When Church People Swarm
By Margaret Marcuson

As a young seminarian, I was surprised to find myself caught in the crossfire of a major church conflict. I was the focus of it. Some in that congregation didn’t believe women should be allowed to preach. I remember sitting on the couch of one of the church leaders while he stood with his New Testament open, telling me why I was wrong; in all honesty, however, I have to admit I had gone to his house to tell him why he was wrong. In ministry, we can be blindsided by a conflict coming out of the woodwork. The intensity escalates surprisingly quickly, and people we thought we knew behave in ways we never expected.

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Deal with People
By Lovett H. Weems, Jr.

Have you noticed how frequently one person can cause a problem in an organization? The response often is to develop a policy for everyone in order to solve the dilemma with one person. Most of us wish to avoid conflict, so people often are reluctant to deal directly with the problem person. As a result, a policy is designed instead of dealing with the real problem. Almost never do these policies serve the organization well.

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Leaders do not need answers.
Leaders must have the right questions.

A pastor went to a church that had justifiable pride in its many achievements over the years. Yet the pastor began to notice aspects of church life that were not doing well and might lead to serious decline in the years ahead. Knowing that telling people something has little impact compared to helping people discover the truth for themselves, this pastor had a series of meetings with groups of church leaders. After affirming the church, he asked this question:

Even with all we have going for us as a congregation,
where are we vulnerable?

Editors:  Lovett H. Weems, Jr. and Ann A. Michel
Production and distribution:  Joe Arnold

Copyright © 2006 by the G. Douglass Lewis Center for Church Leadership. Leading Ideas material may be freely distributed with attribution (exclusive of material protected by separate copyright).