Thriving Through Ministry Conflict : By Understanding Your Red and Blue Zones

by James P. Osterhaus, Joseph M. Jurkowski, and Todd A. Hahn

• ISBN13: 9780310263449
• ISBN10: 0310263441
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-09-01
• Publisher: Harpercollins Christian Pub

Summary

Barry is at the end of his rope with his church. Though he was hired with the enthusiastic support of the church leadership to revitalize a congregation in decline, he has faced nothing but resistance every step of the way. The church board is in constant conflict, and now the situation has degenerated into personal attacks against him. In desperation, Barry turns to a friend's mentor for help. Is there hope? Or will Barry need to resign his pastorate?

Author Biography

Joe Jurkowski is also the founder of the Counseling Center of Fairfax, Virginia Todd Hahn is the president of PSI Resources and Couchhead.com, an educational resources firm, and is part of the planting team for Next Level Church in Charlotte

Table of Contents

List of Response Activities	p. 9
Acknowledgments	p. 11
Introduction: A Dangerous and Difficult Path	p. 13
Welcome to the Jungle	p. 19
Ctrl + Alt + Delete = ?	p. 26
It's All about You	p. 37
Things Fall Apart	p. 45
The Deepest Water	p. 58
On the Right Track	p. 67
Thaw in Chicago	p. 74
Back at Work	p. 84
Entrusted	p. 94
Response Activities
The Problem Is You, So Know Yourself	p. 101
Resistance Is Your Ally	p. 114
Adaptive Change	p. 128
Discussion Questions	p. 151
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Thriving through Ministry Conflict
Copyright © 2005 by TAG—The Armstrong Group
Published in association with Eames Literary Services, Nashville, Tennessee
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Osterhaus, James P.
Thriving through ministry conflict : by understanding your red and blue
zones / James P. Osterhaus, Joseph M. Jurkowski, and Todd A. Hahn.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-10: 0-310-26344-1 (hard : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-26344-9 (hardcover)
1. Church controversies. 2. Clergy—Psychology. 3. Pastoral theology.
I. Jurkowski, Joseph M. II. Hahn, Todd, 1968- III. Title.
BV652.9.O88 2005
253—dc22
2005010114
This edition printed on acid-free paper.
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CHAPTER 1
Welcome to the Jungle
Barry Wolf was getting used to the headaches. They started in
the back of his head and worked their way relentlessly to a point
behind his eyes so that no amount of kneading his temples
helped.When a headache hit, he had to accept the misery until sleep
or half a bottle of ibuprofen kicked in. It was no way to live if one
wanted to lead a church effectively. And Barry was all about effectiveness.
After a ten-year career in insurance sales, Barry had come to the
conclusion that God wanted him to become a pastor. Packing up his
family, including two kids, Barry moved across the country for ministerial
studies. Putting his rare combination of people skills and organizational
acumen to work, Barry finished school early and landed
his first pastorate, leading the First Community Church of Elizabethton,
Illinois.
Barry had moved into his first call with the conviction that
churches in the twenty-first century should be more than traditional
chaplaincies and social clubs for the spiritually minded. He believed
that the church should have an impact in the community and should
function as an effective, life-changing organization by leading people
to follow Christ closely and to live that out in their day-to-day lives.
Barry wasn’t sure how to make this happen, but he had both theological
and commonsense business training and figured he could
work it out in the field.
The call process had been a fairly straightforward one. Jim Grendell,
the chairman of the search committee, combined the precision
of a veteran CPA with the winsomeness of a gifted salesman. He
was also refreshingly honest, even blunt, qualities that Barry admired,
even if his own people-pleasing tendencies occasionally prevented
him from practicing them.
“Look,” said Jim, “I believe that you are the man for this job. You
are in your midthirties, so you are not wet behind the ears. At the
same time, this is your first pastorate, so you are not coming in with
a lot of preconceptions. You also have a background as a salesperson,
which you are going to need to turn this church around.”
Jim described a church whose best days were behind it but which
had potential for the future. First Community had been founded
during the church boom years of the 1950s and had grown quickly.
Located in a fairly affluent suburb of Chicago, the church attracted
a wide spectrum of members, from young families to retirees. Its programs
for children were known throughout the area, it boasted a
series of gifted pastors, and the church made a significant contribution
toward meeting the needs of the disadvantaged in the community.
The church’s growth stabilized in the mid-1960s and stayed level
for about another decade. In the 1970s the demographics of the community
began to change as many families moved a bit farther away
from the Chicago center. Those left behind tended to be older folks
who had no desire to move and those who could not afford to move.
In time the ethnic composition of the area began to change as well,
and First Community, which had been mostly white, did not reflect
this change. By the early 1990s the sanctuary, which seated 700 and
had been filled nearly to capacity for years, held about 225 worshipers
on Sunday morning, and the median age of the congregation was
spiking upward.
Driven in part by the economic boom of the mid- to late-1990s,
young families began to repopulate Elizabethton, but again the
church wasn’t able to attract this new population. By 2000, when
Barry took the reins as pastor, the church’s beautiful structure and
rich history belied its decline in members, finances, and energy.
Barry was not one to shy away from a challenge and so had had
no difficulty deciding to come to First Community.With Jim’s stated
support and the sense of the search committee that Barry was the
one to lead the church in its efforts to reach young families and so
revitalize itself, Barry and his family had moved to Elizabethton with
high hopes and trust in God.
The next three years had been the longest of Barry’s life. The
congregation’s worship seemed lifeless. There was a shortage of volunteers
in every area. Offerings provided enough money to pay
salaries and keep the building up, but there were few resources to
expand ministry and create new programs, things Barry knew were
essential to reach the changing community.
Worst of all, some of his early allies had become antagonists.The
search committee had invited him specifically because he was young
and creative and they knew the church needed to change. But when
Barry began to implement changes—even minor ones to make the
worship services livelier and to brighten the children’s ministry
rooms—he met resistance that seemed wholly out of proportion to
his decisions.
The great shock was that Jim Grendell had become his nemesis.
Five minutes into Barry’s first board meeting at First Community
Church, it was clear who called the shots—Jim. Jim was not a
physically imposing man, but he had a presence about him.He could
talk to anyone about nearly everything and did so with charm. He
was well spoken, was looked to as a mentor by many, and in spite of
his apparent strength was given to emotion and even tears when discussing
an issue important to him. And usually others followed him.
Jim was the kind of guy you wanted on your side and the exact
person you hoped and prayed wasn’t aligned against you, because,
Barry soon realized, Jim

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