By Dale Sellers

I spent some time developing a list of best practices that we’ve included in some of our recent posts. These practices are incredibly valuable for creating a ministry culture that is healthy and sustainable. With that in mind, I’d like to highlight a few of them so you can evaluate how your ministry is currently implementing them.

Best practice: lead people back to mission, spiritual fruit, and Jesus’ call to unity—especially when arguments feel justified.

Have you ever felt like the current season you’re in is too good to be true? I have. I remember when I was pastoring our church, thinking about how we were experiencing a sense of unity throughout the church that was really uncommon.

I accepted the position of lead pastor after our church had gone through a really bad split. There were about seventy people left once the dust had settled. I proceeded with caution during the pastoral search process, knowing the full impact of the split may not be over.

My intuition to take my time proved to be warranted. It turned out that the church’s worship leader had been in talks with a faction of the church that wanted him to be the next pastor. He was a gifted worship leader who knew how to direct the congregation into an authentic encounter with the Lord each week; however, he was not equipped or trained with the gift of a pastor/leader.

Therefore, the group of people who remained after the first church split actually split again before I accepted the job. The group of seventy was now reduced to thirty people who were hurt, suspicious, and discouraged. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I accepted the position of pastor. But I did sense the Lord directing me to do it.

Once the dust had settled, we pulled together over the next few years to create an impactful ministry. Hurts were healed, trust was reestablished, and life change began to happen consistently as we put our hearts and souls into reaching the surrounding community for Jesus. At one point, I realized that half of our membership, which was now near 70, was made up of people we had helped come to know Jesus.

I remember thinking in the years that followed how uncommon it was for a church that had been so divided to become healthy. In fact, I would wonder to myself how we were able to build such a unified church family after that era of division and hostility.

In all transparency, we did hit some tough times many years later. But I’ll save that story for another post. The purpose of this post is to share some of the things we did that helped a divided church experience uncommon unity.

Best Practices To Heal A Divided Church

1 – Identify repeated sources of division.

By “sources of division,” I’m referring to people with agendas. You’ve most certainly dealt with this if you’ve been leading in ministry for any amount of time. People with agendas are polarizing. Their main focus in the church is getting their way. Whenever they are challenged, they unleash their wrath on anyone who opposes them.

I find that confronting people like this is extremely crippling to most pastors, especially in small churches. I recently learned from George Barna that the majority of pastors are actually introverts. Therefore, the last thing on their leadership radar is to confront people, because confrontation is just counter to their personality.

However, I can tell you from experience that divisive people will not go away or back down. They are used to getting their way. But it is possible to root them out if your approach is team-led instead of just doing it on your own.

Build a consensus within your leadership team on where the church is headed. Then communicate the team’s desire to move forward with unity to the divisive person. This won’t be easy or pleasant. But it is necessary if the church is to ever experience true health.

2 – Create some small wins to foster positive momentum.

Trying to bring a church, or any organization for that matter, back from divisive experiences is difficult. But it can be done with intentional focus on restoring positive momentum.

One of the biggest mistakes I made was believing we needed to hit a grand slam in order to build momentum. I focused solely on big events and projects designed to create the greatest impact. However, I soon discovered this approach to be super draining on the congregation and me.

I was so thankful to learn that the “all or nothing” or “go big or go home” approach was wrong. What our group needed was just a small taste of victory. Small, subtle victories can create positive momentum when they happen consistently.

Therefore, don’t underestimate the value of small wins coupled together. They can produce the energy needed to get things moving in the right direction again.

An example would be to celebrate extravagantly every time someone becomes a believer. Celebrating conversions and baptisms is a tangible way to help your congregation see the eternal impact of your ministry.

3 – Focus more on relationships than vision.

People recovering from a traumatic experience need time. Trauma doesn’t just go away or heal itself, and the healing process can’t be rushed.

As much as I know the value of vision, I also understand that timing is crucial for implementing it. In fact, attempting to implement vision in a recovering congregation can have the opposite effect. People will actually resist an outward-focused vision when they are inwardly trying to heal.

The time will come to begin leading your church toward its vision. However, approaching that time with patience and empathy will build the unity and trust necessary to accomplish it down the road.

4 – Flush out underlying traditions, habits, and programs that undermine unity. (Identify consistent sources of conflict.)

Much like our first point, addressing traditions, habits, and programs requires courageous leadership. Our first point dealt with individuals. This point is about revealing the ways your ministry has fallen behind over the years. You can identify these as “sacred cows.”

A big barrier to unified engagement happens when our ministry continues to preserve outdated programs and traditions. It becomes difficult for new people to buy in wholeheartedly when they don’t understand why we do certain things.

