Making Peace: A Guide to Overcoming Church Conflict
Overview
Church conflict is neither isolated nor uncommon. Pastors, governing boards, and denominational leaders spend a major portion of their time each year assessing, mediating, and reconciling church conflicts. You may be facing some level of conflict in your church right now.
Making Peace collects the lessons and experience of more than ten years of work in church conflict resolution. Jim Van Yperen shares why churches become unhealthy and how God wants to heal them so they may become thriving communities of faith.
Making Peace is a “why” book, not a “how-to” book. The lordship of Jesus Christ, not method, should be the object and subject of your search for answers. The promise of Scripture is that God will allow nothing into your life that you are not able to bear through faith in him. Whatever conflict or crisis your church may now be facing, God will provide a way out or a way through for your good and his glory.
Top Highlights
“Conflict is the result of unwarranted and unfilled desire. It is unwarranted because the desire is for personal pleasure and self-promotion, not for understanding or seeking God’s will. It is unfulfilled because our motive, like our desire, is self-seeking.” (Page 94)
“By system dynamic we mean the interrelationship of external and internal forces that influence our decisions and create the conditions for conflict. A system dynamic is a structure that underlies the way we organize, work, lead, and make decisions in organizations, including churches.” (Page 37)
“What is presented as the ‘problem’ is usually a symptom of what lies underneath. As long as we treat the symptom, not the underlying problem, the conflict will return. It may lie dormant for a time, but it always comes back. Always.” (Page 28)
“Typically we choose one of four primary conflict response styles: passive, evasive, defensive, or aggressive.” (Pages 89–90)
“The church becomes a shopping center where we pick and choose what is good for us. We are not a community being formed by God’s Word and Spirit. We are individuals shaping ourselves. This strips the Gospel of its power—leaving people in their selfish individualism rather than inviting them into a transforming community of faith.” (Page 31)
About Jim Van Yperen
Jim Van Yperen is the founder and executive director of Metanoia Ministries, a non-profit Christian ministry serving evangelical churches in conflict reconciliation and leadership formation. He has served hundreds of pastors and dozens of conflicted churches in the past decade, including serving six churches as an interim pastor. Jim and his wife, Sharon, are the parents of two adult children and reside on a small sheep farm in East Washington, New Hampshire.