As promised, here is my first of five tips for dealing with church conflict and politics.  Let the smart pastor community know your thoughts.

Tip # 1 – Have appropriate advocates and counselors
When
you are involved in some sort of political situation involving another is critical.  The best possible person you can have with you is your supervisor.  If you are an associate staff, this will ideally be the senior pastor. If the political situation involves them,
then have an advocate in the way your church governance allows. This
may be a denominational official, the church council, a pastoral
oversight group, or your supervisor’s, supervisor. If you are serving
in a non-denominational setting, perhaps the best you can do would be a
peer serving in another church.

This person, besides having authority, must be trusted by both you and the person you are in conflict with.

Having the right person with you helps in several ways. First,
they can speak on your behalf.  Frequently these issues become
emotionally charged and personal. Having a respected and trustworthy
third party to process the situation with the conflicted parties can
defuse some of the heat.  Additionally, because they are not directly
involved they may have insight into the situation that your hurt makes
it difficult to see. Finally, while you will read later I believe that
you need to have a positive mindset going into these sorts of things,
should events deteriorate this person can serve as a witness to what
was said and done in various meetings.

One time I was involved in a political scrape because I did not
endorse a style of evangelism for an event that a woman in our church wanted to employ.  This woman was for one style of evangelism – confrontational.  I believe confrontational evangelism is a Biblical model and has a time and place to use , but the event she wanted to use it at was not, in my judgment, the right one. Because I did not think this was the right idea, she was quite upset.  (Typically, I only heard about this as a half a dozen people came to me
and told about the outrageous things being said about me.) A seasoned pastor suggested having a third party in the room with us when we
were to meet face to face.  This person was able to ask questions that
the personal attacks directed against me blinded me to asking. They
were able to help redirect us to sort out the issues. While this woman
eventually left the church, publicly questioning my fitness to serve as a pastor (and even my salvation!), I could always direct people with questions to
the other people involved in the discussions to verify my side of the
story. I can think of dozens of experiences prior to this one where my
life would have been easier had I sought out a respected third party to
enter the fray with me.

The essence of faith in Christ is that we need help, and we can not
save ourselves. We can not nor should not save ourselves when it comes
to church politics either. In the case I referenced at the introduction to this series,
there was probably no way to salvage his job, but had the right
people gotten involved he probably could have left on terms more
advantageous to future employment and to his family.

Talk with you tomorrow.

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