Social Identity,Conflict Management,Religion and a Building: Peaks and Valleys in the Life of a Large Christian Church

Abstract

A large Christian church experienced organizational behaviour issues over a period of approximately 13 years. Growth issues forced the church to evaluate purchase of another property in anticipation of relocating the congregation to a new facility. Church membership plummeted from over 3,000 members to approximately 2,000 members. Strife continued after land and a temporary classroom/chapel/office building were purchased. A new congregation with no psychological or physical relationship to the initial campus developed, with few shared activities or responsibilities. The financial burden borne by the membership because of the new facility further stretched both the pocketbooks and the faith of the members at the home campus that the purchase had even been a good idea. Lack of expertise in managing cognitive conflict to create positive tension and extract differing viewpoints that might uncover innovative solutions to the problem and no conscious thought to curtailing affective conflict that demoralizes, encourages distrust and undermines the solidarity of the group caused a situation that quickly became runaway dissention.

Keywords

Conflict management minority dissent social identify authentic leaders mission mirroring

Introduction

Organizational behaviour problems began about 2002 in a large Christian Church. Due to significant membership and activity increases, a decision to sell the existing building and move to a new location was made. Plans for a new worship and music centre triggered negative reactions and subsequent organizational behaviour issues among a vocal minority of the membership, in addition to loss of members and financial support. Continuing discord and vocal dissention resulted in conflict situations. This case study looks at those conflict situations with respect to the positive and negative interactions of individuals in the roles of leaders and followers.

Personal Involvement

Both authors have been members of this church since the early 1980s. We met at the church in 1985 and were married there in 1988. Both were on the committee that gathered and examined demographics for the average income in the geographical area served by the church. We both have served in various capacities at the church. We were part of the communications team and participated in the purchase of the additional 8.8 acres adjoining the new classroom building. We also supported the recent bond issue that stabilized the mortgage payments to enable more planning for the new sanctuary (Kahn, 2004).

A Short Church History

On February 3, 1980 the first formal worship service of this Christian church was held at a children’s day care centre with about forty persons attending. The rapidly expanding congregation soon outgrew this location and moved to a larger children’s care centre in April 1980. Charter Sunday for the new congregation was celebrated in this facility on June 15, 1980, with 75 members joining (History of [name withheld for confidentiality reasons], 2012).

In 1981, the growing congregation merged with another new church and after meeting at a third temporary site, jointly decided to purchase a parcel of land and build a permanent home for the church (History of [name withheld for confidentiality reasons], 2012). These activities occurred over a period of years and under the tenure and guidance of two pastors, both well-liked by congregants.

The third senior pastor, a charismatic ordained minister who converted from a different denomination, continued to increase membership, which required an expansion of the original building. That construction brought a large room that was used as both the Sanctuary and a multi-purpose room and several offices and classrooms. A series of youth ministers quickly attracted families with children and focused efforts on recruiting and preparing young people for seminary. A second expansion, also during this pastor’s tenure and completed in 1988, brought an 800-seat Sanctuary plus additional offices and classrooms, children’s Sunday School area and youth gathering areas. The Sanctuary built during the first building expansion became the multi-use Fellowship Hall and dedicated youth area. County building codes and the physical limitations of the site dictated the building could not be expanded a third time.

In the final decade of the twentieth century and into the twenty first century, membership grew 300 per cent from 900 to over 3000, with weekly attendance at one of the seven services averaging over 1,800. A fourth minister led this explosion in membership through the addition of lay leaders, formation of small groups and support from several charter members. Close affiliation between the goals of these individuals and the pastoral staff worked well to propel attendance and collect members into the Faith, as demonstrated by the resulting increase in membership numbers. The church became the largest of its denomination between Kansas City and San Francisco, much to the credit of the hard-working senior pastor and new associate pastors. Directors of Care Ministries, Children’s Ministries, Youth Ministries and Music became full time positions and support staff, including both paid staff and volunteers, increased as well. The full-time staff positions were managed by the associate pastors, while the senior pastor concentrated on increasing attendance at worship services and in classrooms. Volunteer efforts focused on growing mission areas and candidates for seminary study, as well as running the business end of the church (History of [name withheld for confidentiality reasons], 2012).

