. To educate our congregation in conflict prevention, consensus building and conflict resolution.
4. To build personal capability in each member in peacemaking as a life skill
5. To serve as a “just-in-time” resource to the Clergy, Church Council, and the Conference
6. Over the four years, we feel pretty good that we have achieved most of these goals.

Challenges to success

We have experienced many challenges to achieving our mission, most of them fairly typical in faith-based and non-profit organizations. The first challenge is simply finding a sufficient number of people with passion in this field.  Very few congregational members have extensive experience in conflict resolution. The second challenge is crafting a compelling vision to motivate the ministry team and sell the idea to the church. Many Christians incorrectly think conflict is only bad and wish “we could all just get along.” The third challenge is overcoming the natural reluctance of church leaders to recognize the need. ADR has not been a major part of the American culture, only litigation. ADR is truly a leading-edge area of church culture and practices. In the beginning, we got a lot of glazed over eyes when describing our vision. Only by articulating our past church conflicts in great detail did we sell our vision.

Sources of inspiration

There are many researchers and practitioners who perform exceptional work in this field. One is Tom Porter of the UMC JustPeace Movement. Another is Professor Dave Brubaker of Eastern Mennonite University. Of course, the founding practitioners in the field include the Mennonite leaders from Lombard, Illinois.

The big surprise

The biggest surprise from our history is that we perform more work for the conference staff (mainly the DS) than we do for our own congregation. There are at least two reasons: one is marketing. We have a large church. Unless we constantly meet with new lay leaders, they forget who we are or what we offer. Second, there is reluctance from our clergy and staff to refer problems to us, because we are congregational members. Some clergy and staff view conflict as “exposing the dirty laundry of the church” to non-elected constituents.

The Future

Our future is exciting and unlimited. We have many ideas about our future, which include:

Mediation of individual disputes

The national JustPeace Ministry successfully conducts mediations of disputes for the UMC across the nation. Our ministry team is aware that other congregational ADR programs offer mediation of internal and external disputes. This is an exciting option but requires experienced mediators and significant administrative support. This is a later stage initiative.

Avoidance of UMC schism over sexuality issues

We are adamantly against schism as the means to resolve church conflict, and accept the conclusions by researcher, peacemaker and Professor Dave Brubaker to avoid schism by encouraging an active middle voice of the congregation.

Collaboration with other denominations

The Phoenix area has several ADR organizations and numerous opportunities for faith-based collaboration through non-denominational vehicles. We have informally met with other faith leaders and see this as a future opportunity. We are aware of the rich tradition of conflict resolution in the Jewish, Catholic, and Mormon faiths. Our church has an active affiliation with a Jewish Temple and an Islamic Center.

Outreach to dissatisfied and departing members

Our Senior Pastor has asked us to consider some outreach to those periodic members who are unhappy and are quitting the congregation. Most of them provide advance warning of their dissatisfaction, and some of them could be retained if only someone reached out, explored their concerns, and attempted some reconciliation. Often the departing member has a problem with a particular clergy person, preventing their successful outreach.  We are struggling as to whether this very legitimate concern (and innovative idea) is a focus for us, or instead another part of the congregation.

The Peacemaker Conflict Resolution series

We have recently purchased the training materials from the Peacemakers Ministries, an outgrowth of the Christian Legal Society.  They offer a four step congregational development program, starting with the individuals own capability with handling conflict. Other goals include conflict coaching and mediation. The ultimate goal is to build a culture of peace within the congregation. The series has DVDs and workbooks. See www.peacemakers.net.

The author

Dick Fincher is a full-time mediator and arbitrator of workplace disputes and litigation. He is the Managing Partner of Workplace Resolutions LLC in Phoenix, Arizona. In 2005, he was the National Vice President of the Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR). He currently serves on the faculty of the Institute for Conflict Resolution (ICR) at Cornell University. He can be contacted at 602-953-5322 or rdf@workplaceresolutions.com