The following article appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of Peacemaker Magazine.

by David D. Schlachter, Director of the Institute for Christian Conciliation

A church wanted to reach its community with the gospel.  They needed an expanded facility to meet this vision, so they turned to a consultant to help them. Along the way, however, serious disagreements arose. The church refused to make any further payments and unilaterally terminated the agreement.  The consultant was outraged and demanded payment. Lawyers got involved, and the situation grew more tense-and public. The local newspaper reported on this relationship breakdown between the church leaders and the consultant, filled with accusations and hurtful statements from both sides.

They all knew the situation was a mess, and was a terrible example of how Christians should treat one another, but where could they turn for help? 

Sometimes, even if a church has trained peacemakers, such conflicts cannot be easily resolved "in house." The issues in the conflict may be more complex than the church's conciliators are prepared to handle, or the dispute may involve the church and a third party.  The Institute for Christian Conciliation (a division of Peacemaker Ministries) and its trained Certified Christian Conciliators provide a forum in which these types of disputes can be addressed in a biblically faithful manner as called for in 1 Corinthians 6.  

In this particular situation above, the contract included a clause calling for disputes to be resolved via mediation and/or arbitration through the Institute for Christian Conciliation (ICC), so the consultant and the church (albeit grudgingly) turned to the ICC for help. The parties wanted the matter arbitrated quickly so they could move on with their lives and businesses, but the ICC counseled them to proceed with mediation first.  Reluctantly, they agreed to a short mediation, but established that if the mediation was not successful it would quickly go to arbitration.  Both the church and the consultant expressed suspicion of one another, proceeding with little expectation of a positive outcome. 

But God had something far better in store.

After some coaching from the conciliator and honest consideration of God's Word, the church leaders took the first step, confessing and apologizing for poor leadership and hurtful actions. The consultant had come to the mediation ready to fight, with a stack of files and papers to prove his points, but God used the brokenness in the church leaders to soften his heart. He responded to the church leaders with forgiveness and confession of his own.  As the process continued, together they addressed over 25 specific personal issues with confession and forgiveness, as well as the material issue-they agreed on a payment from the church to the consultant.  

Knowing the public nature of their dispute, they also decided to provide the local newspaper with the following statement:

"This past summer there were two articles in the [Local newspaper] reporting on a dispute between [Church] and [Consultant].  [Consultant] had been hired to design a new building for the growing [Church].  During [year] issues arose which we all allowed to create a lot of hurt and a climate of extreme mistrust.  It ended up with both sides becoming adversaries and hiring attorneys to try to settle the dispute.  Both parties finally sat down together in [year] with an impartial Christian mediator.  Right from the outset of the meeting it was obvious that we had both been guilty of very poor communication and that we had unfairly judged one another's motives, which continued degenerating into anger and mistrust.  Hiring legal counsel only exacerbated those feelings on both sides.

"As we met together God started to work in our hearts, and it became painfully obvious that we all had been doing what Jesus warned against . . . trying to 'remove the speck' from each other's eye without dealing with the 'log' in our own (Matthew 7). So each side tearfully confessed our wrongs to the other and we asked for and received each other's forgiveness.  By the end of the day we had settled all the outstanding issues and even went out together for an enjoyable meal as friends.

"We wanted to write this joint letter to let readers of the previous newspaper articles know that Christianity does work.  And we want you to know that if God has the power to restore and bring life to our broken relationship, He also has the power to restore a hurting marriage, to reconcile parents and children, to resurrect broken dreams, to change the direction of one's life."

This case is an example of how we all need help sometimes. Whether that help comes from a family member, pastor, friend, or even a professional organization like the ICC, we need someone else to help us get back on the right path when we are lost in the middle of a conflict. The long road to reconciliation often takes us to unexpected challenges and detours that require us to set aside our pride and ask for help.  We must obediently follow the path and trust God to change our hearts and bring reconciliation and restoration.