Expansion Issue

By 2000, membership had grown to over 3,000 and the worship schedule was expanded to accommodate seven services. The previous building expansions had enlarged the original level of functionality, but these were inadequate to house the growing need for more classrooms, children’s, and youth’s programmes, as well as the adult ministries and multiple worship services and social activities. The large number of attendees at these activities more than exceeded the classroom capacity. The building expansion possibilities had been maximized with the second expansion and now there was no way to grow on that property, either physically or in membership. The pastors preached from the pulpit how the capacity of both the sanctuary and the parking lot were exceeded on holidays, often resulting in visitors being turned away, but the obligation of members was to continue inviting people.

Expansion Issues

In 2001 a small group of church members selected by the Senior Pastor became a Discernment Team (a common church method of trying to determine God’s will by prayerful reflection) (New York Annual Conference, 2012) to address the challenges caused by the significant increase in church membership and activities. The Discernment Team suggested the church examine moving to a new location. Coupled with the recommendation to relocate the church was the suggestion to sell the original building as soon as a new Sanctuary could be built in the new location. These actions were undertaken by followers who assumed leadership roles (Baker, 2007). The church council authorized a committee of volunteers to identify and hire a consulting company to lead efforts to evaluate growth options and recommend a course of action. The entire church membership was challenged by the formal leaders to fill roles in this effort to determine the feasibility of remaining in the present building or seeking a new location. Leaders did not promote either choice but encouraged participants to be open-minded and work with facts (Woolley, Caza & Levy, 2011). Several groups of volunteers were recruited by the Senior Pastor to analyze growth history and projections, donation records and demographics for the geographic area from which the congregation drew members and visitors. All demographic indications were that the economy of the city could easily support the relocation of the church if membership continued to grow at its present rate. The recommendation from the consulting company and the building committee members was to locate another parcel of land for purchase and future site of a new Sanctuary and classrooms.

After several months of looking at locations, a site was found approximately one mile from the present location. Negotiations with the owner packaged an existing building and several acres of land with an option for 8.8 more acres. At a ‘town hall’ meeting presided over by the Bishop, the church membership voted on purchasing the new site and optional acreage (74 per cent in favour of the expansion, 26 per cent opposed to the expansion). This was the first indication that any part of the congregation did not agree with the plans for relocating the church. Dissenters were vocally and passionately opposed to any consideration of relocating the congregation to a new building. In response to the dissention identified in the first vote, a second vote was taken, with members upholding the original decision to plan and search for a new property by about the same margin. Many members were disgruntled that so few people had participated in either vote. In addition the dissenters targeted the senior pastor and volunteers on the various committees for personal attacks and innuendos. No effort was made by the church leadership to determine the reason one-quarter of the voting membership was opposed to the relocation (De Dreu & West, 2001).

This final town hall meeting and the majority affirmation to continue with the relocation efforts led to the purchase of land and a warehouse building about one mile from the existing church campus. A purchase agreement was worked out between the building committee chairperson (one of the original charter members of the church) and the finance committee chairperson (a local realtor) as representatives of the congregation and the property owner, with the property owner financing the purchase and an option for the church to buy an adjoining 8.8 acres. The warehouse was renovated to include a chapel, classrooms, youth centre, thrift shop and a worship centre that also doubled as a performing arts centre. This second campus was rededicated in August 2006. The Senior Pastor turned over administration of the second campus to the associate pastor, who handled worship services on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, as well as children’s classes and nursery services with assistance from lay leaders. This effectively divided the congregation between two locations, resulting in both a psychological and physical division of the congregation (informal conversation with second campus attendees, 2010). Additional negativity, on top of the increasing financial burden was beginning to undermine the confidence and trust of the congregation that the purchase decision was a good one.

