THE EFFECT OF CONFLICT IN THE CHURCH ORGANIZATION

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THE EFFECT OF CONFLICT IN THE CHURCH ORGANIZATION:

A. A. Lawal (1993) said that conflict could be seen as a potential for improving organizational performance depending on how it is managed.

In the same vein D.E. Egbe (2000) added that conflict in organization is like fire. According to him fire can be very useful or harmful depending on how it is handled. For instance, we use fire to cook food and heat our houses, but if house catches fire, it can destroy the whole house and kill the people inside it.”

Therefore in this post, we shall examine both positive and negative effect of face-up between church workers and leaders especially in this contemporary time.

I. POSITIVE EFFECT OF CONFLICT:

Conflict between church leaders and workers has always resulting to the following points stated below.

(a) It helps to remove things that make both the leadership and staffs to disassociate themselves, and as a result unity among the leaders and their workforce may be established in a common parlance. There is saying that a good fight clear the air, after expression of conflict, the combatants may feel closer to each other.

(b) After conflict new leadership may be brought to the church, because the former leader may be found unsuitable under the pressures of conflict. Old goals may be modified by more relevant goals as a result of the conflict. Conflict may increase motivation because of the greater diversity of view-points and a lightened sense of necessity.

According to Igbadiwei {2001} “conflict can help to check the excessive use of power wrongly in an organization” leadership may become more autocratic depending on the state of the type of leadership that had existed before the conflict.

In fact some of the conflicts in the church between leadership and workers should not be seen as the work of the devil, rather, God allows them so that the leadership of the church will rise up to expectation. For instance in the early church, it was conflict that moved the leadership of the church to recognize that they ought not to leave the ministration of the word of God and prayers to serve table) Acts 6:1-7)

Therefore church leaders should not see every conflict situation as against the church and her leadership rather let them come together and find out the area they need to put things in order to allow harmonious relationship.

II. NEGATIVE OUTCOME OF CONFLICT IN THE CHURCH:

• It can Cause the Death of Innocent Members:

There is a saying that “when two elephants fights the grass gets hurt” some times “face-up” between church leadership and members can lead to the both physical and spiritual death of some innocent members.

CASE STUDY.

In 1986 Saviour's Evangelical Mission had a serious conflict between the leadership and their subordinates that would have led to the death of the entire ministry if not the grace of God, this problem took them to police, and on several occasions police personnel’s would come to church when fellowship is going on to arrest members, and in another occasion before the time of church service they will come and lock up the church and mount a guard making sure nobody will use the church hall for worship. This face up lingered and they went to court to decide the case. As usual they were recommended to settle outside the church hence it is a religious matter.

Within this time many of her members left the church to another, others refuse to join other churches; some even went back to their former orthodox churches. One of the members from our local government in the process fell sick, since she is not going to church again, the husband after much persuasion won her consent and went to native fortune tellers to find out what happened and as he came back to do what they told him would solve the problem, in the process that woman died.

There are other reported cases of mysterious deaths during those ugly days of their face up, which wouldn’t have happen if not the lingering conflict between the leadership and her workforce”.

Many innocent members have lost their lives due to conflict in their churches that weaken the spiritual life of the entire church and other members backslide as a result.

(2) Death Of The Key Actors.

Human resources conflict in the church with their leadership may some times spark off God’s judgment either on the leadership or among the workers themselves depending on the motives of those who champion the face-up.

G.T. Igbadiwei (2001)stated that “Moses had sufficient number of crisis in the wilderness while leading the Israelites to the promise land but the greatest of all came from the one insinuated by Korah, Dathan and Abiram which led to the death of thousands of people” (See Num. 16:1-5).

In this conflict God himself took the pain to sequel the conflict by killing the principal actors, so that the rest people could change their mind not to continue in the conflict. The government of some countries times does this by killing principal actors of the conflict, and that leads to peace in the country. In this contemporary time, cases abound where God stood in the midst of church conflict to judge the principal actors.

