EP 257 – Reframing Conflict with Mark Clifton
1. Conflict is Inevitable, But It’s Also an Opportunity.
You can’t avoid conflict, especially when leading a church through renewal. Instead of seeing it as something to flee from, view it as a Gospel opportunity. This is your chance to let the Gospel do its transformative work within your congregation.
2. Avoiding Conflict Can Lead to Greater Harm.
While most pastors naturally want to avoid conflict, dodging it can lead to bigger problems down the line. Addressing issues head-on, with grace and wisdom, helps to prevent larger divisions and misunderstandings.
3. Reflect on Your Relationship with Conflict.
If you find yourself drawn to conflict, it might be time to take a step back. Some individuals thrive on drama, which can be damaging to both them and their ministry. Honest self-reflection is crucial to ensure your motives align with your calling.
4. Lead with the Gospel.
Conflict is not just a hurdle; it’s a platform to demonstrate Gospel-centered leadership. Approach disagreements with a spirit of reconciliation, aiming to restore relationships and bring healing through Christ.
5. Embrace the Process.
Reframing conflict isn’t about finding quick fixes. It’s about embracing a process that requires patience, prayer, and persistent Gospel application. Trust that God is at work, even in the messiness of ministry conflicts.
Remember, conflict is not something to be feared but an opportunity to glorify God by applying the Gospel in real and tangible ways.
[00:00:00] JimBo Stewart: Welcome to another episode of the Replant Boot Camp, the podcast for church renewal leaders where we listen, learn, and laugh together with boots on the ground church leaders. I’m your host, Jimbo Stewart. This podcast is sponsored by Church QuickSight by 180 Digital. Getting a website that your visitors and members will love doesn’t have to be hard.
Learn more at churchquicksight. com.
Here we are, back at the boot camp, back at it again. Hope you’re ready for the next episode. This week, I get to hang out with El Jefe himself, El Padre Mark Clifton.
Hey, I’m
doing good.
[00:00:48] Mark Clifton: good. No one’s in this room with us, but we are in a conference room of an association in the Delta of
[00:00:54] JimBo Stewart: Yeah,
[00:00:55] Mark Clifton: I didn’t know Arkansas had a Delta.
[00:00:56] JimBo Stewart: Yeah, it was right there on the Mississippi River, not far from Memphis.
[00:01:00] Mark Clifton: We are in Croft, Arkansas.
[00:01:03] Clint Haynes: Hey guys, sorry to interrupt. Uh, Clint Haynes with Tri County Baptist Association. two things real quick. Number one, thank y’all so much for coming and investing in Delta Pastures. It means the world to us. And number two, um, it’s Colt. You’re not in Croft, you are in Colt, Arkansas, and we’re glad to have you.
[00:01:26] JimBo Stewart: Which, as you informed me today,
[00:01:28] Mark Clifton: Is the home of the Silver Fox.
[00:01:30] JimBo Stewart: Yeah.
Which, I’m just gonna be, I’m gonna confess, I didn’t know who that
[00:01:34] Mark Clifton: Charlie Rich. Charlie Rich, ladies and gentlemen. I was an old country music DJ. Charlie Rich. Yes.
[00:01:41] JimBo Stewart: us your country music DJ voice and intro. Like, what was your call station, how would you do it?
[00:01:47] Mark Clifton: It is two minutes until five o’clock on KEXS 1090 Southern Gospel and Country Music. And by the way, we’ve got weather and traffic on the eights coming up. Right now it’s sunny skies and 47 degrees. Let’s take a listen to Charlie Rich and when we get behind closed
[00:02:01] JimBo Stewart: door.
That’s good. That was
[00:02:03] Mark Clifton: Actually, there was a big country music station in Little Rock called K A A Y in Little Rock. I always wanted to work there, because I wanted to yell back and go, Welcome to K A A Y, Little Rock, Arkansas. 50, 000 people. Clearwatt Channel. All night long. Anyway, people think they’ve turned
[00:02:19] JimBo Stewart: into
turned
[00:02:20] Mark Clifton: into Little Rock.
