From Friction to Resolution: Effective Conflict Management in Churches

Are your church's leaders adept at navigating the choppy waters of conflict, or does the mere mention of disagreement send them running for the hills? Our latest podcast episode pulls back the curtain on the reality facing over 43% of church staff members who are less than satisfied with how conflict is managed within their spiritual teams. Together, we'll share insights and practical strategies to ensure conflicts are not only managed but harnessed to strengthen your church's foundation, leaving your team more connected and spiritually nourished.

As the shepherd of your flock, it's paramount to keep the health of your church staff in tip-top shape. That's why we're excited to introduce Chemistry Staffing's 2024 Healthy Church Staff Assessment, a tool that promises to shine a light on the dynamics of your team across seven key areas. This episode isn't just a conversation; it's an armory of resources tailored for leaders who are committed to cultivating a robust ministry team. So, grab your headphones and let's embark on a journey to create a culture of effective conflict management and a flourishing church staff.

Have questions or comments? Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hi there, welcome to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes, I am one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom and today I'm glad you're here we're going to tackle the challenges of effective conflict management in your church. Yuck, who wants to talk about conflict management? Matter of fact, a lot of us spend most of our days trying to avoid conflict management and avoiding those tough conversations. Nobody likes it, but it's part of if you've worked in a church for longer than five minutes that it's part of the day-to-day interactions. There will be scuffles as Judge Judy, my favorite theologian, likes to call them kerfuffles in your church and in your relationships and on your church staff. So let's talk about how to effectively manage conflict in the church today, and we're going to start off, and the reason that we're doing this is it's part of the series we've been on here at the podcast. Hope you've been listening along. If not, you can listen to all the past episodes. When we're talking about the last what? Two and a half weeks now, I think. We've been talking about healthy church staffs in particular and looking at some of the results we had from our 2023 Healthy Church Staff Assessment, and we asked a question specifically about how church staff people feel that their church and their leadership do in managing conflict. And it turns out here's the results. Drum roll please. 57% of church staff that we surveyed and we got over a thousand current church staff that responded 57 percent of those thousand people said that their leadership handles conflict well, or at least they feel like their leadership handles conflict. So that's encouraging, I guess. But it also means that nearly half of our church staff people if and half the people in your church on your church staff, if your church is typical 57% feel that you handle conflict. But it means that what? My math isn't very good, but, like 43%, nearly half don't feel like you do a really great job on managing conflict. So how can churches do better? That's what we're going to talk about today.

Speaker 1: 2:23

Okay, so let's dive in First. Let's look at the numbers. Let's look at again 57% it's a slim majority, but okay, it's still a majority agree that their church leadership handles conflict in a healthy way and, as I said, 22% disagree. That's nearly a quarter. Now, if your church is typical and some churches are going to have a lot less people that feel like there's a bad way of managing conflict there's going to be some churches that nearly maybe everybody. Maybe you're really bad at handling conflict, but in our survey, about 22% almost a quarter of staff members in the United States feel that it is not well. And then there's the 22%, and nearly as many about 20% are neutral. They're just unsure or maybe just haven't been involved in any kind of serious conflicts yet that they have formed an opinion about Okay.

Speaker 1: 3:14

So let's take a look at some of those responses. First of all, the positive responses Over half say that something good is happening. That means good conflict resolution procedures could already be in place. It could be that there's regular training, or that maybe your church just has a great culture of open communication. Maybe your church is very proactive. When you sniff something out that's not quite going well, you have those tough conversations early on. Those are strengths to build on. If your church is positive and doing well in this area, you could always build on those, and we'll talk about that in a minute. So that's over half. That's good.

Speaker 1: 3:53

Let's talk about the 22% that disagree, though, and this is really. This is where the real work lies. This is where the hard work lies right, because you need to take somebody who has told us we asked them does your church handle conflict? Well? And they say, no, we do not handle conflict.

Speaker 1: 4:11

What do you do to help those people that feel, like man, there's conflict and nobody's dealing with it? First of all, you need to be able to. Really, this is one of those areas as a leader where you just have to be two things self-aware and proactive. Self-aware means that you need to have kind of on your radar where are the problems? Are there problems? If you just put your head in the sand and think everything is great all the time, you're going to miss those problems. So self-awareness and then I already forgot the second thing I said, but it is just not only self-awareness. But then I already forgot the second thing I said, but it is just not only self-awareness, but action.

