The church is messy because the church contains people. How can the church deal with conflict in healthy ways?
Acts 15; Galatians 2:1-14
It’s no secret that we live in a contentious, polarized world. Nasty arguments and conflicts permeate our media, and it seems like everyone is quick to voice their opinion about this or that issue, never mind whether or not they have their facts straight. Whether it’s in Congress, in the newspaper, in the coffee shop, or even at a family gathering, no one can seem to speak anymore without causing a fight. As a culture, we’ve lost the ability to debate and dialogue over issues and, instead, we have devolved into hurling sound bites, posting nasty invectives about those who think differently, or focusing on only those news and media sources that agree with our way of thinking.
The church, unfortunately, isn’t immune to that way of thinking and behaving. Attending one of our denominational meetings, for example, is a painful experience. When I went to General Conference last year, every day when I arrived at the venue I was greeted by a gauntlet of people handing out fliers and shouting out their position on a particular issue. Inside the convention hall, the debate was rancorous and, at times, downright silly. Just to establish the rules for debate took three hours of debate. A few of us have been around local church meetings that were equally dysfunctional. I’ve certainly seen my share of church fights over the years—over everything from the style of music, to the floor plan of a new building, to what color the new carpet in the sanctuary should be. It’s always amazing to see what people will get fired up about. As one of my clergy colleagues once put it, “Ministry would be a great gig if it weren’t for all these people!”
But the truth is that wherever you have people, you have conflict. Community is messy business because people tend to focus on themselves first—that’s part of our sinful nature. We have a hard time hearing the other, putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes, listening for understanding, making decisions based not on our particular agendas but on God’s agenda.
It’s tempting for many Christians to want to point back to the early church as a pristine example of the way the church should be today, but when we read the Book of Acts we learn that the early church was just as conflict prone as we are. Handling conflict in the first century was just as difficult as it is in the 21st century, and the conflict that the early church was dealing with in Acts 15 was no minor quibble over carpet colors in the sanctuary—it as about the criteria that the Gentiles needed to meet before they could become part of the church. We touched on this last week when we looked at the story of Peter and Cornelius, and here in Acts 15, as in much of the rest of the New Testament, the conflict raises its ugly head again.
At the outset of this chapter, a significant portion of the fledgling Christian church had left Jerusalem and settled in Antioch (part of modern day Turkey bordering Syria). Paul and Barnabas had been commissioned as missionaries there in Antioch and in chapters 13 and 14 we read about the results of their preaching: the Gentiles and some Jews believing their uniting good news about Jesus while others from both sides hurled stones at them. Back in Antioch some Christ-following Jews from Jerusalem came down to Antioch and began to dredge up the argument that these new Gentile converts would have to be circumcised before they could be “saved.” In Acts 15:2 we learn that Paul and Barnabas “had no small dissension and debate with them” (which is an understatement), but Paul’s goal was not to merely engage in a debate with these Jewish Christians, his goal was to settle the issue once and for all, so he and Barnabas were commissioned to go to Jerusalem where the first major council in Christian history takes place.
A Model for Dealing with Conflict
You know, most of us do our best to avoid conflict. The truth is, however, that the more we avoid dealing directly with conflict, the more likely we are to see it escalate. When we fail to deal directly with conflict, it tends to give strength to the extremists. Going toward the conflict or “moving toward the roar” as one of my mentors puts it, can actually turn conflict from something contentious to something constructive. The early church wasn’t conflict-free by any means, but what we read here in Acts 15 is a kind of model for dealing with conflict in a healthy way, particularly within the Christian community.
Discernment
The first factor in healthy conflict is a commitment to discernment. In our culture, and in much of the church today, decisions are mostly made by votes where the majority rules. When that happens, everyone votes based on their personal opinions. In Acts, however, we see that the early church’s first commitment was to discernment—gathering together to search out what God had to say on the matter. It would have been easy for the church to split at this point over a vote on whether Gentiles should be circumcised or not, but Paul and Barnabas go to Jerusalem so that the Antioch and Jerusalem churches can reason through the question together. Verse 6 is powerful in its simplicity: “The apostle and the elders met together to consider this matter.” Remember here that both sides of the debate wanted to please God. The believers who were Pharisees weren’t evil troublemakers insisting on circumcision in order to throw roadblocks in front of the Gentiles, they were simply wanting to maintain the covenant relationship that God had established with Israel. Paul, himself a Pharisee, saw that the covenant had opened up and that circumcision of the body was not as important as circumcision of the heart, characterized by faith in Christ. They met to hash out the implications of both sides, and no doubt spent a lot of time in prayer over the matter individually and together.
Putting decisions to a vote most often focuses on the question of what we want. In a vote there will always be winners and losers. Discernment, on the other hand, focuses on the question of what God wants, what God is up to, and where God wants to lead us. We cannot commit to making decisions unless we’re willing to commit to prayer and study. This is especially important for leaders, who must be willing to lay aside their agendas in order to listen for God’s agenda. Discernment takes time, it takes commitment, it’s not expedient, but it is absolutely necessary if we are going to come together around the purposes of God.
Discernment is as important at the kitchen table as it is in the church boardroom. When you made your last major decision, did you take the time to really focus on and discuss what God wanted in that situation? I know that’s something I need to remember and make time for. When we commit to a process of discernment together, we begin to deal with conflict from the common ground of desiring God’s best for us.