K A Y. We are in Croft, Arkansas.
The home birthplace of Charlie Rich. When we get behind closed doors. Don’t listen to that song. It’s not very edifying. but we’re not going to talk about that anymore.
[00:02:33] JimBo Stewart: here’s what we’re going to talk about is, so this is coming out the day before the replant summit starts.
And so if you’re driving there, you’re flying there, you’re listening to this or you missed out, you didn’t register and you didn’t attend. We won’t at least give you a taste. What we’re talking about
[00:02:48] Mark Clifton: day before it starts.
[00:02:50] JimBo Stewart: this is the day before the replant
[00:02:51] Mark Clifton: drive on over. We’ve got a room
[00:02:53] JimBo Stewart: Come on. We’ll make it work
[00:02:54] Mark Clifton: not a hotel room. I ain’t got no more hotel rooms, but you’re welcome to join. You sleep in your car.
[00:03:01] JimBo Stewart: Well, we’ll leave it we’ll slip you in we’ll just write your name on somebody else’s name tag
[00:03:05] Mark Clifton: I know. Come on over.
[00:03:06] JimBo Stewart: Yeah, we’d love it.
So we decided as a team that this year the focus of the Replant Summit would be reframing conflict. We planned this, back in January and one of the things we knew is we’d be coming into, most likely, a contentious season for our nation.
as a whole, and then as we approach the election, we also know that potentially convention meetings, uh, have some contention to them. But we also, more than even all of that, know that leading a church in renewal, you’re gonna deal with conflict. It’s, it’s gonna be a part of the whole process. And so, what we want to talk about is reframing, how we think about conflict.
It’s not something that we have to run away from or avoid, but it’s a gospel opportunity, a way to bring light to the gospel and let the gospel do its work in your church. And so, Mark, you get to kick off the whole conference. Talk to us a little bit, like, when you hear that, what comes to your mind?
[00:03:59] Mark Clifton: Well, I think none of us like conflict. If you like conflict, then go ahead and quit being a pastor,
because we
don’t, we don’t need that. And you know, truthfully, there are some guys who do like it, to be frank about
[00:04:11] JimBo Stewart: it.
Yeah.
[00:04:11] Mark Clifton: Uh, there are some people who love drama, believe it or not, and they need drama in their life. And there are some people who, some pastors, absolutely love drama. Not very many of them, but there are some who thrive on conflict and because it makes them feel important and makes them feel powerful and they generally are pastors who, uh, maybe aren’t even really called to be a pastor and they can, can do some damage to a church.
There’s not very many like that, but I would be amiss if I didn’t say there weren’t some. So if you’re a pastor who seems to really look forward to and enjoy conflict, do some serious reflection on your life and why you are there. But most of us as pastors, we want to avoid conflict. Like the plague.
It’s like if we have a problem with somebody in our church or we know there are two people who are arguing or fussing. And so you come out of your office on Sunday morning and you’re going to head down the hallway and you see them coming. You are, you dump into any Sunday school classroom you can duck into
[00:05:08] JimBo Stewart: into.
So you don’t have to talk
[00:05:10] Mark Clifton: have to talk. Have I ever done that?
[00:05:12] JimBo Stewart: to them. Have
[00:05:14] Mark Clifton: I ever, have I ever tried to avoid conflict? Absolutely. Yes. And no, I don’t want to talk to that person. I know they’re going to be upset. Absolutely. but listen, you can’t, you should not try to avoid it because avoiding the conflict that’s going on in your church only makes it worse.
Avoiding conflict does not make it go away. Okay, now you, here, I always say this, Jimbo, you don’t want to spend 20 on a 0. 20 conflict. So some pastors deflate every small conflict to a big deal, and then they make it much bigger than it really is. Part of learning how to be a good conflict resolution person is knowing what level of intensity to bring to each situation. Some situations require Very little level of intensity.