Speaker 1: 4:48

When you find that there are discussions, conversations, you need to be proactive. There needs to be some discussions early on so that those problems and those conflicts don't fester. The longer that they go and they fester, the worse it's going to be and the harder it's going to be to get the person that is in conflict to feel good about. Hey, my church is on top of this and they're here to help us. Okay, so the hardest group that you're going to have to work with as a leader are those people that are dissatisfied, that say, no, we do not do this. Well, now there's a whole other group that the dissatisfied group is about 22%, but there's also a neutral group about 20% that are in the middle. So maybe they've just not witnessed any kind of serious conflict. Maybe they're just unsure if leaders could handle those tougher ones. Maybe they. Maybe you got one right, maybe you got one wrong. Maybe you're batting 50%, you're batting 500. You're batting 50%, okay, and not 500.

Speaker 1: 5:48

So the neutral group and we've said this with most of the questions that we've unpacked here on the podcast the neutral group are the ones that are easiest to sway. They're the ones that are on the fence. To get them from neutral to feeling good is get them involved. Share information openly with your staff how you've solved some past conflicts and those could be without naming names, of course. If it's a small staff, you can share maybe some examples from your past, maybe from a different ministry setting or maybe just some old ones. But being transparent and even including them in some of the problem-solving discussions is really key to help this neutral group to become more satisfied in the area of conflict resolutions.

Speaker 1: 6:34

The other thing is just listen. Take time to listen to everyone, but particularly these people that are on the fence. It's really going to make a difference. Take their suggestions seriously. It really is your chance to turn that neutrality into really some confident support going in to the future, really from a practical standpoint. Be aware, review your conflict resolution strategies and you're like Todd, we don't have any conflict resolution strategies. That might be an issue that you need to really consider. It's always good to have.

Speaker 1: 7:09

I'm not a big policy guy, believe it or not, but I think it's always good to have on paper or at least some scriptural standards for okay, when we see a conflict, this is how we're going to deal with it. Make sure that it's solid, make sure that it's fair. Maybe think about some quarterly meetings where staff can openly discuss how it's going outside of just a normal, the normal rhythm of a staff meeting. Discuss any kind of things that are on people's radar where there might be brewing conflicts with leadership. Find out where people are either neutral or dissatisfied. It's really if you promote and provide this safe place, the safe way to be proactive rather than reactive, it will really make a difference, and in some cases it might be good particularly if you've had some issues, some real issues with conflicts in the past to pick a couple of your staff or someone that can do some conflict resolution training so that they can have the tools that can benefit not just your staff but really your whole church.

Speaker 1: 8:16

So now look, conflict is a part of any workplace, every workplace and even churches, yep. But handled right, it can make things better. And just knowing that there's only 15% 57% that feel good in this area, it means that most of us, as leaders and in churches, have some real work to do here. So let's be proactive, let's be transparent and let's really model this kind of healthy conflict resolution. It needs to be done with grace, but it can be effective. But I'm telling you and this is from your past, particularly for somebody like me that does not like confrontation If you do like confrontation too much, then that might be another issue.

Speaker 1: 9:00

But for people like me that I feel like I'm good when I'm in a situation where I need to confront, but at the same time, I loathe doing it. If you are one of those that kind of wants to sidestep it, you can't sidestep it for long. A lot of times these things don't take care of themselves, and if you don't have a hard conversation early on, you're going to have an even harder conversation later on. Hey, if you have any questions, maybe you're going through a conflict right now and you'd just be like Todd tell me what you think about this. I would love to hear your story, see if there's any way that I can help.

Speaker 1: 9:34

We also offer some coaching on our side at Chemistry Staffing, and this conversation is all part of a series that we've been doing on Healthy Church Staff right here at the podcast, and if you have not taken our 2024 version of the Healthy Church Staff Assessment, you can do that. It's absolutely free. We're going to ask you about 50 questions and it's really going to help us get a pulse on where church staff are in seven key areas. So you can take that right now it's absolutely free at churchstaffassessmentcom. Churchstaffassessmentcom. Churchstaffassessmentcom. Thanks so much for listening to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast.