07 War & Peace

Jesus famously said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Now, interestingly, He didn't say blessed are the peace keepers. And there's a vast difference between peace keepers and peacemakers. In order to keep the peace, ironically, sometimes there has to be conflict. We need to understand what peace and unity is.

And true peace is not simply the absence of conflict. The biblical concept of peace, or shalom, is wholeness. And within a group, it's very easy, or even within a marriage, it's very easy to have a situation where your relationships have no conflict. But there's no wholeness.

There's no unity. There's no oneness. There's no togetherness. You can have two people living in the same house, living completely separate lives. They may hate each other. There may be no conflict, but there's no peace. As community leaders, we need people who are not afraid of conflict.

The Courage to Have Difficult Conversations

I'm not saying we must create conflict for the sake of it, or necessarily that we must enjoy conflict. But we must be those who are willing to have the difficult conversations. As I've spoken to many leaders over the years, and I say, which aspect of leadership is the most intimidating?

Which is the scariest? Which is the most difficult to do? Time and time again, people talk about initiating conversations and engagements that they know have a high likelihood of ending in some kind of conflict or leading to some kind of disagreement. Because to be honest, all of us want to be liked.

None of us want to be disliked. None of us really wants to engage in fights if we don't have to. But if we're not willing to go there, if we're not willing to give people what they don't want sometimes. Like as a father, I learned very quickly, sometimes I've got to be willing to be hated by my kids.

I've got to be willing to upset my kids. Because if I only feed them what they want, let them go to bed when they want, see who they want and do what they want, they may love me, but I'm destroying them. And later down the road, they're going to hate me.

And so I've got to be willing to have that conflict. Have that dislike. I've got to be willing to be hated now in order to be loved later. The Bible tells us that the kisses of an enemy are many, but faithful are the wounds of a friend.

I've often said this, I want friendships with people who love me enough to tell me what I don't want to hear. Who love me enough to risk that very friendship for the sake of truth. Now some people love the truth but don't bring the truth with love.

A man I admired a lot said this, "Truth without love is brutality but love without truth is sentimentality." We have got to be willing to sit down with people and speak the truth in love. We've got to do it wisely, we've got to do it sensitively, we've got to do it lovingly, and we've got to do it redemptively.

But we've got to be prepared to have those moments of conflict. And we've got to be prepared that conflict will happen between people in our community. There will be divisive people. There'll be people who easily take offense. There'll be people who want to go their own way.

Fighting for Unity in Community

And sometimes because we're not willing to engage and deal with those things, we let those things run. And those things are community killers. We know the scripture, Psalm 133. Where there is unity, the Lord commands life and blessing. And unity doesn't mean we all sit there being nice and polite to each other.

It means there's a true oneness and there's a true flowing together. And if, as a community leader, you would want the Lord commanding life in your community. And if you want the Lord commanding blessing in your community—and I hope you would—then you've got to be somebody who's willing to fight for unity.

Sounds like a paradox, but it's true. If we're afraid of conflict, then we can become passive aggressive. And that destroys community as well. The good news is you're not alone. The good news is you've got a team around you. You've got elders and deacons around you.

Now, what that doesn't mean is, "Oh, that means I can just go running to one of my elders all the time and tell them there's a problem. Can you deal with it?" It's not about abdicating your responsibility. But it is about knowing that if I feel out of my depth, if I feel unable, if I feel intimidated, I've got somebody who will back me up.

Training People to Give Correction and Guidance

They will support me and even come alongside me and even come with me as I do it. When I used to run a year of your life course, young people would come and spend a year and I would train them and equip them for a year.

I was very deliberate about one aspect of that course. Because just filling people with theology wasn't going to create leaders of the future and knew character issues were important. So, very early on in the year I would take them out for coffee one at a time.

So I can get to know them and speak into their lives and speak about things they could do better. And during the year if they did things sometimes I would meet with them and rebuke them and correct them or whatever. But one of the things I realized is, nobody really often trains other people how to do this.

So, over the course of the year what I would do is, first of all I would meet people individually, then I would meet people two at a time, and somebody would listen as I had that conversation. Then, I would ask that other person, a month or so later, "You have the conversation while I watch you."

And I can guide you and correct you in that conversation. By the end of the year, we wouldn't even go out for coffee. We would do it as a whole group. It got named the round table. One at a time go around and say, "Speak into this person's life."

When I asked for feedback on what were the most meaningful times in the year, I was shocked to find it wasn't my amazing teaching and the theology they'd learned. It wasn't any of that. The most meaningful thing in the lives of those students, time and time and time again, was the coffees and the round table.

And so it was my willingness to have those conversations. Sometimes that were unpleasant. Sometimes that caused disappointment, but reshaped people. And sometimes it was the fact that other people were trained in how to have those conversations. So, I want to suggest to you as a community leader, you may have never had the opportunity, the willingness, or felt you've had the ability to sit down and bring correction and guidance to somebody in a sense that you know has the potential to bring conflict.

If that's the case, don't run away from it, and don't hide, don't ignore it. Rather speak to somebody and say, "I need training and equipping in this area of my leadership. Would you come with me and do it with me? Or can I sit with you while you meet with somebody?"

There is a principle of training, not just with this, but in most things. First of all, you watch somebody do it. Then you do it together. Then they watch you do it. And then they release you, and you give feedback regularly. Let's not be afraid of the difficult conversations.

Let's not be afraid of iron sharpening iron. Let's not fall into the trap of being peacekeepers. But let's be peacemakers, because then we will be truly blessed.