I heard someone say the other day, it was really good. He said, this lady came to me and she said, pastor, there are people saying X, Y, and Z. And he said, well, we have about 150 people on Sunday morning. So just give me a rough idea. You think 150 people are saying that? Oh, no, no. Maybe 100 people? Oh, no, no. Maybe 50? No, 25? Probably not. Maybe 10? And honestly, she said, Maybe, but probably not. And he said, well, then it’s not very many. Is it? She said, no, not really. Now that’s the way you can kind of tone it down without going, well, what people, and you know, he’s just gotta, so there are ways you can kind of, you gotta, you can’t ignore that conflict.
You can’t just blow her off and say, look, I’m not gonna listen to you. But on their hand, you don’t want to make it more important than it is. But my point in all that is. As a pastor, don’t run to conflict and don’t find your joy in it, but don’t hide away in your office and pretend like it’s going to go away.
You have to deal with it. It’s your job to be the one that can help that. So you create an environment in your church where conflict is resolved. It doesn’t go unresolved. It won’t be a matter of whether you’ll have conflict among people. Goodness sakes, people can love each other and have conflict. You have conflict with your kids and your spouse and you love each other.
But the key isn’t, isn’t that. It’s how do you resolve it? How do you even learn from it? How does it, how does it make you grow deeper in your love for each other? Right?
[00:07:33] JimBo Stewart: Yeah. One of the things we were talking about at lunch even is, sometimes you have to identify is this a, is the conflict that you feel a tension or a problem? Right? And if it’s, if it’s a tension, then it’s not something that has to be solved like a
[00:07:47] Mark Clifton: Explain the difference to me.
[00:07:49] JimBo Stewart: Okay, so a tension would be, the tension is between the youth ministry and the adult ministry. So tension would be, hey, we need to make sure our worship services are such that youth want to be here, but the adults would say, yeah, but we’re here too, right? And here’s what I would mean. If you treat that as a problem to be solved, You create a winner and a loser, and you choose either the youth or the adults to lose or win.
And when you choose one of those to lose or win, everybody ends up losing. And so, rather than treating that as a problem that has to be solved, I think it actually has to be a tension that has to be managed, and that’s where we take it to, let’s put the interest of others above ourselves. Let’s serve each other well, and let’s live in the tension of
[00:08:39] Mark Clifton: Good
word, because that’s really something that was somewhat of a very important game changer in our marriage.
I took a counselor named Ken Howard, a great Christian counselor, up to Canada one time to do some consulting with, just some conferencing. with some married couples, uh, church pastors and their wives in Canada. And in this conference, my wife was with me, man. Ken shared some really cool insights that we’ve taken back all those many years ago and applied him to our marriage.
And there is a noticeable improvement in, in our marriage from this. And that is just what you said. Not every conflict has to be.
[00:09:17] JimBo Stewart: Yeah.
[00:09:17] Mark Clifton: there doesn’t have to be a winner and loser even in marriage You can you can just say you know what we just agree That that’s not ever going to be totally resolved and it’s not worth fighting over.
It’s not worth arguing over And and what was it? You said you don’t resolve it, but you
[00:09:33] JimBo Stewart: Yeah. You manage
[00:09:33] Mark Clifton: manage it. That’s it. You manage
[00:09:35] JimBo Stewart: it
Yeah, you manage attention. But the problem is if you take attention and you try to solve it like a problem, you make more problems.
[00:09:41] Mark Clifton: and so that’s right. So so if yeah, we treat everything in a marriage like a problem to be solved Well, you’re never going to solve all of them.
But if it’s a, if it’s a tension to be managed, you can find ways to manage that tension and manage that. And, and that has really changed. We just don’t, we don’t really fight anymore. Of course, you have to be our age. You’re just too tired to fight and you realize it doesn’t really matter anyway. And so, uh, we just, uh, you know, we just, we just sit down and watch baseball.
But, uh, no, it’s not necessarily true. We have,
[00:10:09] JimBo Stewart: also
[00:10:10] Mark Clifton: we watch hockey and all, but you do learn that you don’t have to fight over everything. I mean, sometimes early in your marriage, it, everything becomes a, you’re going to draw the line and you know, this, that you just, I love that you don’t have to, you know, you can just manage the tension.
