I’ve been a PCA pastor for 37 years. For the last 20 years, I’ve been very happily settled as the senior pastor of the PCA church in Providence, Rhode Island, but for the first 15 years of my ministry, I served a church in the Dallas area. I loved that time of my life, the people, and the church, but my standard description of those years has always been, “13 great years, one difficult year, and one really difficult year.” And that’s putting it mildly.
It was the perfect storm, a complicated mix of personalities, agendas, and misunderstandings. After years of peace, people with different priorities found themselves slow to listen, quick to speak, and quick to become angry (the opposite of James 1:19). While the flash point was leadership-level conflict, it spilled over into the congregation, with the lives of dozens of people being very adversely impacted.
Do I sound vague? Yes, and deliberately so. I’m not interested in recounting the details which led to our congregational meltdown, of which my recollections would be imperfect and fallible at best. Instead, I simply want to give you a sense of where so many of us found ourselves as our church conflict reached its crescendo: drained, hurt, bitter, angry, confused, and exhausted.
There was a very painful and pronounced fracturing of friendships, with wounds so deep that it was impossible to imagine they would ever heal. While the details vary from church to church and situation to situation, these are the experiences that are common to all who endure severe church conflict.
People went their separate ways: some remained in the church, others left, and my family and I eventually landed back East. I asked an older, wiser friend who went through a similar trial how long it would take to recover from this kind of conflict.
“About five years,” he said.
And he was right, virtually to the day.
And that was all I realistically hoped for: recovery and being able to move on with my life and ministry. I did not anticipate what seemed unthinkable and impossible at the time. Over the course of the next 20 years, hearts softened, friendships were repaired, and joy and mutual affection were restored. It did not come quickly or all at once. But it did come, and it has been wondrous and remarkable to behold.
A few months ago, many of us from that church situation gathered together. It is difficult to describe the peculiar joy and delight found when the same group who were once engulfed in a maelstrom of conflict and upheaval find themselves feasting, laughing, remembering, and being thankful for one another and for the season when our lives overlapped.
There isn’t a trace of the anger, bitterness, or despair I once felt. All of that is years behind me. All that now remains is love and affection for these dear brothers and sisters.
Not every relationship has been repaired, nor every friendship restored. But the healing has been very substantial and is something that amazes me every time I think of it.
I hope I never again have to endure such a period of ecclesiastical strife, but of course, on this side of glory there are no guarantees.
I think, however, of those who may be reading these words. Some people are about to enter a time of great conflict, but think it could never happen to them and their churches. Some of you are in the middle of such a conflagration, finding your lives consumed by it. Some are in the aftermath of a traumatic ordeal, navigating the wreckage and debris, wondering if you’ll ever heal.
I am enough of a realist to acknowledge that some wounds won’t be healed and some friendships won’t be restored until the perfect reconciliation of the world to come. Yet, I wanted to share my experience to give you hope and to bear witness to the fact that loving and laughing may well come about over the ensuing years. You may find, to your surprise and delight, that, with the passage of time, your wounds will be healed.
I recently finished preaching through the Psalms of Ascent (120-134). It was especially poignant for me to think of the language of Psalm 133, of how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity, with the oil running down upon head and beard and the veritable dew of Hermon falling on the mountains of Zion.
And then to think of that goodness and pleasantness being shattered and destroyed … only in due course, by the grace of God, to be restored. Thanks be to God, who, by his Word and Spirit – and through the passage of time – heals our wounds.
David Sherwood serves as senior pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Providence, Rhode Island.