Zen, of course, does not make life all rainbows and unicorns. No spiritual practice will do that. Over time with a spiritual discipline, our problems bother us less. We get to where we don’t mind problems so much. But the problems themselves aren’t any less. And, really, that’s a good thing. Dealing with problems gives us something to live for – or, it can, if we relish the challenge.
Sometimes people expect congregational life to be all rainbows and unicorns. No one says it out loud, of course. “Hey, I joined this church. Where are my rainbows and unicorns?” No one says that. No one even consciously thinks it. But maybe some of us, unconsciously, were harboring a secret hope that this community was the end of all our problems. There’s something deeply human about that quiet hope. We don’t really expect magic, but there’s a part of us thinking maybe this church – or the right church somewhere – could somehow be the balm for everything — relational tension, grief, burnout, loneliness. When it isn’t, that can be disillusioning.
Faith communities do offer something beautiful: support, purpose, connection. But they’re also made up of people — real, messy, sometimes surprising, sometimes disappointing people. It’s at this point that you might expect me to say that we aren’t perfect, but as some of you have discerned about me, I like to take the opposite angle on that and say actually, we ARE perfect. We are perfect the way that newborn babes are perfect – delightful just the way they are while at the same time having a lot of growing to do.
And what better place to do your growing than surrounded by a hundred, or a few hundred, other people who have a lot of growing to do? Congregational life doesn’t solve all problems, but it’s a place to walk through them together. So, no rainbows and unicorns — unless maybe you’re doing an art project with the kids downstairs. Shared coffee and a cookie – hugs, maybe, if you’re game for that -- honest expressions of our hopes. Maybe some time when life is falling apart, a casserole. And the aforementioned support, purpose, and connection. It’s not rainbows and unicorns, but it’s nice. It can sometimes be more than nice. It can be life-saving – it really can. Plenty of us, I know, have stories of how this place held them together when everything was falling apart. And when things aren’t all falling apart, it’s still nice.
Until.
Until someone says something that rubs us the wrong way. Until a beloved program changes. Until one day we feel unseen. We see conflict. Maybe we’re embroiled in a conflict. We’re surprised. We’re disappointed. Maybe disillusioned. I get it.
It’s hard to see that conflict as a good thing. I know, some people love conflict. But most of the people who come to a church aren’t looking for a fight. People who are looking for a fight typically look somewhere else. Yet fights do happen here: personalities clash, expectations differ, my anxiety about there being too much of something meets your anxiety about there not being enough of that thing.
A marriage that has weathered difficult fights is a stronger marriage, and the same goes for the relationship between you and this church. Conflict drives innovation as it challenges our complacencies and nudges us to a creative and novel synthesis of divergent ideas. Conflict helps establishes healthy boundaries as it clarifies our respective expectations, which reduces future misunderstandings. Better to air out and work through small misunderstandings so that that larger ones are avoided. Conflict builds democratic process as we collectively hear our different concerns.
Of course, conflict has to be done well. I remember many years ago, before I was a minister or even seriously considering the possibility of beginning the process toward becoming one, it was about 1990 or 1991, and I was in my early thirties, and a lay member in our congregation in Charlottesville, Virginia. I remember that a measure was up for congregational vote: a by-laws amendment that required a two-thirds majority to pass. I don’t remember what the proposed amendment was, just that I was in favor of it. It was just what our church needed. I spoke up at our congregational meeting, and marshalled my most cogent arguments – and remember, you are looking at the 1976 Georgia High School state debate champion.
Other people spoke against the measure, and several further others spoke also in support of what I supported. And when the 150 or so votes were cast, the tally came in at 57% in favor, 43% opposed. All these years later, I’ve long forgotten what the issue was, but I remember those vote percentages. My side had a clear majority, but not a two-thirds majority. The measure was defeated.
As the meeting adjourned, and the gathering slowly began thinning out, a feeling of remarkable joy came over me. It was the best I have ever felt after a congregational meeting. My side lost, but the process had been beautiful to behold, and inspiring to be part of. I loved how different we were, and how our different perspectives had been heard and weighed.
Did I still think the other side was mistaken? I’m sure I did, but I also recognized that it was possible I was mistaken, and, more important, that making mistakes is part of what makes us perfect: it’s how we grow and learn. My sense of bonding to a congregation has never been stronger.
That sense of joy in congregational life – in the possibility of human beings coming together and being different and disagreeing and building community not DESPITE the differences and disagreements, but community ON THE VERY BASIS OF differences and disagreements – that joy became part of why I so loved congregational life that I wanted to become a minister and help bring people into congregational life.
So become a minister I did. In that role, I served one congregation for seven years, and then served another congregation for ten years. They were strikingly different in how they processed conflict. The first congregation did not handle conflict well. The second congregation handled it pretty well. In fact, since I had just come to the second congregation from my experience with the first congregation, I found the way that the second congregation handled conflict astonishing. It was astonishingly healthy.
The second congregation had had a big fight just before I got there: voices had been raised, feelings had been hurt. But they kept talking it through, and they healed. They were able to let go of the past, settle into loving each other in the present. Their conflict had brought to them the benefits that conflict can bring: a catalyst for growth and change, re-examination of assumptions, deepened understanding of each other and strengthened relationships, vulnerability leading to greater resilience and greater trust.
The first congregation, on the other hand, did not have healthy conflict. The folks there were still seething from fights and divisions they’d had twenty years before I got there. They held grudges. Even when they tried not to, they were still holding them.
