How Does a Pastor Handle Tension on their Pastoral Team?

What do you do when your pastoral team begins to disagree and disengage, and things become tense?

Jon Payne, director of church development, shares short and long-term advice for when tension creeps into your pastoral team.

[Transcript lightly edited for clarity.]

Host: It may start small at first, but slowly and surely you start to notice it. There's a coldness and formality to relationships on the pastoral team. There's perhaps an irritability or an unwillingness to bear with one another graciously, or perhaps there's straight-up disagreements or tensions among the pastors or their wives or their families.

So how does a pastor handle it when they begin to sense tensions on their pastoral team and they want to stop them and restore the warmth of relationship they once enjoyed?

Well, this week, Director of Church Development John Payne tackles this important issue; and he gives both short-term advice for a pastoral team that finds tensions cropping up in their meetings and relationships. And he also gives some long-term recommendations to keep pastoral team relationships healthy in the long run. Let's listen in.

Jon Payne: Well, let me first say I think this is an important topic for every pastor to be considering. Evaluating team health can be something that goes under the radar, we can neglect because we're focused on serving people in the church. But I'd like to focus my recommendations in two main categories. One would be short term reconciliation, and then the other would be long term improvement on short term reconciliation. If we're aware that we've sinned against a brother pastor in harsh speech or judgment, or in any way, if we've let them down in some way sinfully, the right thing to do is just to go and ask for their forgiveness.

There's not some special course of action for a pastor that's different than an ordinary Christian. We're going to sin against each other as pastors, and we need to be able to go and repent and ask forgiveness. We also need to consider if we feel that we've been sinned against, we need to seize those opportunities, where possible, to go and bring that up with a fellow pastor. You know, it might come across in the form of a question. One on one brother.

It seemed like you were maybe struggling with me or you seemed to be frustrated with me the other day when we were meeting. Have I done anything to offend you? And then just allow ordinary reconciliation and forgiveness and kindness and mercy to take their effect in a personal relational meeting. That's gonna be a normal part of team ministry and it shouldn't be neglected. It's also worth noting if we've sinned against each other in front of the rest of the team.

If we have a larger team, it can be helpful to ask for forgiveness of the team for sinning in front of them. It may also be that we've damaged or been unkind to our brother's reputation in front of others. And we need to consider whether we've set a bad example for our team in that way. So if other team members have witnessed that sin or been the recipient of a harsh word towards a fellow pastor, we should go to them as well. There have been times where in front of an entire team, I've had to say, brothers, please forgive me.

I felt that was a sinful response on my part. And that's a. That's a good expression of humility that can take place. It could also be the case that just as with individuals, if we think that a brother pastor has sinned in front of the entire team, we might go to them privately and say, brother, it seemed like that answer you gave was harsh or unkind or unloving. Would you be willing to consider that before the Lord?

So the overarching point here with this short term reconciliation is we just don't want to assume that we're on some different track than ordinary everyday Christians, because that's what we are. We are ordinary everyday Christians who just have also been called to the task of setting the believers an example. And so we need to set the believers an example in how we reconcile as individuals and then with any kind of team struggles or conflicts that we have. So that'd be on short term reconciliation. We just need to press into that.

We need to not give ourselves the excuse that this isn't something that we should have to do because we're pastors. Rather, it's something that we should do in an exemplary way because we're pastors. Second big category I'd recommend would be long term improvement or team health improvement. If there is a deep conflict or antagonism that is present on a team, I would recommend, at least for Sovereign Grace pastors, that they would seek help from a regional leader. It can be very helpful to have another voice in the room to talk through some of those conflicts.

I would also recommend using the Team Health tool that we put together a number of years ago, and it's available on the Sovereign Grace Pastors website. I would look for the following opportunities for improving the team health. First of all, I would entrust, number one, I would entrust your ministry preferences to the Lord. So often conflicts come about not because of deep differences in conviction, but because we have preferences in ministry. We'd rather spend a little more money on youth ministry and they'd rather spend it more on the evangelism ministry.

We'd rather have this upcoming seminar on this date and they'd rather have it on a different date. And those somewhat small preferences can ultimately lead to conflict. And I would encourage a regular self reminder that we entrust our ministry preferences to the Lord. This is his church. And most of the decisions we make are not deeply theological, they're just preferential.

And we can be servant hearted in the way we relate to them. The second thing for long term improvement would be I would pray for the team. I would pray for the team regularly for their spiritual health, for their. Their fruitfulness in ministry. We want to position ourselves where we're seeking to make them a success in ministry.

And the best way we can do that is by prayer. I would also encourage encouraging the team. I would look for moments to celebrate God's grace at work in the service of your fellow pastor. If encouragement has given way to a regular pattern of critique, and perhaps critique has become the more normal atmosphere of the team, then I would set aside an extended season to focus and prioritize encouragement. I would make sure that in team meetings, team retreats, team gatherings, that we're looking for ways to build each other up.

A team that isn't regularly encouraging each other is, is ultimately a team that is going to face conflict inevitably. None of us are immune from the danger of neglecting encouragement. And then lastly, I would encourage a regular pattern of relaxing together as a team. I mean, in this times that are informal, that they're outside the office or wherever you would normally meet, times of catching up relationally, times of checking in on each other's families, perhaps doing something fun together, go out for a meal. There's lots of ways you can have fun that doesn't require a lot of money or even a particular shared interest.

It can just be something that you're doing together that you can all enjoy. I would encourage looking for moments to do that. If we only function as sort of professional pastors, we're gonna have a harder time relating to each other in a sort of relaxed and gracious way. I do not believe it is a waste of ministry time for brothers to take some time and relate together as friends. I would encourage the pursuit of some of those moments.

On occasion. Just get out together and sit and talk and let yourselves relax together. That's going to build a sense of camaraderie for the harder moments where you have to have the hard conversations. And that would be the last thing I would say. I would encourage pastors to not neglect hard conversations about disunity with the goal of cultivating affection and unity.

But sometimes hard conversations have to come first. And we have to move through those with honesty and with love and with humility so that we can move toward a level of clarity and unity and move past maybe the nagging or perhaps severe conflicts that can undermine our pastoral effectiveness. Again, great question. And may the Lord give grace and unity to our pastors to love each other well and in that way to reflect the gospel that we're all called to preach.

Host: Thanks for listening. This has been a resource from Sovereign Grace Churches. Have a question about pastoral ministry? We'd love to hear it and help you get an answer. You can submit your questions and find more resources at sgcpastors.com and if you have a fellow pastor or leader, this could serve, pass it on.