The Issue Is Not The Issue: The Real Causes of Congregational Conflict

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Presumed Causes Of Conflict

Often pastors and members will identify the cause of the pastor-focused conflict as being one or more of the following issues relating to the pastor.

1. Preaching: Inadequate preparation, delivery, and content.

2. Personal preferences: Unsatisfactory grooming, attire, home, car, vacations, spending, hobbies, friends, and politics.

3. Personal qualities: A perceived lack of warmth, enthusiasm, listening skills, accessibility; poor relations with both sexes, youth, people of all ages, families, and singles.

4. Family members: Unacceptable manners that include:

• How the spouse dresses, drives, acts, looks, prays, sings, and cooks.
• How the children behave in school, church, home, and community.
• Anything the church disapproves that are miscellaneous, nonchurch related items.

5. Congregational administration: A perceived lack in any area of the church including the budget, the time the pastor spends in the office, in visitation, in committees, and in community involvement.

6. Pastoral availability: A perceived neglect of pastoral duties, adult education, visiting the sick, choir, fund raising, retreats, Sunday School curriculum, teacher training, officiating at ceremonies, and recruiting new members.

7. Theological attitudes: Dislikes can be expressed concerning pastoral prayers, the order of service, selected texts, music, and traditions that are not observed.¹

However, these are just surface or what researchers call content issues. They are not the real issues. Rather, they are indications of greater anxiety beneath the surface of what is expressed in the content of their concerns.

The Real Causes Of Conflict

Rabbi Edwin Friedman in his landmark book on church conflict, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue,researched the real reasons for conflict. Below are some of what he considers to be the real or essential causes of congregational conflict.²

1. Lay overcommitment. “The intensity with which some laypeople become invested in their religious institutions makes the church … a prime arena for the displacement of important, unresolved family issues.”³

2. Change in homeostasis (status quo): Examples include changes in the…

Pastor’s* Personal Life	Pastor’s Professional Life	Congregation’s Life	Church’s Professional Leader
A birth, death, illness, or hospitalization in the pastor’s family.	The pastor attains a professional advancement.	The pastor enacts new ideas that introduce a power shift from the few to a new group.	The pastor hires or fires a key professional staff member (especially the administrative secretary).
The pastor has an extended family crisis, such as aging parents.	The pastor earns a new academic degree.	The pastor introduces racial diversity to the congregation.	There is a rise or elimination of interpersonal conflict between two key leaders.
There is a divorce, affair, or sexual misconduct in the pastor’s family.	The pastor receives new responsibilities in the extended faith system.	There is a change in the average age of the congregation’s constituency.	There are changes in the church hierarchy or extended church system.
There are changes in the family of the spiritual leader.	The pastor is granted tenure (prolonged stay).	There is a change in the church’s organizational philosophy.	There is a death or retirement of a founder, builder, or charismatic organizer.
The pastor has new, renewed, or prolonged community involvement.	The pastor receives a contract extension.		There is a restructuring of the hierarchy, a re-centralizing, a creating of more or fewer sub-groupings.
… Or any other recent change which may trigger individual responses

*May include other professional staff or significant lay leaders.

3. Life-cycle events: Great stress occurs before, during, and after various rites of passage including marriage, divorce, and funerals.⁴

4. Pastoral over-functioning and burnout:⁵ Pastors who try to do it all and become responsible when others do not carry out their responsibilities are prone to burn out (See “Checklist for Self-Differentiation” from article number 49, “Are You Too Involved With Your Church?” by Barb Schmitz at http://www.ministryhealth.net/index.html.)The most dangerous issue about over-functioning, asserts Friedman, is that if over-functioning is a manifestation of anxiety, it will serve to promote it as well.”⁶

5. Triangulation: In its most basic form, triangulation refers to the proliferation of in-direct communication between two principal parties by involving an additional third party to carry the messages between the two principal parties.

Then What’s The Issue?

When looking at causes for conflict, one must look beyond the presented or content issues. As Friedman wrote, “It is almost never the issue per se that is destructive but, rather, the overall homeostatic conditions that give to any issue its destructive potential.”⁷

Before any intervention, be sure to remember this axiom: “The issue is not the issue.” Look, listen, observe, listen, learn, listen, inquire, listen, investigate, listen, and then listen before defining and addressing the issue or problem. Remember, “The issue is not the issue.”

Thomas F. Fischer, m.div., m.s.a., director, Ministry Health: Support and Resources for Pastors and Christian Ministry Professionals, Rochester Hills, Michigan. For more articles on church conflict, visit Ministry Health website: http://www.ministryhealth.net.

Endnotes

1. E. Friedman, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue(New York: Guilford Press, 1985), 206.
2. Compare Friedman, 202 ff.
3. Ibid., 198.
4. Ibid., 214.
5. Ibid., 210 ff.
6. Ibid., 211.
7. Ibid., 204.