There doesn’t have to be a winner and loser in it. And that’s true too. Like you said, in the church situation, you don’t want to create winners and losers.
[00:10:30] JimBo Stewart: Sometimes, though, it’s not a tension, it is a problem. Well,
[00:10:33] Mark Clifton: excuse me. You do create winners and losers if it’s a theological issue or something like that. But if it’s a matter of, you know, But, you know, do we put these silk flowers on here or not?
Do we, what time do we have the worship service? Those kinds of things that are not theological. Those need to be managed.
[00:10:49] JimBo Stewart: Yeah. All right. Well, so talk to us biblically. What, what can we look to biblically to understand
the importance of managing reframing conflict and how it impacts the whole body of Christ? Because it, when it’s not just attention, when it’s a problem and we got to deal with it, what does that, what does that look like?
What wisdom can we pull from scripture?
[00:11:13] Mark Clifton: can we pull from Scripture? Philippians, the joy, book. I mean, ever since I was a little kid, I was told that, you know, Philippians is all about joy and it is, it’s about, and of course he’s writing it in a very difficult context, but he’s full of joy.
Paul is, and he’s, he’s delighted in the gospel, delighted in Christ. You know, one of the first verses you learn as a kid is rejoice in the Lord. Always. Again, I say rejoice. Would you like me to sing that for
[00:11:39] JimBo Stewart: no thanks.
Rejoice
[00:11:40] Mark Clifton: in the Lord always. We’ll sing it in a round. You ready? I’ll sing it. And then you. You and I can sing it in a
[00:11:45] JimBo Stewart: a round, ready?
[00:11:46] Mark Clifton: Rejoice in the, no
[00:11:47] JimBo Stewart: Did you
[00:11:48] Mark Clifton: you ever
sing it in a round?
[00:11:49] JimBo Stewart: round?
[00:11:50] Mark Clifton: You didn’t? Okay, let’s try it in a round. Rejoice in the Lord always
[00:11:55] JimBo Stewart: in the Lord always. Rejoice
[00:11:57] Mark Clifton: Rejoice, it would work! It works in a round! And then you can have, let’s have all the women above the age of 50 sing this verse. Now, I would not suggest you say
[00:12:05] JimBo Stewart: that.
[00:12:07] Mark Clifton: I did that one time. I was in, I was pastoring a rural church in North Missouri and I was leading music and pastoring. And sometimes we’d say, uh, you know, the men only on this person, the women only on this verse. And for some stupid reason, I was in college. I just said, and all, all the women over 50 on this verse,
[00:12:29] JimBo Stewart: they love that.
[00:12:30] Mark Clifton: it was not well received. I don’t even know why I did it. I was, I meant them with just the older ladies is what I meant, you know? And I didn’t want to say, I knew enough, not say older ladies. So I just picked a number. Okay, anyway, why are we here? Oh, the Rejoyful, the Joyful book.
[00:12:49] JimBo Stewart: Philippians.
[00:12:50] Mark Clifton: So Philippians. But, as Paul is unpacking this wonderful, joyful letter about rejoicing the Lord always and, in verse, in fact, in, in, uh, chapter 4, verse 1, Therefore, my brothers whom I love, for my joy and my crown stand firm the Lord, trust my beloved.
And then, the letter takes a complete and sudden and dramatic turn To this, he names two women by name, right? By name,
[00:13:17] JimBo Stewart: Yeah.
[00:13:18] Mark Clifton: you can imagine they’re all sitting around and he’s, they’re reading this letter out loud,
and hanging on every syllable, right? Cause this comes from Paul.
And by the
way, just getting a letter in those days from far away like that.
And from Paul, wow, what a powerful moment as they’re reading it out loud. And then imagine that, you, you know how to pronounce these names,
[00:13:38] JimBo Stewart: right?
