The Listening Ear

Creative Conflict

I recently finished a series of sermons based on the book of James. One of the issues that James examines has to do with conflict and disagreement in the Christian community. Since one of the sermons I preached in my series on James had to do with how Christians can deal with conflict, I have decided to write a series of posts on that topic.

I think the first thing to recognize is that disagreement and conflict are a normal part of human relationships. We can expect to experience conflict in our marriages and our families, in our community and even in the church.

Conflict is inevitable because we are human beings. Humans are sinners. We are imperfect so there are times when our sinful nature keeps us from seeing the truth. It happens to us all. We need to realize this and to hold our convictions lightly. There’s always the chance we may be wrong and not know it. Or maybe we do know it, but our selfish nature causes us to persist in following the wrong path.

Nevertheless, there more than self-centeredness that leads to conflict. Often conflict results from human limitations. It may be the case that none of us can see the whole picture by ourselves. We may need to hear the views that differ from our own because those views may contain information we need in order to make good decisions and to discover the best solutions to the problem that face us.

Once we recognize that conflict and disagreements are bound to occur, it won’t take us by surprise when it happens. I think that conflict can lead to a crisis that can actually produce positive results.

I have read more than once that the Chinese character for crisis is a combination of two other characters—the characters for danger and opportunity. I don’t read or write Chinese so I have to take the word of others that this is true. Nevertheless, I have come to realize that conflict is both dangerous and an opportunity for us. It can be dangerous if we allow conflict to harm relationships and divide the Christian community. That is not what God wants for us.

On the other hand, conflict offers us an opportunity to grow in our faith and to come up with better solutions to the challenges that we face. In my next post on conflict, I’ll look at the negative impact that conflict can have on us as individuals and as a faith community. Following that I want to explore the ways that conflict and disagreement can be put to positive use.

Encouragement

I hit a spot recently when it was hard to carve out time to write for my blog. Some people noticed and encouraged me to get back to writing as soon as I could. I appreciate their encouragement and it has inspired me to work the blog back into my schedule. I hope that I can keep posting on a regular basis.

Thanks to all those who do read what I write. It make the effort worthwhile.

Disappointment

We received word today that the application we made for a Lilly Grant to enable me to take a sabbatical was not accepted. This was disappointing news not only because I have been hoping to take a sabbatical next year, but also because I had a vision of taking some good equipment to Tanzania to do some extensive videotaping there.

My hope was that we could capture video about what life in Kidugala is like as well as videotaping some of the projects that the Western Iowa synod is funding. I envisioned taping work at a well-drilling site, including the impact it makes on the lives of ordinary Tanzanians. I wanted to tape the Girls school that we have helped start. I wanted to tape at the site where the new Center for Agricultural Development is going to be located.

We can still take the video equipment we already have with us to Kidugala, but I am concerned about the quality of what we can produce. We’ll just have to see what we can accomplish with what we have to work with.

We still have one more grant application pending and should hear about that by mid-December. Competition for that grant is intensive with not much more than 10% of the applications being funded. Our companion congregation team and I have already begun to make plans for our trip even if we don’t receive that grant. It will most likely mean, though, that I won’t be able to take a sabbatical next year.

I need to take time to process what this means for me and for the trip we plan to take. One door has closed. We’ll have to watch to see what other doors may open.

Dealing with the Dip-4

In this final post, I want to consider how we can tell the difference between a dip and a dead end. Seth Godin in The Dip suggests we ask three questions:

1. Am I panicking? When the pressure is greatest to compromise, to drop out or to settle, it is very tempting to quit. Doing so is usually dangerous and expensive. The best quiters are those who decide beforehand when they are going to quit.
2. Who am I trying to influence? If we are tying to influence one person or one organization, then there are definite limits to how long we keep trying. If we don’t succeed in a few tries, it gets harder with each attempt. On the other hand if you are trying to influence a mass of individuals who might be understood as a market, the rules are different. Persistence often pays off when you have something valuable to offer people.
3. What sort of measurable progress am I making? To succeed we need to keep moving forward. Progress can be measured in different ways and it may require subtle observation to see our progress. If we don’t see progress, it may not mean that we need to abandon our goal. It could be that we need to change tactics.

I think Godin’s concept of the dip is helpful as we face the challenges of our personal lives and those in the life of a congregation like ours. Quiting is never the same as failing. Quiting involves shifting our energies and resources to those things that promise a long-term return for us. If we stop just because things are uncomfortable or even painful, we may be seeking short-term benefits at the expense of more long term goals.
Godin says that few people quit running a marathon when they have completed the 25th mile. The temptation to drop out is much stronger in the middle of the race. I make me thing of what the Apostle Paul says, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,
I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 3:13-14) Its not easy to make it through the dip, but it is worth it, especially when we are committed to the mission that Christ has given the Church.