Ministries that refuse to update and change will soon find their ability to connect with new people to be futile. I’m sure many of the outdated programs we hold onto were effective in their day. But valuing them over engagement with people keeps us from ever connecting.

5 – Confront agenda-driven personalities with love, wisdom, and strategy.

I mentioned earlier the need to confront divisive people, but this is much easier said than done. This point focuses on how to do this well, because I really wish someone had told me how to do this in my early years of ministry.

Confrontation Steps:

1. Never confront out of emotion. I knew a pastor once who could never have hard conversations until he reached the breaking point. Unfortunately, he got so angry that he only made the situation worse.
2. Never allow issues to accumulate. A pastor that I served under used to keep a little black book in his desk where he would write down things the staff did wrong over a period of months. Then, once a quarter, he would bring out the little black book and attack us with a long list of things he had collected. As you can imagine, there was no way we could defend ourselves or even have a constructive conversation about our “many” offenses. This was a really unfair way of leading us.
3. Take a respected leader with you. This is especially helpful if you are a young pastor confronting someone older than you. Having someone else in the room can help to keep things from getting too personal. An older leader who is a peacemaker can often help create an atmosphere of resolution.

6 – Continually remind everyone of the mission and vision of the church.

The thing that will help your ministry move forward after a time of healing, restoration, and recovery is to clearly define the ministry’s mission and vision.

There comes a point when you have to move on. It’s critical for developing unity to have clarity in mission and vision. Your mission describes why you exist as a ministry. Your vision describes where you are going over the next few years. They serve as guardrails to help keep you moving forward on the right path.

Any organization that has more than one vision will soon discover it has division. In due season, you will eventually arrive at the crossroads between healing and moving forward again. It is imperative that you rally everyone around the ministry’s mission and vision to build healthy momentum.

7 – Never devalue the impact of desperate prayer moments.

I’m embarrassed to say that prayer has oftentimes been a last resort for me. I’ve always felt this crazy pressure to try and “clean things up” before asking Jesus to help. (This is obviously not the way to do it.)

My pride has often led me to try to avoid the embarrassment of needing help. Honestly, I don’t know all the reasons I’ve acted this way. Somewhere in my development, I falsely believed that He expects me to never fail.

Thankfully, I discovered in my latter years that I am unable to accomplish anything of eternal value without His presence and leading in my life. Discovering that Jesus is more interested in me doing things FROM Him instead of FOR Him has been a game-changer for me.

Simply put, prayerless ministries are powerless ministries. We will never see our churches unified in any arena until we are unified in prayer.

8 – Don’t allow negative voices, gossip, and personal attacks to derail your focus.

Nehemiah had a daunting task of rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. Even with the king’s blessing, he had distractors who would try to get him to stop building by coming down from his work to talk with them.

In Nehemiah 6, we learn that the location his detractors wanted to meet was in villages near the plain of Ono. He simply refused their invitation to sit and discuss because the work was too great. He wouldn’t come down from building the wall to talk with the people at Ono.

You and I will have times where we have to say “oh no” to our detractors, too. I’ve discovered throughout my ministry life the importance of saying “no” to anything that tries to distract me from building healthy unity.

One of the saddest things I encountered was the pain of people who were with me when I started out, only to have my biggest supporters become my biggest detractors over time. Serve in leadership long enough, and you will eventually feel this pain too. Betrayal is one of the hardest things to overcome.

Eventually, you will find yourself at a place where you realize that forgiveness is the only path forward for you. Holding on to unforgiveness will stop you in your tracks. You will not be able to go forward holding on to the pain from the past.

The Bible has many, many passages on unity and its importance. One of the last things Jesus prayed on the night before facing the cross was that we would all be one. Pursuing unity isn’t something we can opt out of. It’s a foundational principle for any healthy, sustainable ministry.

—–——————————————

Related resources from 95Network

• The Distraction of Division: 6 Distractions Hurting Church Unity Today
• How to Overcome the Opposition to Change
• Bridging The Minority Gap With Intentional Relationships (w/ Hykeng Paul) – Episode 133

What are you doing that is working well? What is not going so well? Let’s connect and have a conversation about it. At 95Network, we are here to support and serve you in any way we can. If you feel like you’re in a season where you’re stalled out and can’t see the way forward, then please reach out to me at [email protected]

• Website: 95Network.org
• 95Network – Soul Care Essentials
• 95Network – Healthy Church Assessment
• Read Stalled: Hope and Help for Pastors Who Thought They’d Be There By Now