Four Pieces of Paper That Reduce Team Conflict

The best and the worst thing about church ministry is that it’s a team sport. 

Together, we as the body of Christ can prove to be far greater than the sum of our parts.  It’s a quiet thrill to discover God’s way of putting us together with people who complement our personal strengths.  But you don’t have to be involved in ministry for very long to also discover what it feels like to have your best intentions blocked by someone else who just doesn’t seem to “get it”.  Perhaps you know what that feels like.  It’s been said that sometimes leadership feels like herding cats. 

Based on a number of decades of “herding cats” in various church settings I would like to suggest four simple statements that, if prepared thoughtfully, could allow leaders to dramatically reduce the amount of the dissonance that can accumulate in ministry settings. 

There’s a principle behind these four statements:  intentionality is more important than control. In many churches people end up living with unspoken dissonance between their various ideas of what they are trying to do—or what kind of church they believe their church should be trying to be. Because they trying to achieve noticeably different results, they naturally try noticeably different methods. And the differences between their different methods naturally trigger resistance from each other.  Everyone ends up feeling tethered to someone who just doesn’t “get it!”

A story is told about two cyclists who paused after struggling on their tandem bicycle up a large hill. “Whew—that was a tough climb!” the one rider exclaimed.  “Yes,” wheezed the other.  “If I hadn’t been squeezing the brake levers the whole time, we might have rolled down that hill backwards!”

It’s not hard to see how those two riders were each negating each other’s efforts.  A similar thing can happen in churches.  However, mutual resistance in churches may be much more subtle to spot. 

This article presents four simple tools that can help ministry leaders to spot this type of dissonance, create alignment for those involved, and help prevent future alignment problems from hindering the work of the ministry’s teams. 

What follows here are descriptions for four short, simple statements—just a portion of a page for each. That’s important.  A three-page catalog listing every task or event that a student ministry volunteer might become involved in won’t help their focus.  It will just keep them busy.  While that all-encompassing list may be helpful for some purposes, it’s no substitute for a simple list that can help a team member know just what it is that they most need to offer.  That can empower them to prioritize their efforts from there.

1. Role Descriptions provide simple descriptions of how a particular team member fits into the organization’s overall efforts.  In the employment world, these might be referred to as job descriptions. This answers the basic question: what is this person supposed to do (and by implication, what are they not expected to do)?  For instance:  the 2nd/3rd grade Sunday school teacher will teach and disciple the children entrusted to them, using the curriculum provided by the Sunday school team leader.  That description may actually look very similar to the role description provided for the 4th/5th grade teacher, with a few obvious adaptations for the age difference.  Every person in the ministry needs to have a simple, clear job description to let them know how they fit in what the congregation aims to do.  

But how will they know if they are fulfilling that purpose? That’s where goals fit in.

2. Goals are simple, practical ways of describing what the person needs to somehow accomplish in order to fulfill their role.  Goals let us know when we can say that we have actually “done” a particular responsibility.   For instance, our 2nd/3rd grade group leader may have 3 simple goals:

• Prepare the lesson and facilitate the class as scheduled
• Pray for each child in your group by name at least once during each month
• Send a card to each student at least twice during the year, affirming something you’ve noticed about God’s care for them. 

If goals are stated simply and concretely, they make it easy to determine whether a person  fulfilled them.  If that Sunday school leader went numerous months without specifically praying for their students, they would be able to tell that they hadn’t met that particular goal.  

In a perfect world, each volunteer could internalize their simple goals and fulfill them without struggle. In reality, we need to help each other. That’s where leaders come in. That leads to our third document. 

3. Who leads whom?  Here is where the proverbial rubber begins to meet the road. 

In a corporate setting this might be called an organizational map or “org chart”.  The Bible makes it clear that God’s people fit together:  the church is one body with many members. 

In a church setting, this element of belonging to the body can become complicated.  Everyone on a committee may have slightly different views of how a Sunday school teacher ought to conduct his class.  Or everyone on a worship committee may have slightly different perspectives on what kind of songs ought to be included in the rotation for this coming year.   And beyond the worship committee, if a worship leader considers the multitude of different tastes represented in the people who attend the services, she may quickly discover a dizzying array of difficulties.  I'm a big fan of democracy, but most pastors learn that there are situations when it’s costly to give every person the same-sized vote. 

