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A passionate, emotional pastor planting a church with opinionated people is bound to encounter a conflict or two … per hour.The conflicts are not the problem. The responses usually are.
Harsh words in the midst of conflict are like weeds in an untended garden. They crop up everywhere until they finally take over and choke out any fruitful conversation. Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpent. Sinful people blame-shift.
Discipleship is the great calling of the church, and the only soil that grows disciples is a local church culture of spiritual formation. Every other ministry of the church can (and should) grow from this soil.
But here’s the challenge: Each church already has an existing culture; any attempt to change the mixture of the “soil” will require the deep, patient work of tilling, fertilizing and weeding. Culture change is neither a tactic nor a strategy: It is a transformation. Peter Drucker famously observed, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” He should have said “breakfast, lunch and dinner” because the prevailing culture in any organization is the great unspoken factor in ministry. (By the time your church is two years old, church culture is beginning to produce fruit, either good or bad.)