Negative attitudes and comments continued to be voiced in small group study sessions, at church dinners, during choir meetings and planning meetings for the new location and the subsequent purchase of the property. Several members complained to the staff about receiving negative and libellous anonymous emails. Many families were unwilling to be surrounded by the negativity and sniping and left to join other congregations. Activities planned by staff and volunteers at the home campus received little support or participation from members of the second campus and attendees at the second campus complained about not being included in home campus activities. Rather than encouraging a friendly rivalry between the two campuses of people with supposedly the same purpose for belonging (Cnaan & Curtis, 2013), or an integration or pulling together of the services and the people from the two campuses was not publically promoted by any of the formal leaders.

When the church council requested the membership to agree to put the existing building up for sale to help defray the mounting costs of maintaining two campuses, many of the older congregants were very vocal about losing ‘…their church’. In spite of the unsettled feeling and a continuing exodus of members and financial contributors, planning teams continued with their efforts to gather space and functionality requirements for the new building. This meant interviewing the leaders of the different ministries, identifying an architectural firm for design proposals and ensuring on-going communication of decisions and plans to the congregants (Avey, Hughes, Norman & Luthans, 2007; Bridges, 2003; Ogden and Hills, 2008).

There has always been a significant sense of cohesiveness and friendliness within the church (Mudrack, 1989). Many members feel the church members are warm, feel the church is home and sense this is where they belong (Corley, 2004; Kirkman & Shapiro, 1997). A group of volunteers is continually engaged in community outreach and congregation growth is perpetuated by personal invitation and word of mouth advertising. Informal leadership appears to be consistently the same people; this sometimes discourages new members from stepping forward to help. There is a strong sense of resistance to change among some of the older members of the congregation (Diamond, 2008), as well as resentment that the existing building would have to be sold to fund the new one.

Analysis

Church members are a collection of people who attend services and activities in order to fulfil a spiritual need; strategic managers are critical to helping members fulfil that need (Bommer, Rich & Rubin, 2005; Cnaan & Curtis, 2012). Formal leadership in this church consists of a senior and an associate pastor, both appointed by a Bishop, a senior official in the church and overseen by a District Superintendent, with the church council consisting of volunteer representatives for the different service and mission areas. The pastors are not allowed to be members of the church, but the lay leaders are required to be members. These individuals are responsible for the spiritual and administrative running of the church, with the overarching doctrine of the denomination providing vision, creed and principles on which the Faith is to be practiced (United Methodist Church, 2012). Most functions are carried out by volunteers (Ammerman as cited by Cnaan & Curtis, 2013).

Both lay and spiritual leaders over the past 20 years have demonstrated a transformational stewardship style (Kee, Newcomer & Davis, 2006). Transformational stewardship reflects the leader’s personal beliefs, approach to situations, involvement of followers and commitment to change and innovation (Kee et al., 2006, p. 7). According to Curry (2002), adult identity development is transferred from leaders to the followers in the organization and the organization’s identity influences the leadership style exhibited by the leaders. Transformational stewardship, then, depending on the success of its implementation, can propel people and organizations into very specific courses of action.

Authentic leadership uses obvious and open acceptance of inputs and involvement by followers in decision-making and information exchange (Avolio, Walumbwa & Weber, 2009). The type of governance that is foundational for this denomination depends on involvement by volunteer members in order to carry the workload of running the congregation. Further, the vision of the denomination is to reach out to world communities to bring people together into faith gatherings and corporate worship. It is noteworthy that a community brought together by mutual purpose of gathering people into a community of faith should themselves have such difficulty in maintaining themselves as a corporate body; this is termed mission mirroring (Allyn, 2011). Spiritual leaders carry responsibility for nurturing and coaching other leaders in promoting positive organizational behaviours (Avolio et al., 2009; Woolley et al., 2011) that support this type of community sense.