Experience
One of the factors we bring to our discernment is our own experience of what God has been doing up to this point. In verse 4 we learn that Paul and Barnabas, “reported all that God had done with them.” In other words, all that had happened on their first missionary journey, where many Gentiles received the gospel. In 13:48 it says, “When the Gentiles heard this [the good news about Jesus] they were glad and praised the Lord; and as many as had been destined for eternal life became believers.” They had experienced dangerous opposition from some Jews, while others also became believers in Jesus. Despite the hardship, Paul and Barnabas had seen that God was doing a new thing. Peter confirmed that by his own experience with Cornelius. He saw that God had given the Gentiles the Holy Spirit, “just as he did to us” (15:8) which led Peter to confirm that “we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will” (v. 11).
The experience of the apostles lent credence to their argument. The traditions of their Jewish faith were being opened up in a new way, the way that God had intended from the beginning. They saw the promise of God’s covenant being opened to all the nations becoming true before their eyes in the signs and wonders done among the Gentiles. They were not merely relying on the tradition of the past, but on the experience of what was happening right in front of them. I’ve always liked the definition of tradition put forth by theologian Jaroslav Pelikan: “Tradition is the living faith of those now dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of those now living.” Their experiences among the Gentiles told the apostles that God was living and acting among the Gentiles, while others could only look backward to what they had always known and done.
One of the questions we need to ask in any conflict is, “Where do we see God at work here?” How might God be opening up new opportunities in the midst of this conflict? How is God reshaping tradition in fresh ways? Are we relying on a living faith in a God who is always at work, or a dead faith in which the way we’ve always done it is the only way to do it now? (Remember the seven last words of every dead church or organization: “We’ve always done it that way”).
Scripture
The primary source for determining the right course of action is Scripture. If God is involved in the process, no discernment or experience will counter what God has said in Scripture. In the Jerusalem Council, after the debate and after hearing the evidence that Paul and Barnabas brought to the table, James evaluates it all through the lens of Scripture. Verse 13: “My brothers, listen to me. Simeon (which refers to Simon Peter) has related how God first looked favorably on the Gentiles, to take from among them a people for his name. This agrees with the words of the prophets, as it is written, ‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen; from its ruins I will rebuild it, and I will set it up, so that all other peoples may seek the Lord—even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called. Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things known from long ago.’” This is a quote from Amos 9:11-12, where the prophet reveals God’s plan for the whole world.
The early church was grounded in the Scriptures and we see them quoted again and again throughout Acts. These aren’t merely proof texts, they are quoted in the context of the larger narrative of the story of Israel which the early Christians believed had come to its long-awaited climax in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Lots of people today use Scripture to support their arguments, but most of them don’t understand the whole context of the Bible as the story God’s redemptive rescue mission for the whole world. Without the benefit of the whole story, the discernment of the Holy Spirit, and the proof of Scriptural truth in the laboratory of human experience, Scripture alone becomes a weapon in the midst of conflict. As one of my seminary profs said, and I quote often: “A biblical text, without a context, is just a pretext for whatever you want it to say.” We study Scripture not so we can memorize a set of zingers to prove our point, but to learn the whole story and our place within it.
I got a lesson in this once during my first appointment. The church sat on a college campus and, as the associate pastor, I was to look at ways we could reach new generations of students. One of those ways would be to offer a different style of worship involving guitars, keyboards and drums. I brought this up during a church council meeting, when one of the members stood up and banged his fist on the table and said, “We will never have drums in the sanctuary!”
Well, I was young, full of myself…and a drummer. And I stood up, banged my open Bible on the table and read Psalm 150, which talks about praising God with “loud clashing cymbals.” And I looked that man in the eye and said, “Now there it is! Praising God with cymbals—what goes with cymbals? DRUMS! Now, if you can find a reference to the word “organ” as a musical instrument in here, I’ll concede.”
It wasn’t exactly a comprehensive use of Scripture. I could have built a better case by talking about worship in the temple, etc. and about our Methodist heritage of using popular tunes to spiritual words to reach new generations. But I was fired up, and I used a proof text. I apologized for my outburst. But, we still had a contemporary service!
Scripture isn’t designed to be a weapon, but rather a tool for us to reason together. The early church modeled that approach, and so should we!
Deference
Lastly, we learn that one of the keys to healthy conflict is deference to one another. Jesus talked about not causing one another to stumble, even if we believe we’re doing the right thing. James, one of the leaders of the church, knew that bringing the Gentiles in without them being circumcised was one thing, but there still needed to be some common ground. He urged that the new Gentile converts abstain from “things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled, and from blood”—things that would cause tension at the table. Rather than the winners of a vote getting to determine how the community should practice its life together, James determined that the community should watch out for one another and go the extra mile to make sure that everyone felt welcome.
Now, this decision didn’t completely solve the issue. In Galatians we hear Paul’s frustration that after the Council there were still some Jewish Christians traveling around telling Gentiles they had to get circumcised. Paul gets fired up about this because, in his mind, the matter had been settled. We learn in Galatians that even Peter struggled with the implications of the decision, for when he came down to Antioch he stopped eating with the Gentiles because he feared those of the Jewish faction. The church continued to wrestle with the issue, as it still wrestles with issues today. Conflict will always be part of human life. Heck, in 15:36 we learn that the missionary partners Paul and Barnabas had a “sharp disagreement” over whether to take John (called Mark) with them on the next missionary tour—so much so that they parted ways.
Conflict is inevitable. It’s how we handle it, however, that makes all the difference. We should neither relish conflict, nor avoid it. Rather, we should be ready to manage it together with the discipline of discernment, the evidence of experience, and the authority of Scripture. This is the kind of process we as a church are looking to model, and I hope it’s a model that all of us can use every day.
