Dealing With Disagreements

INTRODUCTION

Some years ago, a minister named Chuck Thomas was invited to preach at a church in Oklahoma. This is the story I read.

Thomas noticed that the church was split down the middle, with each side having its own communion table and elders who prayed and served their respective halves of the congregation. This division greatly surprised Thomas and his wife. After the service, a family at the church invited Thomas and his wife back for lunch. Thomas asked about the division. He was told that many years earlier, the church decided to install new carpet. Half of the congregation wanted blue carpet, but the other half wanted rose carpet. They couldn’t agree, so they laid blue carpet in one half of the church building and rose carpet in the other half. But this didn’t end the dispute. Families stayed on their bits of carpet. But the story had a happy ending. Thomas later went back to the church and pleaded with the people there to forgive each other. Eventually, they did.

Today, we’re going to think about disagreements and conflicts.

Peter read Philippians 4:2-9 for us. I initially thought I’d be able to look at the whole passage. But I’ve decided to focus on just verses 2 and 3. In these verses, Paul acts to resolve a disagreement between two women, Euodia and Syntyche. These two verses will give us plenty to think about on the subject of dealing with disagreement.

I’m first going to look at some examples of disagreements that happen in church. Then I’ll talk briefly about why unity is SO important. Finally, I’ll look at how Paul addressed the disagreement between Euodia and Syntyche and see what we can learn from his example.

DISAGREEMENTS BETWEEN BELIEVERS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

There were quite a few disagreements between Christians in the New Testament. Paul and Barnabas disagreed about whether to take John Mark with them on their missionary journey, as Paul felt John Mark had abandoned them earlier. Paul and Peter disagreed because Peter had stopped eating with Gentiles. And there were many other disagreements among Christians, for example, about what they could eat, whether they should observe special days, and so on.

DISAGREEMENTS BETWEEN BELIEVERS IN CHURCHES TODAY

Sadly, we see many disagreements in the church today.

Somebody did a survey on Twitter to find out about things which had caused conflicts at church. Some of the things people mentioned were really trivial.

In one church there was a disagreement over whether it was OK for the worship leader to have his shoes off during the service.

In another church, a church member hid the vacuum cleaner. It led to a church split.

In a third church, there was a disagreement over whether to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ when it was someone’s birthday.

Can we imagine people here disagreeing over things like this?!

A minister of a church in the United States called Liz Boulton wrote about her experience of disagreement. Boulton was leading her first church after finishing seminary. She found there was a group of people at the church who would not communicate with her directly but met together to discuss their grievances. Eventually, they presented her with a letter. They wanted a meeting, and they wanted someone higher up in the church hierarchy to officiate. But at the meeting, the people who weren’t happy only had trivial complaints. Boulton wrote, ‘what they … said were things like, “We didn't know you were going out of town on vacation,” and “We don’t have enough input into what goes in the newsletter.”’ At the end of her account, Boulton commented, ‘I’ve now lost count of the number of colleagues in ministry I’ve met who have similar stories.’

Let me give a personal story. Before Priscilla and I came down to Bournemouth we were members of a church in Somerset. But a few months after we joined the church, the minister left due to a conflict within the church. A church member objected to the minister’s teaching about creation and the deacons didn’t handle the situation well. The minister didn’t feel supported – and left.

I found a statistic that in the United States, 34 percent of pastors serve in congregations that had forced their previous pastors to resign due to conflict. That is shocking.

Some disagreements are over trivial things. But some disagreements are over things which are genuinely serious. Right now, the worldwide church is going through one of the biggest splits in its history. Liberal and Evangelical Christians are divided, and the main cause of the division is the matter of same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ inclusion. This is a very serious matter.

So, there were disagreements in the early church and there are disagreements in the church today. Does it matter?

THE NEED FOR UNITY