Uodia
[00:13:40] Mark Clifton: Uh huh,
[00:13:41] JimBo Stewart: and
[00:13:42] Mark Clifton: Syntyche.
you got it right. Thank you. Very good. So,
[00:13:47] JimBo Stewart: Yeah, but I’m thinking, you’re sitting there, we’re all sitting there, we’re all excited, and all of a sudden
it goes, And Mark Clifton,
[00:13:52] Mark Clifton: Yeah, I entreat Mark Clifton. And Jimbo Stewart. And Jimbo Stewart. What? I
[00:13:57] JimBo Stewart: get your stuff together, That’s, so he
[00:14:01] Mark Clifton: So, he says, I entreat Euodia, and.
[00:14:04] JimBo Stewart: Sintikee,
[00:14:05] Mark Clifton: did that very well. I entreat Yoda and S Yoda and S Yoda and S
[00:14:12] JimBo Stewart: I suggest
[00:14:13] Mark Clifton: I suggest you practice these names before you
[00:14:16] JimBo Stewart: preach this
Yeah.
[00:14:18] Mark Clifton: I sugge I I entreat
[00:14:21] JimBo Stewart: you two
[00:14:22] Mark Clifton: these
two ladies by name, what? To agree in the Lord. Now we’re joking about this and everything, but this, this is really serious. He’s got this wonderful letter on joy and Trevin Wax is the one that pointed this out to me the first time.
So I’ll make sure he gets credit for that. But this wonderful letter on joy. And then out of the blue, he names two ladies. He says, entreats a strong word. Man, I beseech you. This is important, listen up, that you agree in the Lord. Now, Trevin brought this up, and this is so, this is drop the mic kind of moment.
What they were fighting over, didn’t matter.
[00:15:02] JimBo Stewart: Yeah.
[00:15:03] Mark Clifton: Because if it mattered, if it was doctrinal, Paul would have taken a side. He wouldn’t have let that hang out there. If they were doing something that was causing people’s faith to become a shipwreck, if they were teaching a doctrine that was not sound, He would have taken a side, but he’s basically saying these two ladies are just disagreeing with each other.
It doesn’t even matter what the disagreement is. We don’t know what it Could have been anything, right? But he says, I entreat you to agree in the Lord. Verse three, I ask you also the true companion, help these women. Who labored side by side with me in the gospel with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life.
They’re believers. He says, Look, not only I’m asking you two women to start getting along and stop this, but church, you have to help them do that. This matters. This kind of dissension cannot continue. It’s so important that Paul calls it out by name in the letter But it’s obviously not a doctrinal issue because he doesn’t take a side on it.
It’s also so important that he encourages, or really entreats the church to hold them accountable to this, right? Why? Because they all are important in the gospel. Okay, and then he goes right to verse 4, Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice. In other words, guys, if you don’t look at that for what it is, a, a, a strong understanding that as a pastor, your joy in the Lord and the joy of the folks in your church in the Lord is really contingent on working as a, as a team and an effort to make sure that you deal with conflict, you know, very, very well.
open and, and positive and constructive way and not kick it under the rug and not hide from it and not let it fester. Because what will happen is you’ll create a culture where conflict is permeating in your church. And some of you showing up at a church and you go, I don’t get it, Mark. There’s just conflict everywhere.
I open a door, there’s another problem. Open a drawer, there’s another problem. This has a history of conflict. Well, somewhere back in the early days of this church, there were two people, like these two, who started fussing with each other, and nobody dealt with it, and then it became the dominant culture.
And so what Paul is saying is, look, this has to stop because the gospel’s too important, the fellowship is too important, joy is too important, and you have to be intentional about it.
Stopping this kind of conflict.
[00:17:35] JimBo Stewart: I think that’s so key to understand that, uh, I love how you’ve tied it to joy and the idea of the joy of the church and the direction of the church, the understanding, the unity of the church, because we all think about unity, but also the, the joy of the church, which is a joy is a pretty big deal in the Bible.