A Pastor friend faced series of crisis in the church after the death of his General Superintendent. And this conflict was created by the key leaders who were inciting the children of the late superintendent against the pastor, in fact they went as far as using police men to harasses and intimidate him.

As this continued, those key members who were fanning the ember of this conflict, died mysteriously one after the other. The whole church members became afraid by the mysterious deaths of these leaders whom they knew were the brainchild of the on going face-up in the church. And with this development everybody sheathed his/her sword and peace and harmony returned back to the entire ministry till date.

What led to the death of Moses the man of God was church conflict which he could not managed. Many servant of God in this contemporary time have suffered a lot in the hand of difficult to lead members and church workers. Some have lost their spiritual authority and position due to perennial conflict they cannot manage.

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(3) Splitting Of Churches.

In this last decade the Christian church has witnessed an indiscriminate proliferation of churches and one of the reasons behind this development is conflict, especially between church leaders and their subordinates.

Some of the young ministers finds it hard to serve under a ministry they would not be given chance to use their gifts and talents freely to serve the Lord. I have witnessed a situation where a General Overseer suspended a junior minister because God is using that minister to the point that church members start to develop interest more on that Pastor. The Pastor was very humble and wouldn’t want to leave the church black-listed, went to plead with the Senior Pastor to forgive him and allow him to continue with them.

The Overseer refused his apology even when some elders in the church weighed into the matter. At last that Pastor was forced to leave, and as he was leaving, more than half of the church he was Pasturing followed him, and help him to start his own ministry.

Bad leadership and administration has helped in raising a lot of conflicts in the church that leads to church splitting these days. And this phenomenon has drastically affected ministerial reputation, as the unbelievers (unchurched people) are accusing men of God as “using church to make business”.

Also there is an urgent need for the Church bodies to look into this matter and constitute church conflict resolution board whose work is to weigh into church that are having crisis and seek to settle the problems by bringing the parties together for discussions or negotiation.

(4) Church conflict can lead to the death of a local church or the entire ministry
It is on record that ministries are passing through tough times due to frequent wrangling and show dawn between the leadership and those working under them.

In the early 70s there was a ministry name “Riches of Church Bible Church with the headquarters at Onitsha Anambra State, Nigeria. This ministry spread to many towns and villages, almost all over Nigeria, within a short period of time. God was with the leadership and the power of God being felt every where. This led to many joining the churches. However, the devil, the enemy of progress, succeeded in sowing conflict between the General Overseer of the ministry with his subordinates, this continue unchecked until the ministry died up till date You cannot hear of “Riches of Christ Church” again.

There are many others that have died as a result of unresolved and perennial conflicts and in such situations it is the members especially the new converts that suffers most, hence many backslides and others used the occasion to black mail the name of God.

(5) The overall leader may work himself to untimely grave due to fear of conflict situation

Moses the man of God suffered a burn out due to lack of faithful workers. It is likely that he disbanded the leadership he put in place through his father in-law’s advice in Exodus 18, when he came down from Mount Sinai and discovered that Aaron and his team have misled the people of Israel, hence he later cried out to God in Num. 11:10-15 that he was left alone to carry out all the responsibilities of caring for a whole congregation of about 3000,000 people.

So many head ministers or senior pastors are suffering today as they are left alone to shoulder the whole responsibilities, which would have been lessened if there are faithful workers available to help. However, some of these leaders are something else due to the selfishness of their character, which is helping to repel people from them.

Conflict during the time of Nimrod.

Igbadiwei sited what happened to Nimrod and his people at Babel as a vivid example of how conflict or crisis can dissolve the existence of an organization.
Babel was one of the few sports on the earth where people gathered for common purpose in the then world. But the purpose of gathering was defeated because there was a crisis situation among the people which the leaders of the gathering could not handle and bring under control. The consequence was the total dissolutions of the whole organization and the project was abandoned halfway.

