Can a church become entrenched in patterns of conflict?

A trained incapacity is a debilitating behavior which an individual or organization has learned from prior experience.  In families, many such debilitating behaviors are learned as children and then carried into the next generation family.  For instance, a child may observe his father's response to an angry clash with his mother.  The father becomes quiet and does not immediately respond to the shouting.  But over the next few days, he does everything in his power to humiliate and denigrate his wife as revenge for the verbal lashing he took.  As the child grows into adulthood and his own relationships with the opposite sex, he then mimics the behavior of his father.  Instead of working to resolve a conflict, he "takes it like a man" and refuses to talk about it.  Later, the inner anger spills out in angry retribution to his spouse.  The first generation family has "trained" by its behaviors the next generational family in handling conflict.  The behaviors passed down are an incapacity to patiently work through conflict, hence the term, "trained incapacity."

Organizations often have behavior characteristics like individuals.  Church congregations are no different.  A trained incapacity relates to church conflict when the membership learns over time how to mishandle conflict situations.  The membership may be so fearful of public opinion that it does its best to stifle any conflict that occurs.  The conflict may be denied, covered up, or ignored.  Over time, members in the church realize this happens and begin to perpetuate this behavior because it is the standard operating procedure.  People who grow up in the church observe this and either accept it or leave.  As a result, the congregation as a whole tends to repeat this behavior over and over.  Members may have no other experience in the church than what they have observed at their church.  Thus, the incapacity to acknowledge and deal with conflict is learned over time and passed down to the next generation members.

Dr. Wise presents four such trained incapacities related to conflict in churches.¹

1. A tendency to spiritualize conflict -- that is to pray about it to the exclusion of attempts at reconciliation.  God certainly intervenes in torn relationships to effect healing but rarely without any communication between the two parties.
2. Denial that any problem exists -- This seems to be particularly strong practice in large "mega" churches where it is extremely difficult to keep a large, diverse group of people focused and working as a team.
3. Trivialization of conflict -- Anything can be trivialized in comparison to the great commission. A marriage problem can be dismissed as unimportant compared to the need to evangelize the neighbors.  Of course, when the marriage breaks up the couple will be unable to evangelize anyone in the neighborhood.
4. The guilt trip -- This is a pattern which uses the pastor or other staff members as a "scape goat" for any problem.  If a conflict occurs, the pastor is blamed for poor leadership.

Each of these behaviors can be a serious and debilitating pattern that a church embraces, even unconsciously.  Over time, members pass down these incapacities to new or younger members.  Most of the time, these behaviors go unnoticed, unchanged and, as a result, so does the training of the next generation members.
 

End Notes:

1. Wise, Dr. Terry. Managing Conflict. Trinity College and Seminary. Course tape 5.

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Copyright 5/23/2001, Randy Lariscy.