Yes. I mean, it’s a huge deal. And I, it makes me think about, so after, so after you do the first session at the Replant Summit, it’s going to get followed up, J. J. Washington. Is gonna, gonna step in and talk to us about count it all joy coming from James chapter one Here’s why I love this all connects together James chapter 1 verse 2 Count it all joy my brothers when you meet trials of various kinds for you know that and this is why we count a joy Here’s why we know even though it’s hard for us as a pastor to deal with this We don’t want to deal with these two ladies We don’t want to handle all of this for for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing And here’s what I somebody I can’t even remember who it was somebody challenged me early In ministry when I was dealing with some difficulties and he said When you deal with difficulty and conflict in ministry, your temptation will be to run away from it But you look it in the eye. You look it in the eye and you stand firm on who Jesus has called you to be. Not because you think you’re right, but because you know Jesus has something for you in this moment. And it’s part of your sanctification to look this in the eye and deal with this in a gospel centered way.
[00:19:03] Mark Clifton: My friend and your friend, Mark Halleck, he always says, lean into the awkward.
It’s awkward to get involved and try to negotiate, conflict among people, but you’ve got to lean into that awkward. Okay, I’ll give you a story, ladies and
[00:19:17] JimBo Stewart: Let’s hear it.
[00:19:18] Mark Clifton: It’s the Saturday before Mother’s Day at Warner Road Baptist Church. Um, a couple years into the replant, we started to reach some young families, and we decided that on Mother’s Day, we’re going to have a catered dinner.
In our fellowship hall because everybody wants to go out eat on Mother’s Day and there’s restaurants are always full and we thought this might be a way even some of our older members could invite their children and grandchildren to come to church on Mother’s Day with them and have a meal in the fellowship hall and we were catered in from restaurants.
So nobody had to cook or clean up. Everybody got to eat. And so I was upstairs in my office and I heard some actual yelling in the fellowship between ladies. And I knew what was going on. We had a group of older ladies who had run that kitchen since, FDR was president. And then we had a group, three or four younger women who had just recently joined the church with their families.
And they were both downstairs together and they were yelling at each other. And, uh, I’ll be honest with you. I was bi vocational and I didn’t have my mother’s day sermon yet on Saturday. All right. I just didn’t. And I thought, okay, I can’t study if they’re yelling. And, I am not going down there and getting mixed up in this.
They don’t pay me enough for that. So, uh, I’m bi vocational for goodness
[00:20:33] JimBo Stewart: good to say. That’s right.
[00:20:34] Mark Clifton: that’s right. Well, let them did it with themselves. So I, I started out the building, man, I got, I got halfway to my truck and then the Lord really spoke to me and said, Hey, you knucklehead, if you don’t deal with it, who’s going to, and I’d been ministering long enough to know probably if I hadn’t been in ministry very long, unfortunately.
Even though the Lord was speaking to me, I probably would have overran him over and gotten in the truck and gone home anyway. But having been in ministry a long time, I was able to think, okay, this could be a lot worse tomorrow than it is today. I don’t want that to happen. And then the Lord kept saying, well, do the right thing.
So I went back in, I went downstairs, the older ladies wanted to set up the tables in the fellowship hall. Longways with the big roll of white paper that rolls all the way down, right? You know, they go there’s big rolls of white paper. The young ladies had brought card tables from home, and they wanted to set up all kinds of card tables, and they brought different colored tablecloths.
They wanted to look more like a restaurant.
[00:21:34] JimBo Stewart: Hmm.
[00:21:35] Mark Clifton: The older ladies were saying in no uncertain terms. We have tried that before. It doesn’t work with traffic flow. It’s hard to get in and out. You can’t see near as many people. This is the best way to do it. The younger ladies said something like, I don’t want to look like I’m eating in a, I don’t know, dining room of an assisted living place.
And that went over really well. So, what are we going to do? We are a bit of an impasse, so they’re yelling at each other. So, I, I stepped in and I said, whoa, whoa, just chill for a minute. I said, I want, first of all, you three younger ladies, come over here with me. So, I took them over, yeah, we had a little church parlor, every dying church like that had a parlor.
Took a little church parlor, and I said, look, um, these older women, So many changes taking place in this church. And I said, the kitchen is sort of their, their one area. I mean, it’s the last thing they’ve got. You’re that’s their turf. I said, you know, what’s our goal here? Make disciples and make disciples that result, the community being mostly better.
