By Greg Yee, Superintendent, PacNWC
Happy Lunar New Years! How many Rats do we have out there?! I was recently in Chicago for meetings and smiled at the fact that with Angela Yee, there are two “Yee’s” around the denominational leadership table and not two of any others! It seemed significant that no Scandinavian surname was repeated. Hear Yee, Hear Yee!
I was also reminded as this same group worked with the Ethnic Commission Presidents on the Six-Fold Test that the vast majority of current denominational leadership is relatively new to the denomination and/or new in their role. In our own conference we are no strangers to the generational shift that has and continues to happen. We have experienced ourselves what it means to have significant organizational memory transition on: Mark Novak, Krisann Jarvis Foss, Kurt Carlson, and most recently Don Robinson. At the church level, my list of pastors looking to transition in the near future is longer than it’s ever been. There is a notable sense of change in the air.
As I often say – all change brings a sense of chaos, and the bigger the change, the greater the sense of chaos. I think it can sometimes feel very chaotic. And nobody likes chaos, right?
I think we’re living in chaotic times. Our nation is in chaos. There has been increased persecution around the global church. And here in the States, Christianity has seemingly lost its credibility, Holy Spirit power, and place. We had a denominationally disrupting Annual Meeting, and I know that some of you are continuing to have challenging conversations still, not to mention difficult conversations about other matters.
At that same leadership meeting, the other Yee mentioned a book she was currently reading, The Good Fight – Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Organization Back on Track, by Liane Davey. In it Davey introduces her concept of “conflict debt.”
“…the sum of all the contentious issues that need to be addressed to be able to move forward instead remain undiscussed and unresolved. Conflict debt can be as simple as withholding the feedback that would allow your colleague to do a better job and as profound as continually deferring a strategic decision while getting further and further behind…” (p.10)
She develops this with the analogy of financial debt. The more and more we allow conflict to persist, the more in debt we become. She says, “When your conflict debt gets too high, it becomes overwhelming. You’re exhausted by the thought of trying to pay it off. You’ve destroyed your credit rating…by letting these issues go unresolved for so long. Maybe it’s so bad that you’re tempted to declare bankruptcy and move [on]…”. (p. 25)
She bullets out:
- “Conflict debt builds up when you avoid the discussions and decisions that are required…
- With conflict debt, the principal costs are compounded by the interest that accumulates in the form of frustration disengagement, and eroded trust.
- Conflict debt is costly to organizations. The unwillingness to work through organizational conflicts prevents effective prioritization, creates innovation silos, and allows risks to go unnoticed.
- Avoiding interpersonal conflicts hampers teamwork…” (p. 26)
There is no relationship or group that we belong to that is without conflict. Conflict is natural and normal for all healthy and growing relationships/groups. It’s not “if” we have conflict, but “how” we have conflict. Davey makes a distinction between being conflict averse and conflict avoidant. She says that we all are conflict averse. But she admonishes that we mustn’t be conflict avoidant. That’s the road to greater debt.
In the spirit of Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil (Eph 4:26-27), and If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone (Rom 12:18), and finally, All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18), we need to pay off our conflict debt.
It’s not easy, or fast, or natural, but we can’t allow our conflict debt to accrue so much that we bankruptcy is forced. I think of the great relief when Bellingham Cov recently celebrated paying off their mortgage. Amazing relief! There is Holy Spirit relief that happens and room again to grow and flourish.
Last month I wrote about togetherness being our superpower as an introduction to this year’s Annual Celebration theme TOGETHER. I’ve chosen to stay with this over the next three months for my Catch articles before we’re in Gig Harbor in April. TOGETHER is taken from Jesus’ forward-looking prayer captured in John 17:
“I pray that they will all be one…so that they world will believe [in me]”
Jesus prays that as he, the Father and Spirit are in community sharing perfect oneness, he prays for us to know the same. He prays this because he believes that this togetherness is the key that will be our ultimate witness to the world.
Famous debt-management program, Dave Ramsey, talks about the Debt Snowball Method:
- List your debts from smallest to largest, regardless of interest rate.
- Attack the smallest debt with a vengeance, while making minimum payments on the rest of your debts.
- Repeat this method as you plow your way through debt.
May we continue to use a similar Conflict Debt Snowball approach. List those we know we need to make amends, attack these debts with intensity and consistency, and keep pushing until we plow our way through.
Francis Assisi’s famous prayer is fitting for us here:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.