Overcoming Conflict in the Life of the Church

Introduction

The first church I was a part of as an adult was a wonderful family of faith when I first started attending. However, I had no idea when I joined that there were issues under the surface which would eventually lead to a pretty ugly church split...

Churches will experience conflict and issues because churches are made up of people…who have issues and conflict with one another.

And, if we had to muddle through church life without a guide, there would be no hope for the church.

But we do have a guide book! And it tells us exactly what to do when it comes to overcoming conflict in the life of the church.

We are in a series focusing on biblical church leadership. The two biblical “offices” of the early church were overseers (elders/pastors) and deacons.

Before we dig into those two roles, lets see why they were necessary in the first place.

Body: Acts 6:1-7

Verse 1

As a church grows, don’t be surprised if complaints come up.

“If the devil cannot destroy by attacks from without, he will seek to overthrow by dissension within.”

Sometimes they are simply worthless whining…

Other times they are based important issues…

But at all times the issues must be dealt with in a godly manner!

The problem came, in part, because the church was experiencing tremendous growth so the administration could not keep up with the number of people.

The basis of the complaint was that the Greek-speaking Jewish Christian widows (also called Hellenists or Grecian Jews) were being neglected in the daily food program.

The OT required that the poor and needy be taken care of, which would have included widows.

At the heart of this issue is the age-old problem of discrimination.

They were being discriminated against as not as important as native-born Hebrew widows.

The Hellenists were Greek-speaking and Greek-thinking Jews of the Diaspora, as opposed to the Aramaic-speaking Palestinian Jews.

This may have not been intentional discrimination…but it still was a problem.

The Hellenists would be in Jerusalem because as they got older, Jews in the Diaspora would often return to the holy city to die…

Verse 2-4

A solution is identified.

The apostles could not stop preaching the word to administer a food program. So a new ministry is created.

Notice that ministries in the early church were based upon need...

Modern churches often have a “we need...” mentality. But, God will often show us what we need as we move forward preaching and teaching the Gospel, worshipping Him, and sharing the Good News with people.

Before this point only two ministries are specifically mentioned; prayer and the ministry of the word.

This word order is not accidental. Prayer must always lead out for preachers.

“They made it a point to speak to God about men before speaking to men about God.”

Were they deacons?

The word deacon comes from the Greek word διάκονος which does not occur here at all. The word here is διάκονος which means to serve or minister.

It’s sometimes argued that the office of deacons is not being created here. Regardless of whether that is true or not, I would point out the following:

Throughout the life of the church, needs arise. They did then, they will now.

One of the needs is to serving those in need.

Here, a group of seven men are chosen to administer serving the needs of widows.

So, to me the argument is moot. True, no official “office” is created, but a ministry in which a group of men serve the needs of the body arises.

Is that ever not needed within the church?

They picked out seven men.

The qualifications were that they needed to be:

Of good repute

Full of the Spirit

Wise

However, in 1 Timothy 3:8-13 we see Paul’s list the qualifications for a deacon, which cover all of those, plus some.

This ministry existed to free the apostles up for the ministry:

The ministry of prayer

The ministry of the Word (preaching & teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ)

A deacon ministry exists to minister to the needs of an ever growing body of Christ and free the pastor from some of the ministry duties so he can be devoted to prayer, the preaching and teaching of the Word, equipping the saints, and protecting the flock.

Verses 5-6

The seven men are chosen.

Not much is said about them, except for:

Stephen – Luke not only says he was a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, but is going to spend the rest of this chapter and the entire next chapter talking about him.

Philip – Luke doesn’t say anything about him here, but chapter 8 gives us two important stories about Philip.

Nicolaus – Luke simply says that he was a proselyte (convert…probably a Gentile who converted to Judaism) from Antioch. Antioch will soon become a center of missionary activity, so that might be why Luke mentions this.

I think there is something telling in what little is said about these men.

These men were not concerned with themselves, but with others. The great mark of a good church leader.

Their names are Greek, so it’s possible that they purposely chose Greek-speaking men so no further complaints of favoritism could be claimed.

However, it wasn’t uncommon for Hebrew men to choose Greek names as well as their own.

The people then laid hands on them to commission them for their task.

The laying on of hands in this type of situation is a way to say, “You go as part of us.”

Verse 7

Here we have one of many summaries of life in the early church in the book of Acts.

This is a result of the proceeding verses.

Church unity and openness to deal with issues often results in church growth…but not always!

God was blessing the ministry:

People were becoming disciples.

Even priests!

But, this is the end of the ‘prosperous’ period of evangelization in Jerusalem.

