Conflict is inevitable. Even in a healthy marriage, family and church.
Like healthy marriages and families, healthy churches don’t avoid conflict, but they deal with it well.
I’ve been in pastoral ministry for more than 35 years. In the early days, I dealt with more conflict than in recent years. Not because the early churches were bad, but because I didn’t know how to deal with conflict as well as I do today.
Unfortunately, I learned how to deal with conflict the hard way – by making mistakes.
Through those mistakes, then through watching and learning from other churches, I have discovered 6 principles that healthy churches use to deal with conflict well:
Author
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Karl produces resources for Helping Small Churches Thrive at KarlVaters.com.
He's the author of four books on church leadership. His fifth book, De-Sizing the Church: How Church Growth Became a Science, Then an Obsession, and What's Next, releases on April 2, 2024.
He also hosts a bi-weekly podcast,The Church Lobby: Conversations on Faith & Ministry. Episodes feature in-depth interviews about the topics that concern pastors, especially those who minister in a small church context.
Karl has served in small-church ministry for over 40 years, so he speaks and writes from decades of hands-on pastoral experience. He and his wife, Shelley have three children and two grandkids.