When All Else Fails, Follow the Instructions

2 09 2010

Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. James 1:23-24

When installing an appliance or putting together a piece of furniture, it seems to me there are levels of understanding. The lowest level is when you know you don’t know anything at all, so you sit down with the instructions first, before you do anything.  The next level is when you think you know something about it, so you start without the instructions and soon find that your are in fact an idiot and then sit down with the instructions. The third level of understanding is when you know enough about the task to know that each case is a little different, so you start by sitting down with the instructions.

If there are higher levels of understanding than this, I admit to being totally out of touch with them.  I myself typically float back and forth between the first two levels. When my wife sees me walking through the house carrying a tool, she immediately drops what she’s doing and follows me as she grabs the phone and calls for help. I have learned (mostly the hard way) how helpful it is to read and follow the instructions from the beginning.  In my case, it doesn’t guarantee success, but it at least prevents me from screwing my table top into the floor, or other such embarrassing results.

When asked how I can mediate congregational conflict in such a wide variety of denominations and churches, how it is possible to effectively navigate church conflict even with little understanding of the culture, the answer seems obvious to me: I just stay focused on the instructions, i.e., scripture.  I learned early in this ministry that there is no amount of worldly wisdom or experience which can guarantee a peaceful, successful mediation in a congregational dispute.  Emotions are high, the pain runs deep, and volatile relationships are unpredictable at best.  There simply is no putting things back together without starting with the instructions: the Word of God.

Interestingly, once you start there, the cultural differences suddenly do not matter much.  Scripture has this remarkable ability to cut through culture and the things of this world.  I certainly cannot always explain why it works…I just know that it does.  That, of course, is what child-like faith looks like.  Finding our way through broken relationships requires a child-like faith in the Word of God and what it tells us about relationships.  As my Dad always says: when all else fails, try reading the instructions.

Of course, I have from time to time encountered a group for whom the Bible is not the final word…a group who questions its authority.  I am always quick to clarify for them that I really have nothing to offer them.  I wouldn’t even know where to start.  If as a “church” they don’t recognize God’s Word as their supreme authority, then for me it is like trying to put something together with no instructions at all.  If the instructions which come with my new appliance are nothing more to me than guidelines, i.e., loose fences to lean against, then chances are pretty good that my new appliance will never work the way it was intended to work.  For a Christian, “The Word” should be at the very center of life.  For a church, it should be the very foundation upon which all things are built.

When it comes to mediating congregational conflict and all its inherent complexities, I am just not smart enough to come up with my own “wisdom” about how it should go.  I am at the lowest level of understanding.  So, I start with the instructions.  I let scripture order my steps and inform my process.  I allow God’s Word to set the agenda.  Then, just maybe, there is at least a chance for success at the end of the day.

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com


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Categories : 5 Principles of Unity, Church Unity, Peacemakers, conflict, leadership

Peacemakers as “Communication Artists”

31 08 2010

Tuesday Re-mix -

This is the next in a series of posts originally titled “Habits of Peacemakers”.

I think my favorite peacemaker in the Bible was Abigail (I Samuel 25).  She saw a disastrous conflict coming (thanks to her absolute jerk of a husband) and she got involved.  She “handled” communication in such a way as to avert a very painful scenario for her family and probably for others as well.

That is a habit of peacemakers.  They see danger coming where there has been a breakdown in communication and they involve themselves in the communication efforts.  They become “interpreters”, helping each party hear the real concern on the other party’s part.  They become “press secretaries”, helping each party learn a better, more productive way to say what they are feeling.  They become “scribes”, making sure that only the right words get etched in stone for posterity’s sake.  And in some cases, they become “advocates”, giving voice to a party who’s voice is otherwise not going to be heard.

