What potholes teach us about systemic problems
The words were printed in large letters on bright fluorescent colored signs, “Frost Heaves.”
They looked like left over placards from a low-budget political campaign stuck in the snow. Some guys named Frost and Heaves were running for office.
People who live in New England or Alaska or some other wintry place know that frost heaves are not the names of politicians or a type of ice cream. The two words describe what happens to our roads in March and April. They freeze and heave.
Frost heaves are caused by the melting and freezing of water trapped under the road surface during a time of year when the temperatures rise during the day and fall back below freezing at night.
Water collects in pockets underneath the road surface, then freezes, expands and forces the road upward often cracking the surface open an inch or two at the peak.
Frost heaves can cause rises of 3-6 inches above the road surface and usually damage it permanently. Driving a vehicle too fast over frost heaves can damage your shocks and shock your nerves.
There is a 9-mile stretch of road between Hillsboro and Washington, New Hampshire that must be one of world’s worst roads for frost heaves. My friend, Bo, who has driven in many places around the world, claims this is the only road he has ever driven where he could not exceed the speed limit. (And the limit is only 35 mph.)
There are some sections of the road that, if you hit the heave just right, you can serve dinner, view an in-flight movie and earn 500 frequent flier miles before landing on the other side. Well, almost.
When the weather breaks to temperatures consistently above freezing, the road settles down to its previous level with potholes and cracks that the road crew dutifully fills, solving the problem until the next winter.
People complain a lot about the roads and those who crew them. But the real problem is underneath. It is this way with church conflicts as well.
What is presented as the “problem” is usually a symptom of what lies underneath. As long as we treat the symptom, not the underlying problem, the conflict will return. It might lie dormant for a time but it always comes back. Always.
People often ask “are there any common factors that cause church conflict?”
While every church is unique and every conflict complex, patterns have emerged in our work with conflicted churches that, like frost heaving roads, are the source of crisis.
First, the problem is often cultural. Our churches have absorbed a culture that actively persuades against spiritual vitality and mutuality, breeding autonomy and individualism instead of biblical community. Instead of addressing conflict and sin redemptively, we adopt habits, therapies and practices defined by our culture. Salvation and sanctification are private and personal with little or no place for a way of life practiced and proved. In some churches there are family systems at work where one large family or long-held tradition has created a culture that guides decision-making, and hinders biblical dialog and discernment.
Second, the problem of church conflict in America is structural, or systemic. Our constitutions and by-laws often fail us when we need them most. We want to “vote” instead of submit.
Church leaders employ models of leadership founded far more upon business (pastors as CEO) or cultural norms (autonomy) rather than biblical community. Pastors and leaders have little or no training in confronting and resolving conflict biblically, and the training they may have is strictly interpersonal. Yet most church conflict is not interpersonal but has its roots in systemic ways of thinking and acting.
Third, church conflict is spiritual. We have lost (or never found) a balanced understanding of living in, walking by and sowing to the Holy Spirit. The notion of holiness is all but lost to a pre-occupation with a knowing or a feeling faith. For some churches, knowing Scripture is everything. For others, reaching the lost is consumed with meeting needs, creating a kind of spiritual attention deficit disorder that forms shallowness.
Finally, there is a theological root to our conflicts. Our theology has been shaped by, and so reflects, the cultural and structural forms above. Objective or subjective thinking about the Gospel leads to legalism or relativism. Since many churches are organized around meeting needs rather than mutual submission under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, individualism replaces biblical community. Conflict exposes legalistic or democratic remedies to issues that require Spirit-directed discernment, repentance and forgiveness.
Like water gathering and freezing under the surface the only way to resolve and redeem church conflict is to identify and address its cultural, structural, spiritual and theological roots.