I said, look, I would rather tables be set up the way you have them set up, but that doesn’t help us make disciples. It doesn’t make the community knows to be better. And I said, it’s going to hurt them a lot more. Not to have their tables, then it’s going to help you to have them. And I said, can we just for, I said, what if this was your great grandma and you were at her house?
Would you go into her house and say, grandma, your table looks silly. I want to bring my table and put it in here. I said, you got to think like that. Well, okay. I mean, I used a lot of credibility this week. I said, not only do I want you to agree to it, I want you to go in to apologize to them. But I said, before I do that, let me go talk to the old ladies.
So I went to the old ladies, and I said basically the same thing, only opposite. You know, I said, these young ladies are very invested in this church. You ought to be really grateful that they want to do something here. Did you not pray for years that young people would be here, and now look how you’re treating them?
I said, if your granddaughters came to your house and wanted to bring some food, would you tell them to take that food back out to the car? You’re not gonna eat it? So now when I said, but I’ll tell you what, they’re willing to let them, they’re willing to follow your leadership here, but you’ve got to make sure you show them how grateful you are for that.
So when they got back together, they actually did like hug each other and then what would have happened if like a knucklehead, I had not gone down there and dealt with that. And I think that’s, as a pastor. Could it have gone wrong? Yeah, it would have gone wrong if I hadn’t gone down there. And some of that’s just what you call mileage.
I’ve been around a long time. I’d seen a lot of things by that time. It’s a good thing I didn’t replant my first church till I was almost 50 because if I’d have been 30, I probably would have blown that up. I probably would have gone down there and told the old ladies to set aside. We’re going to use the young ones and that wouldn’t have helped.
So anyway, that’s just a story, but it’s a little bit like how you have to get in there, roll up your sleeves and find some way to deal with that conflict so that it doesn’t get worse. Okay, I know we got a long way, but here’s the cool thing. The main lady in that story wasn’t a lady named Mildred, and she was the chairman of the of the of the kitchen committee, and she was very, very strict.
But fast forward in about eight years, Mildred now is going to care. She’s going to assisted living. And she has no daughters and her sons don’t really care about her kitchen stuff at all. And she lived a few blocks in the church. So the last Sunday that Mildred was with us, before she went to the assisted living, she said, Mark, can I say something at the end of the service?
And, you know, normally you’re not sure about that, but Mildred, she’d put her time in at the church and sure. Why not? So I gave her the microphone and she said, you know, this has been my church for all these years and yada, yada, yada, yada. She said, and I’ve learned to love these young mothers so much. And I’m so grateful we have all these young women here.
She said, I have a kitchen full of some of the best frying pans and pots and pans. She said, I have, I have handmade tea towels. I have dishes. She said, I’m not going to need them at the assisted living place. I’m going to, she said, so after church today, I’m going to go home and open every kitchen cabinet door I have.
And I want every young mother in our church to come and take whatever she And I mean, there wasn’t a dry eye. And, and so those women that few years, seven, eight years before I’d been arguing with her now hugged her and loved her and she opened the kitchen to them. So there’s joy that happens when you work to resolve that conflict.
So I just wanted to share that story too.
[00:25:40] JimBo Stewart: That’s good. Hey, would you close our time by praying for the pastors and ministry leaders that are listening to this as they deal with conflict?
[00:25:46] Mark Clifton: Father, I thank you for every man and woman listening to this. I thank you for every pastor who is, who’s paying attention to this. There isn’t a one of us that doesn’t face conflict on a regular basis in our lives, in our marriages, and Lord, in our church.
And so to help us to lean into you, uh, listen to you, lean into those awkward situations, and let you show how you can find, find opportunities to bring grace and joy where Satan means to have destruction. Uh, but Lord, we have to step up. And we have to be those who take responsibility, to manage these situations and to love people through this conflict for the sake of the gospel and for the joy of the church in Jesus name.
[00:26:23] JimBo Stewart: Amen.
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Clint haynes, Mark Clifton, reframing conflict