A critical survey of that situation highlights the potent of organizational crisis in destroying any organization where the leadership cannot control the overall effect of the crisis. While we cannot blame the leaders of he construction of Babel project for not being able to control the crisis situation they found in the organization because it had a divine origin, we can blame them for allowing the circumstance that resulted in the crisis situation.

A careful study of the crisis situation in the construction of Babel reveals some of the following points: -

(a) God Himself introduced the crisis situation into the organization that was responsible for the construction of Babel; God insinuated the crisis because His spoken word was violated by the leadership of the organization. It means that it is possible for a church to be scattered by God when such a church leadership deliberately violates the plan and purpose of God for His people.

The present crisis situation in the church may not be divorced from the fact that so many church leaders like the ones in the organization that constructed Babel have deliberately violated divinely instituted principles of church leadership in the heart of God.

(b) Secondly, there was an element of human being worship in the organization that constructed Babel. The Principle figure who attracted the multitude in the then world was Nimrod, the son of Cushie, who use his talent of hunting to attract the people unto himself and made them to worship him (Gen.10:8-11) instead of God. More than that he instituted laws that counteracted the plans of God and the immediate purpose of God resettling people on the earth after the great flood.

Nimrod never wanted God’s People to scatter and cover the different parts of the world so that cities and nations could be built as it is today, therefore, God took the pain to introduce a crisis situation hat could led to the fulfillment of His word. (Gen.1: 26-29).

This means that when a church organization refuses to fulfill the plan of God, that alone could result in crisis that the leadership would not be able to control.

(c) What God did to insinuate crisis situation in Nimrod’s organization was to diversify and multiply their visions and dreams that led to differences in understandings and perceptions. Crisis situation comes in an organization when there are unresolvable differences in the visions and drams of the lay people who team up to work towards the fulfillment of the organizational goals.

Nimrod started with empire building, and God inspired more people with that same vision but with different plans because they could not find any satisfaction and fulfillment in Nimrod’s kingdom. It means that God can close down a church by inspiring the key principal persons in that church to look for their ministries because they do or cannot derive any fulfillment or satisfaction from their former church.

The fact about differences in the tongues clearly explain how the crisis situation in the kingdom of Babel took both political and ethnic dimensions thereby resulting in different regions and beliefs that led to the destruction of the Kingdom of Babel. This clearly explains why it is not the perfect will of God for ethnicity to be emphasized in the Church.

In the church God expects all believers to be one united in Him but when ethnicity is emphasized, it is a sign that the church is dying. Differences in languages among God’s people in Nimrod organization results in racial discriminations, slavery, and other socio-political problems that world leaders find it difficult to find solution to.

(d) Increased Awareness among God’s People.

What Nimrod started as a rebel against God’s word finally help to inspire more people to go into the act of empire building? As they came to do the work for Nimrod, they also acquired the necessary skills and the subsequent vision to build theirs.

Therefore, as they spent time in doing the work, growth in awareness and the vision and zeal to do their own came upon them and that also led to their separation from him. It means that there must come times when our subordinates who by virtue of growth may separate from us as a result of awareness.

If we believe that growth means increase in size, in knowledge, awareness and being able to take up more responsibilities then we should know that such adult Christians under the leadership of God should be allowed to leave without any destruction.

(e) Increasing Dissatisfaction with the Leadership of the Organization:
Nimrod gathered the entire world under his control without any willingness to allow any individualistic approach to the work. It was an organization where people’s basic God’s given rights to do what they intend to do was not given. He led the organization with the highest highhanded without putting into consideration the feelings of the people.

People were deformed and their individual identities were removed to bear his own identity. He wanted everybody to carry his identify upon their lives and God felt cheated and deprived of his Glory so He scattered them.

For only God has the singular honour of controlling and guiding the direction of human beings but when a church engages itself in wanting to control the consciences of the people, such a church is heading for organizational conflict that can result in its death. This was the greatest pitfall of the Roman Catholic, which in the era of the great Reformers who withstood the church for trying to direct and control the consciences of the people with things that were truths from the Bible. When people discovered that they were fooled by so called church leaders they revolted and came out of such wrong things.