The leadership tried gamely to mitigate the bad feeling, and they promulgated a slogan they often repeated: Assume best possible motive. It’s a good slogan. Assume best possible motive. In a conflict situation, if you think the other side has nefarious motives, is operating from some hidden evil agenda, then the conflict isn’t just a comparison and weighing of diverse perspectives, it’s a battle of good versus evil. And there’s no reconciling with evil. To avoid that downward spiral of acrimony, the first congregation’s members reminded each other: assume best possible motive.
But this slogan didn’t make the grudges go away. The difficulty is, if conflict has gotten to the point where it feels like a battle of good versus evil, your brain at that point has locked in and locked down. You can tell yourself to assume the best possible motive, but the only motives that seem to you at all possible are all nefarious ones. You think you are assuming best possible motive, but even the best motive you can imagine still seems evil – because the conflict has so narrowed your imagination that you’re unable to imagine a truly good motive.
If it feels like a battle of good versus evil, then you don’t have the spaciousness, the imaginative capacity, to imagine motives on the other side that aren’t evil. Our imaginations fail, and against that failure of imagination, the slogan, “assume best possible motive” doesn’t stand a chance. Empathy, curiosity, and openness to complexity shut down. The lens flattens. People become caricatures, and motives become irredeemable. “Assume best possible motive” demands a level of imaginative and emotional flexibility that, in the midst of a good vs. evil conflict, we simply don’t have.
At that point the need is to create conditions for spaciousness to re-emerge. There are some intentional ways to facilitate that. Step back. Breathe. Sit silently and notice how your body feels when you picture the main other person with whom you’re disagreeing. Find someone you trust who is outside the conflict, who isn’t a member of the church, and talk it over with them. And name to yourself where you are – say to yourself, “Right now, I cannot imagine a good motive. That’s a signal to me that I need to pause, and not charge forward.”
This Des Moines congregation has had conflict. I heard a lot about it when I first got here. It undermined your confidence in yourselves as a truly good and wonderful congregation. My approach has been to say, “Eh. Let’s just do church for a while and see what shakes out – what settles down and what doesn’t. Will this turn out to be more like the first of those two congregations I was mentioning or more like the second?”
Turns out you are neither – you are your own thing. Of course. (Duh!) You are perfect, and you are learning. To continue that growth, let’s look at some examples of church conflict -- examples of conflicts we haven’t had here, but like those which some churches have.
Suppose a church finance committee is debating how to allocate a budget surplus. One member proposes investing in community outreach, while another insists on building maintenance. Voices rise. Someone mutters, “Some people just don’t care about the actual mission of the church.” In that moment, the disagreement has become moralized. It’s no longer about budget priorities — it’s a question of whether someone truly cares about the church.
The task is to recover spaciousness, which might happen if there’s someone to step in and say: “Can we each take a minute to name what we most hope for in this decision — not what we’re against, but what we’re trying to protect or nurture?” This reframes the discussion from attack/defend to values/vision, and invites people to see each other’s deeper motives, even if they still disagree.
I can easily imagine that, in this congregation, someone would step in to say something like that. There are a bunch of you, in fact, that I can see saying that.
Take another example. Suppose a church member posts an article on social media that others in the congregation find troubling. A few angry comments appear: “How could you share something so harmful?” The original poster feels attacked and responds defensively. Soon, both sides are questioning each other’s morality.
How might spaciousness be recovered? It might help for a third party, a mutual friend, to reach out to both parties to say: “I can see you both care deeply — would you be open to a conversation in person? I’d be willing to sit with you.” This small, human gesture introduces warmth and presence into a cold digital exchange. It creates space for nuance, tone, and shared humanity to re-enter.
Here’s a third case. During a small group discussion on a justice issue, someone shares a perspective rooted in personal experience. Another person, uncomfortable with what was said, doesn’t respond — but they don’t come back to the group the next week. They begin quietly avoiding the person who spoke up. The story in their head has already been written: “That person is pushing an agenda. I can’t trust them.”
The path toward recovering spaciousness might open if a facilitator notices the change and gently follows up. “I noticed you seemed uncomfortable last week. I care about your experience in the group. Can we talk about what’s coming up for you?” By inviting a conversation before assumptions calcify, the facilitator opens space for the withdrawn person to voice their fears — and maybe hear a fuller story.
One more. Something similar to this one might be on your horizon, because you’ll have a new minister next year, and they might make changes to the worship style that some folks might not like. It’s possible. I don’t know what that change would be, but in some congregations it’s a change in the music that can disorient longtime members. The sudden appearance of drums and electric guitar might make some long-timers think, “This new minister is trying to erase everything we’ve built.” Meanwhile, younger attendees feel energized and think, “Why are the older folks trying to kill the spirit?”
How to recover spaciousness? Rather than framing the situation as “traditionalists vs. progressives,” the celebrants team, with the minister, might host a listening circle where people are asked, “What kind of worship has helped move your spirit most deeply?” and “What do you grieve losing? What do you hope we can create together?” This allows pain and hope to coexist in the room — and helps everyone remember that everyone is seeking connection with the divine, just in different forms.
So I want to tell you today that we now have a new process in place to assist any of us in the recovery of spaciousness. We have a conflict reconciliation team – at today’s forum they and I will be discussing and describing how to make use of them. Let me go ahead and introduce them to you now – and you’ll see more of them in the forum. Sally B, Scott C, Jeremy G, John M, Ellen T. They are our spaciousness recovery team – though the official name is Conflict Reconciliation team.
In all of those examples, when spaciousness is recovered, then the benefits of conflict can emerge: growth and change, learning and new perspectives, deepened understanding of one another and deepened trust.
Sometimes it’s tough. But it’s so worth it. And, honestly, who really wanted rainbows and unicorns anyway?
Amen.
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