Intervention in Church Conflict

This book needs to be in the hands of every pastor, church leader, counselor, consultant, mediator, and leader in higher education, organizations, the workplace, and any other place where there are two or more people having two or more opinions. Its goal is to help a congregation or organization build inner resources that could stabilize life together and produce a more adequate and stable organization for the future.

The approach was a real lifesaver for the author who, as a relatively new pastor, was appointed to a church in conflict while working toward a degree in counseling. Applying her studies in family systems theory and narrative therapy to congregational life, she developed a model for conflict intervention in the church (and workplace).

She claims she would have been "sunk" without the research, coursework, advisers, and the fifty-two hours of clinical supervision that went into it. At her new appointment, it was clear that members were lost, hurting, and hampered in using their gifts to build up the whole body. Their story as a congregation was saturated with the pain of sustained conflict; they longed to be reclaimed by the love of God so that they might bring the healing power of the gospel to others.

The intervention was highly successful. Leaders began interacting in a healthy manner, working together toward wholeness. They had a new focus--on strength, not weakness; on leadership and health, not pathology. It had changed from "who has the problem" to "who has the motivation." This change in the more emotionally healthy parts at the higher levels in the system began to produce a change in the system as a whole.

This book is not about quick fixes (which do not exist). It's about ideas, not directions; hope, not merely well-charted diagrams; and encouragement, not rigid rules. The reader will come away with a clearer understanding of their organization as a system, the power of presence, what it means to be an equipping leader, and will be informed as to how to exercise responsibility in effecting a cure.