Excerpt:

Life can be dangerous. Church life can be especially dangerous. As I’ve coached ministers through the years, most would implicate conflict as the top culprit that makes church leadership such a challenge.

As I have said to countless ministers through the years, Ministry doesn’t involve conflict, ministry IS conflict. Consider the life of Jesus in the gospels. Nearly every interaction involved conflict that need to be successfully negotiated. Several, such as when he is confronted with whether to pay taxes, were actually life-threatening.

Now consider this. The healthiest churches are loaded with conflict, as are the least healthy. It’s not the conflict per se, it’s the very nature of that conflict that counts. And understanding how that conflict works is critical….

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