For instance, take wedding rehearsals.  As a pastor, I’ve found them to be clumsy group exercises.  Everyone’s excited, maybe kind of nervous.  Someone may have even passed a flask outside the church.  And as the designated clergy in the room, I’ve got to get everyone positioned in their places so the wedding party will look their best in the ceremony the next day.  In my first rehearsals I often found myself overwhelmed with advice from well-intentioned relatives and friends watching the show from the pews.  “The groomsmen were too far to the left…no, it’s the second bridesmaid, she isn’t centered between the other two…”

I found it profoundly helpful when another pastor suggested that at my next rehearsal I quietly ask just one person to be my “how does this look?” observer.  (I think I chose the mother of the bride, because no one was going to stand up to her on rehearsal night!)  When it came time to arrange the wedding party I listened for only one voice—hers.  She could quickly point out who was standing too close or too far apart.  In a few moments time we had easily marked everyone’s parking spot on the platform with little pieces of masking tape, and we could move on to more important things. 

So also, in a healthy ministry setting, each volunteer needs to know whose direction to listen for most closely. 

Now, obviously, this approach could be abused in a ministry setting.  If a committee chair decides to go rogue, you could quickly create chaos as one ministry starts to operate independently of the rest of the body.  That’s not how a body works!

But here’s where the Who Leads Whom? idea becomes so important.  Suppose that a team leader does end up somehow out of sync with the larger priorities of the ministry.  That simply moves this conversation up to the next level.  If the person leading this errant committee chair needs has carefully worked through these same questions with him or her, then they should be in a pretty good position to notice the problem and engage in productive dialogue about it.  In a healthy church leadership environment, every member of a team should not only know who their leader is, but also who is the leader of their leader. The average North American church is small enough that this series of partnerships will usually lead directly to a Council or staff member. 

This approach results in a ministry-wide “map” of who-leads-whom.  This allows everyone in a ministry to work out disagreements like a family, as they follow the priorities toward which God has been prompting the Pastor and Council or other primary leaders.  This kind of  map is the most helpful way of avoiding the silos in which ministries can become isolated from the rest of the church. 

But this sounds elaborate. Who has the time or breathing room to come up with these forms of clarity?  Most leaders, and most of the people they lead, already have plenty on their calendars.  How can busy leaders clear out yet more time to think these questions through?

There may be a number of steps that could help church leaders clear out the thought space needed to develop this kind of clarity.  Bringing in an outside perspective, for instance, can really help speed up a discussion.  A skilled facilitator or other guide can ask questions from an outside perspective, leading people to think about the same things differently.  Over my years as a facilitator, I’ve enjoyed helping a number of churches in that kind of role, leading them to uncover possibilities from God that had been staring them in the face all along. 

But perhaps the simplest, most accessible, way of freeing up leaders’ time is usually printed right in front of participants in a meeting: the agenda. 

4. Meeting agendas provide the means for the teams and other leadership groups to decide which items most warrant the group's time as they sit down together.  In any given meeting there are usually far more things that might be discussed than there are minutes for the discussion to happen. If someone doesn’t take a few moments to thoughtfully prioritize the events of the meeting, the group members’ time can easily be spent many times over on various topics that have captured group members’ attention.  There are a lot of important things the group might discuss—but which of those things are the most important?  A well-thought-out agenda can really help with that.   And while a thoughtful agenda may come with a variety of attachments to be considered, the most important thing about an agenda is the fact that it lays out simply what the group will be considering and in what sequence. 

For instance, one helpful step is to put the most important agenda items first in the meeting.  That can provide a simple way of preventing secondary discussions from displacing more critical questions.  It can also be helpful if the person facilitating the meeting identifies on the agenda just what the purpose of each discussion will be. Is there a decision to be made? If so, what is it?  Somebody should make a proposal, ideally prior to the meeting.  If an agenda item is simply for information, the chair might consider suggesting a time limit for the discussion instead of talking until there’s nothing left to talk about.  That will save time, too. 

In addition, the most important items in a meeting will be addressed more effectively by distributing them before the meeting with explanation so that members can familiarize themselves with the documents.  It can unnecessarily double the length of a meeting if proposals are read out loud in the meeting when they could have been distributed and read at home before the meeting. 

These four documents, when laid out thoughtfully, can dramatically increase the intentionality and effectiveness of any ministry effort.  They are simple and they really help.  However the process to come up with them rarely is.  While it’s not hard to come up with a grocery list of things that matter…it can be surprisingly difficult to pinpoint exactly what matters most.  That’s where an outside voice as facilitator can be helpful, to nudge everyone along toward the areas of agreement that often lurk just under the surface waters of apparent disagreements.

The point behind all four of this is simple: intentionality is more important than control. 

Unfortunately, it’s also a lot more difficult.  That’s why many leaders can easily slip into a temptation to control as a way of keeping their chaos at bay. 

So let me ask you: what are you intentional about?