Peacemakers understand one thing about relationships: they rise and fall based completely upon perceptions.  Your response to me (i.e., your half of our relationship) will necessarily be based on your perception of me or of something I have said or done.  Knowing this, peacemakers help control that perception by controlling the communication.  They get involved in that process in order to ensure that genuine communication is really happening (as opposed to speculation or wrong conclusions).

Peacemakers insist that there be communication when there otherwise would not be.  They stop the gossiper and insist that he/she talk directly TO the person rather than ABOUT the person.  They push me to talk to you about my feelings when I might rather stew and steam a while longer.  They let you know that I am stewing and implore you to come to me and listen.

Peacemakers intercede between you and me in order to help me understand your pain and to help you understand my pain.  They have an ability to take my deepest concern and express it to you in words you will understand, and vice versa.  They step between us, just temporarily, in order to get us past this communications glitch.

A peacemaker sees someone trying desperately to communicate something important to another person who clearly is not understanding, and the peacemaker is compelled to step in and help the communication happen.  It is how they are wired.  They cannot help it.

Peacemakers have, over time, naturally developed a knack for delivering difficult messages, hard or painful truths…so much so, that their friends and family often ask -them to handle difficult communications for them.  This particular skill, perhaps as much as any other, sometimes pushes them into leadership positions.  Because saying the hard things is something leaders do.  For genuine peacemakers, “speaking the truth in love” is more than just an admonishment, it has become an art form.  And they are artists.

So, who do you know like this?  Who are the peacemakers in your life?

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.

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Categories : Church Communications, Peacemakers, Reconciliation, leadership

Focusing Through the Pain

26 08 2010

“Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.” Hebrews 3:1

This week in The Gathering, I will teach about God’s perspective on grief.  Tough lesson for me, since I have been blessed with only a limited amount of it in my life.  Frankly, I’ve done a whole lot more consoling of others than I have needed consoling myself.  But you don’t have to be an expert on grief to know that it has a profound effect on our ability to see truth.  In fact, a part of the healing process is learning to look through the pain to some larger truth which, difficult as it may be to grasp in spite of the pain, still has a way of guiding us.

But the grief process is not reserved only for individuals.  Churches grieve also.  The loss of a much-loved leader, the loss of a ministry or program, the loss of a “way of doing things”, the loss of unity…all of these can cause a type of grieving process for a church.  And like the grieving process for an individual, it can be unpredictable and unrelenting.  It can last a few days or a few years, perhaps even an entire generation.  It can cause the church to do and say things it doesn’t mean to do and say.  But most of all, just like the grief process for anyone else, it is painful…unbearably so.

Moreover, grief has a way of disorienting us, both as individuals and as congregations.  It turns up into down and right into left.  It leaves us not even knowing which way to look for direction.  It is chaotic and complex and confounding.

So, it is in the pain of real grief when we are often left with little orientation other than to fall back onto whatever “safe harbor” we have established ahead of time.  For me, that would be God’s Word.  Whether in my individual grief or in my corporate grief, I have already long since decided where I will turn.  I have placed my most childlike faith in God’s Word, so that, even through the unspeakable pain of emptiness and loss, I can at least find some general sense of my bearings.

Of course, hearing the truth–perhaps even knowing the truth–does not take the pain away.  It does not bypass the grief process.  We must still go through all the pain which grief brings, for however long the process may be for us.  But fixing our eyes on eternal truth at least serves to give us direction, it reminds us to breathe, and then to breathe again.  It walks before us every day of the journey, calling us one more step forward…not around the grief, but through it.

It gives us the only thing we can trust during the otherwise mixed-up season of emptiness and loss.  There is nothing else trustworthy, nothing else which is not capable of leading us astray.  We must fix our eyes on Jesus and cling to His Word…and crawl forward, and then do it again.  And at some point a long way down that road, clarity begins to come again.  And though the loss is still there and has carved out a new normal for us, we still have the one thing worth holding onto through it all…God’s love.  And isn’t that exactly what your church needs most?

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com


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Categories : 5 Principles of Unity, conflict, leadership

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