Excellence in Conflict
In 1992, when I was assigned as bishop of the Nashville Area of the United Methodist Church, a lay member of the Committee on the Episcopacy asked me in a “get acquainted” meeting, “What Bible verse would best express the compelling vision of your ministry?” Moments of uncomfortable silence and nervous delay followed as I quickly ran verses through my mind. Then I blurted out these words, “. . . in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself and entrusting to us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:19).The questioner and other members of the committee politely smiled approval. Then we moved on to other things.
Two weeks later the lay person appeared unannounced at my office with a gift. A graphic artist, he presented me with a matted and framed poster on which he had written in beautiful calligraphy the words I had affirmed as my vision for ministry. Ever since that day, that poster has graced my office. For more than 15 years, it has reminded me that reconciliation is at the heart of the Christian gospel and an essential component of faithful ministry.
Little did I realize when I was assigned as bishop how much of my time and energy would be spent in conflict. Dealing with differences, disagreements, and resistance was not new, of course. After all, I had spent 32 years as a local church pastor. Every pastor, indeed every human being, encounters conflicts. But when I became a bishop, the conflicts I had to deal with—their persistence, level, and intensity—escalated dramatically. So too did the expectations that others placed on me to resolve the conflicts.
While I find conflict threatening, painful, and difficult, I know that it must be addressed. Indeed, engaging conflict is integral to rather than a diversion from ministry. Reconciliation presumes the existence of alienation, conflict, and discord. Differences, with their accompanying anger and tension, are the context in which the ministry of reconciliation takes place. Otherwise, reconciliation becomes a disembodied theological abstraction.
Central to the Christian gospel is God’s engagement with alienation, estrangement, and resistance. In Christ, God entered the conflict, absorbed its hostility and violence, and redeemed the world through the Cross, a cruel and visible sign of violent resistance. Therein is defined the origin, meaning, and power of excellence in conflict.
One of few references to excellence in the New Testament is in Paul’s letter to the conflicted congregation in Corinth. To a community with multiple divisions and intense controversies, he wrote, “And I will show you a more excellent way” (1 Corinthians 12:31b). There follows his hymn to agape and the definition of the “more excellent way.”
Conflict resolution within the Christian community involves more than a set of skills employed to facilitate consensus and harmony, though such skills are important. Rather, conflict is a context and opportunity for embodying the more excellent way, the gospel of reconciliation.
Amid the conflicts of the 1960s, James Dittes wrote a book entitled, The Church in the Way. Drawing on his knowledge and skills as a therapist and professor of pastoral care, he affirmed that resistance and conflict represent the growing edges in the quest for maturity and wholeness. He encouraged pastors to approach resistance and conflict as necessary components of positive change, just as therapists consider resistance in clients an essential part of healing and wholeness.
However, we know all too well that conflicts often exacerbate alienation and foster hatred and varied forms of violence. Therapists are trained to view such tricky exchanges as “transference” and “counter-transference.” They learn and practice diagnostic and listening skills; and they resist internalizing the conflicts and resistance. Such skills are essential to the pastoral role as well if we are to facilitate growth and reconciliation.
But reconciliation is grounded in more than conflict management skills. Excellence in conflict emerges from grace—God’s presence and power to heal, forgive, reconcile, and transform. Paul’s affirmation is that, in Christ, God has already reconciled all things and we are invited to live and share now in God’s reconciliation.
Such participation requires a self-awareness and confidence grounded in grace. It requires courage to enter conflict with the assurance that more is at work than our own efforts. Grace enables us to enter the conflict, listen to the other, absorb anger and hostility, and offer alternative visions of a new future.
Excellence in conflict is desperately needed in our polarized and violent world, where even the church often mirrors the world’s alienation and destructive engagement with conflict. The church’s ability to deal with divergence and discord is a very real measure of our faithfulness to the gospel, as much or even more than the validity of our stated positions and pronouncements on controversial issues. Excellence has to do with how well we embody the “more excellent way” and God’s already effected reconciliation.
SPE peer groups afford abundant opportunities for pastors to experience reconciliation and to engage in the ministry of reconciliation. Such communities potentially offer pastors a safe place to deal with their own inner conflicts and the ongoing conflicts within their congregations. As many participants tell us, diversity within the community is a valuable resource for growth in the “more excellent way.” In SPE peer groups, pastors are learning to confront conflicts with patience, humility, honesty, forgiveness, and persistence grounded in God’s reconciliation of all things in Jesus Christ.
Kenneth L. Carder is the Williams Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity School and a senior fellow with Pulpit & Pew: The Duke Center for Excellence in Ministry. He was bishop of the Mississippi Area of the United Methodist Church from 2000 to 2004 and the Nashville Area of the UMC from 1992 to 2000.