In 2010, the Senior Pastor who was present during the relocation activities was reassigned to another district as a District Superintendent to expand church membership in a neighbouring multi-county area. By increasing membership 300 per cent over a period of more than 14 years, this Pastor catapulted the church into being the largest church of its denomination between Los Angeles and Kansas City. Although non-profit organizations have no standard for measuring effectiveness (Herman & Renz, 1999), it became evident through this promotion and transfer that numbers are at least one measure of success for religious non-profits of this denomination.

Implications

Communication was one of the main underlying problems. When the church membership voted 74 per cent to 26 per cent to relocate, no pastor or other church leader attempted to discover why 26 per cent voted not to relocate. Leaders assumed that the arguments against the relocation would serve to bring the community closer as everyone reunited to support the single mission. This assumed that the need for social identification with the majority voters of the congregation would be sufficient to re-integrate the minority dissenters (Gundlack, Zivnuska & Stoner, 2006). Church leaders also assumed the 26 per cent would change their minds once they saw they were in the minority, although no attempt was made to discern what would change the minds of these people (Natemeyer & Hersey, 2011; Seidman & McCauley, 2011). Some of that 26 per cent formed immediately into the vocal negative group and began undermining the relocation effort. One person stated ‘They will never get us out of this building.’

Conclusion

Previous formal and informal church leaders initiated a massive and risky change through a belief in the ability of the community of faith to pull together and support this undertaking (Gundlack et al., 2011). The relocation project, because it was under the auspices of a religious non-profit organization, was perceived to be above reproach so far as motives and ethical behaviour by all concerned (Pinnington, 2011). These leaders were able to influence the majority of the church membership in this belief of group efficacy (Pescosolido, 2001) because the congregation placed trust in the formal leaders.

Continued derision by the vocal minority, and gradual erosion of the members’ faith in the leadership and its ability to accomplish the relocation and recover from the financial challenges was manifested by decreased volunteerism, declining attendance and membership and severely diminished contributions. Although leaders were engaged, open and above-board about following the doctrine of the denomination in growing membership (Avolio et al., 2009) and enlisting members in seeking a solution to the space problem, the congregation’s faith in being able to successfully relocate into a larger facility was sufficiently undermined that success was very much jeopardized. The resulting resistance to change, albeit by a minority, became divisive to the completion of the task (Armenakis, Harris & Mossholder, 1993). The organization’s apparent disregard for the opinions of one quarter of the membership in making decisions that culturally and financially affected the entire body quickly created a schism that is slowly recovering (De Dreu & West, 2001). Attending to the voices of minority dissent (De Dreu & West, 2001) would allow more thorough examination, questioning and consideration of alternatives. Conflicting views in decision-making enables either innovation or degradation into animosity and personal attacks. Cognitive conflict, that which encourages exchange of different viewpoints and promotes deeper analysis of the situation or problem can result in better decisions and a more collaborative relationship (Kotlyar & Karakowsky, 2007). Affective conflict is a type of conflict that threatens group harmony and solidarity and can result in distrust, group dissention and a lower level of commitment to the group’s value system (Kotlyar & Karakowsky, 2007, p. 40). Management of these conflict types require highly trained and very experienced leaders who are knowledgeable of the culture, the individuals and the environment. By the time the interim pastors and the most recent lay leaders were on-board, emotions were out of control and collateral damage control was the most urgent need; the opportunity for changing affective conflict into cognitive conflict was past (Kotlyar & Karakowsky, 2007, p. 41). The lack of perceived fair process (Seidman & McCauley, 2011) continues to handicap changes that have been undertaken to repair the goodwill and trust of the congregation.

This large church very rapidly lost about one-third of its membership over a several month period. Now, however, new members arrive almost every Sunday. The culture that attracted so many to the church still appears to exist, but is undergoing some shifts due to the departure of many members who were unhappy with the disruptions and changes. Several of those people were major financial contributors, as well as volunteers and informal leaders.

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