Leading Your Church Through Conflict and Reconciliation

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Oakland A's manager Billy Martin had a formula for managerial success, which he expressed in Sports Illustrated. "You'll have fifteen guys who will run through a wall for you, five who hate you, and five who are undecided. The trick is keeping the five who hate you away from the five who are undecided."

There have been times in the past four years, four months, and twenty-two days—precisely the period of time that I have been a pastor—that I have felt like a graduate of the Billy Martin School of Church Management. To be honest, trying to write this article on conflict has been a bit like not having enough time to read the marvelous book on time management I bought six years ago. I feel that I must know a lot about conflict because I have been so involved in it. But I can't seem to get out of it long enough to reflect on what I think I must be learning. As the saying goes, "When you're up to your posterior in alligators, you don't think about draining the swamp."

This may be more true of a small church than a large church. Large churches may have all kinds of different groups and individuals in conflict with one another, but they often have a way of absorbing it all; so as some would say, they can co-opt conflict. Like old man river, they just keep rolling along. Small churches, on the other hand, have too many opportunities for the conflicting parties to keep meeting one another, or colliding, as the case may be. And their conflict has much greater potential to rend the tender fabric of the body. For the small church, it is much harder to keep the five who hate you, or the church, away from those who are undecided.

How then is the small church to regard conflict?

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