Interestingly, this section begins a two-chapter section of Acts that transitions the Gospel from a Jerusalem-based, Jewish oriented faith to the beginnings of the ministry to Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth.

So What?

What does the church do when conflicts and issues arise in the life of the church?

The church remembers its commitment to unity.

Some church problems are more pressing that others.

How could this potentially threaten the unity of the church?

Is this one person or one family’s issue, or is it something that involves numerous people?

What is the attitude of those who are involved in the issue? (“I’m right, they are wrong” vs. “How can we find common ground and do nothing to hinder the work of the Gospel?”)

Bad attitudes are a major problem, but it’s the attitudes that need to be addressed before the “issue.”

The first step when an issue arises in a church is for each person involved to remember that God cares a lot more about the unity of the church then you getting your way.

The early church faced a real problem. A problem that could have caused a divide that, if left unaddressed, would have likely split the church along ethnic lines in ways that would have damaged the church greatly.

But, because their was a commitment to unity, they dealt with the issue.

The church remains committed to ministering to people’s needs.

Regardless of why the Greek-speaking widows were being neglected, the apostles understand that it was the church’s responsibility to minister to the needs of all of its people.

But, it was something that required people in the church to step up.

In this case, seven are chosen to fulfill this need.

Whether this is the start of the deacons ministry or not doesn’t really matter. The point is, when needs arrive in the life of the church, the members of the church must step up to fulfill those needs.

And some of the most important needs that must be addressed are: what are the needs of our people, particularly the most vulnerable.

We should see these as: children, teenagers, widows, the sick, the aged.

Am I doing anything to minister to the needs of any of these people?

The church resolves to keep its leaders committed to prayer and the preaching and teaching of God’s Word.

One of the vital aspects of the apostle’s plan here is this new role would free the apostles up to fulfill their pastoral role in the early church.

The reasons for this are:

Because the greatest need for the church is for leaders to pray and to preach and teach the Word...

Because it is very easy to neglect prayer and the ministry of the Word within the multitude of duties within the church...

This is even more true today, as the church has become much more of an organization than it was in the first century.

Because many hands make work light...

Within the modern church, 40% of pastors are considered at high risk for burning out and leaving pastoral ministry forever.

Additionally, the growing trend right now is that fewer and fewer young men are entering the ministry. And, the majority that are, do not want to pastor established churches (choosing to either start a church or take part in a parachurch organization). The average age of a lead pastor has jumped from 50 years old in 2000, to 57 years old today.

Many pastors are leaving ministry because they feel like too much is expected from them, most of their work doesn’t reflect their giftedness, “death by a thousand papercuts”, not enough of the membership of the church is serving the needs of the church, and family pressures becomes overwhelming.

As we will see next week when we look at overseers, some of this unavoidable, but the members can do something to fight against these disturbing trends.

The church has to make a continual commitment to this, because it is very easy to fall into the “that’s what we pay the pastor for” trap.

Solutions are revealed as the church comes together to solve the problem.

Notice something interesting here: they didn’t wait for God to say, “Here’s what I want you to do...”

This might seem counter-intuitive, especially for a Christ-centric pastor like myself.

But, what we see here is the apostles are depending on what they’ve been taught by the Lord to guide their decision making. (I’m sure they prayed a lot as well!)

They were taught by Christ the importance of unity, of the priority of preaching the Word, and of prayer. This laid the foundation for their decision making and their solutions.

And, it ought to be the same with us. Our question should always be: how does Scripture guide this decision?

Additionally: how does this solution fit with the clear teaching of Scripture?

Notice also that once the church was unified about the solution, they prayed and they laid hands on these seven men.

Again, laying hands is a way of saying: we go with you.

When we call people to service, we ought to do all we can to support and encourage them in their ministry.

These men were to be men of “good repute” “full of the Spirit” and full of “wisdom”. That was the vetting process.

No vetting process guarantees that someone isn’t going to mess up, but we have a tendency today to assume the worst out of our leaders instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Finally, I love here how the congregation “owns” the problem and does their assigned part (v.5).

Today, the majority of people in the church, when conflict arises either start building a faction of like-minded people or they leave.

Both are absolutely deadly to a church but even more deadly to our personal spiritual walk.

Think about God’s sovereignty here:

God wanted to the early church to experience this conflict. Why? Because they needed to establish something that would have incredible impact on the church throughout their lives, and throughout the history of the church. But, they had to experience it in order to grow from it.

Today, we are conflict and hard times adverse people. And because of that we miss out on amazing growth opportunities.

But if we face them, we might get to experience something like we see in verse 7...