Dealing with the Dip-3

When Seth Godin talks about The Dip he describes three different circumstances we may face. The first is the dip, that time between starting something and true mastery. It is the long slog that’s necessary to achieve anything truly important. When we recognize that we are in the dip, we don’t just endure it, we need lean into it, we need to push harder, we might even change the rules as we go along.
But there’s another kind of situation that Godin labels the ‘cul-de-sac,’ a fancy way of saying ‘dead end.’ This is a situation where you can work and work and work and nothing changes. Often people get stuck on a dead end path because it would be painful to leave that path. No matter how long they stay at it, the dead end never gets them anywhere.
A third situation that happens occasionally is what Godin calls the cliff. That’s a situation where we can’t quit until we fall off and everything falls apart. Fortunately that doesn’t happen as often.
Godin points out that the difference between success and failure is no simply dependent on the amount of effort we put forth. People can put a great deal of effort into a dead end and still get nowhere.
The key, then, is to put as much effort as we can into the dip situation and at the same time to abandon all the dead end paths so that we can focus our energy on that things that are important and will really get us somewhere.
By the way, I am convinced that the decision that we are wrestling with regarding our facilty needs is a dip. It something that we want to lean into, to keep working toward the right solution. Doing so will yield great dividends for St. Paul Lutheran. I believe that’s exactly what we are doing even though sometimes it would seem easier to give up.
I also think that the focus on excellence in our congregation’s ministry is one of the factors to consider as we make our choices. We don’t want to take the easy path; rather we want to take the way that leads to excellence for the sake of our Lord and for those to whom we minister.

Dealing with the Dip-2

In his book The Dip Seth Godin suggests that one way that we can decide whether we should persist in something or quit is whether we intend to be the best in the world at something. If we only expect to be mediocre, if that’s what we settle for, maybe we should try something that we are more passionate about, more committed to and have more potential in achieving.

I expect that many would consider that goal of being best in the world to be both audacious and unrealistic. In fact many would say that the claim to be best in the world is more than a bit arrogant.

But hear a little more of what Godin really means. His idea of best in the world is a bit more flexible. He means best as in right now, at this moment in time. And world can mean the world that others live in and have access to.

For instance, it seems to me that the Treynor schools strive to be the best school in the world for families living in this area. Are the Treynor schools the absolutely best schools in all the world? That’s unlikely and it would be hard to demonstrate objectively that they are even if it were true because ‘best’ is subjective. Yet our community’s school system strives to be the best available to those in our area. And it wouldn’t even matter if they were number 2 as long as they had being the best as their goal. That’s the reason we don’t have a mediocre school system.

Here’s a question to consider: What would it look like for St. Paul Lutheran to strive to be the best in the world? Would it mean that we strive to be the best church for children, youth and families who live in the Treynor area? I think we’ve been moving in that direction for some years. Could we also provide the best ministry for seniors who live in the Treynor area? I think that might be a possible, too.

I doubt that we can be the best choice for every one. Nevertheless having excellence as our aim seems to me to be a God-honoring goal. The Lord deserves that kind of commitment.

Dealing with the Dip

I just finish reading Seth Godin’s book, titled, The Dip. It is a short read, but it has some wisdom to it.

Basically, Godin writes about the resistance we encounter whenever we start something new. For instance, maybe we decide we want to try to learn how to play the saxophone. We start out all enthused and at first it isn’t hard to practice because this is something new.

Eventually, though, it gets more difficult. Often when we are learning a new skill, we get to the point where we don’t seem to be making much progress. We are tempted to quit.

Godin contends that it isn’t always bad to quit something. Its not true that winners never quit (Vince Lombardi to the contrary). Winners quit all the time. They quit some things so that they can refocus their efforts on what’s important, what will yield the most results. Those are the things they stick with no matter what.

Godin suggests three things to help us put that into practice.

Quit the wrong stuff.
Stick with the right stuff.
Have the guts to do one or the other.

So the key is to find a way to discriminate between all those things that are distractions for us so that we can focus on the things that are important. Have you ever quit something before you should have given up? Have you ever stuck with something in spite of some great resistance because you knew it was the right thing to do? How do you tell the difference?

From Time & Talents To Gifts-based Ministry

Dennis White, the chair of our Mobilization Team and I attended a workshop today on Spiritual Gifts Ministry. The workshop was led by Keith Mundy, assistant director for Stewardship in the ELCA.

I found that the workshop was filled with helpful and insight-filled information. That began as Keith gave a brief history how the church’s approach to the stewardship of gifts and talents has changed over the year.

Several decades ago, you often found a time and talents approach being employed. This was a needs-based approach that asked people to fill out a questionnaire where they would check off whatever skills and abilities they had and then the church used that to identify people to fill various jobs in the church. The jobs had already been created and the task was to find people to fill those jobs.

That approach might have worked OK at one time, but often people filled out form, but no one ever contacted them or asked them to make use of their skills and abilities.

In the 80’s a new way of taking about the stewardship of gifts and talents emerged. It was called volunteer ministry. Sometimes it focused on needs in the congregation, trying to develop and recruit volunteers for jobs in the church. At other times, volunteer ministry began concentrating on the assets that people possessed and simply asking how they might be able to put those assets to work.

Today, Keith told us, the focus in the church is moving to the identification of spiritual gifts. An effort is made to help people discover the unique gifts they have and also to discern how God is calling them to use those gifts. This is definitely an asset-based rather than a needs-base approach. It centers on helping people discover ways they can use their gifts doing something about which they feel passionate.

This way of approaching ministry focuses on abundance rather than scarcity. Instead of trying to fill empty spots, gifts-based ministry assumes that God has blessed us with a variety of gifts spread among the members of the church. The task is the discover those gifts and help people find ways to use their gifts.