The focus of these articles is to help you equip the students with healthy conflict resolution skills.  In the first installment of this series on resolving conflict we discussed, “What is conflict?”  In part two we review the consequences of unresolved conflict.

It can be very easy to try to just ignore conflict and hope that it goes away. Some people, like me, don’t like dealing with conflict and hope that it just magically disappears. However, when ongoing conflict is “swept under the rug” especially for long periods of time the consequences can be devastating, often in ways that we don’t even realize. When you don’t change the oil or oil filter in your car but just keep adding oil when it runs low the effects may not be observed or felt immediately, but a slow deteriorating friction that will eventually destroy your engine is taking its toll. Consider the possible seen and unseen “side effects” of unresolved conflict.

• Low moral
• Tension
• Complaining
• Negative confrontation – fighting
• Accusations
• Threats
• Sabotage – retaliation
• Bickering
• Diminishing team spirit
• Absenteeism
• Ministry – atmosphere becomes negative
• Diminished productivity
• Stunted ministry growth
• There is a downward relational spiral between those involved
• Staff turnover – conflict is the primary reason people leave the ministry
• Relationships deteriorate
• Physical health suffers
• Emotional health suffers
• Spiritual strongholds develop through unforgiveness and bitterness
• Escalation
  • The conflict intensifies and becomes more hostile, more vicious.
  • Then we find more issues to fight about – number of issues grow
  • We generalize our specific problem to the entire relationship
  • We go from specific to general – character accusations
    • It goes from, “He forgot to put the van key back,”  to “He is a lazy, careless person who doesn’t think about anybody but himself.”
    • We continue until we hate each other’s guts and waste our energy on getting even.
    • Finally, we enlist other people to help us fight the battle, fracturing and polarizing the ministry team.
• Attitudinal changes toward the other person are not just temporary, they leave an almost irreversible impression.
  • Selective Reception
  • Once I have decided you’re my enemy, I’ll look for evidence to prove I’m right.
    • If I think you’re a liar, I’ll try to catch you in a lie.
    • If I think you’re cutting me down, I’ll interpret most of what you say as a personal attack.
    • If I think you backstab and sabotage, whenever I see you talking to someone, I’ll think you’re gossiping about me.
    • I’ll never notice anything good that you do.
    • Once I see you as an enemy, I’ll treat you like the enemy I think you are.
• Ceasing to communicate
  • We reach an impasse and establish roadblocks.
  •  It is very difficult to re-establish trust.
  • We may work politely together, but we’re suspicious and guarded, and bitterness grows. (Forgiveness is key to spiritual mental and emotional health.)

I am sure that you have personally observed and experienced some of these consequences. It is easy to see that the consequences of unresolved conflict can be disastrous. Hopefully this will help open our eyes to the importance of helping the students learn to deal with conflict. The stress of unresolved conflict is often used as an excuse to return to addiction. Observance of these “symptoms” of conflict can bring light to unobserved (hidden) conflict even if you are unaware of any open expression of conflict.

In the next newsletter we will look at self-evaluation questions to minimize conflict.