Pete Stone* is driving through the streets of one of the fastest growing suburbs in Australia, as he chats to me via his mobile. I imagine the freshly painted homes sparkling under a hot spring sun.
Pete ministers amongst the newly built dreams that commentators dub "aspirational Australia'. But spiritually, his suburb mirrors the bare strips of drought-strangled lawn " everywhere he looks, it's fast drying up into a wasteland.
A few years ago, a nearby church had 700 members. A split in the congregation has seen its numbers dwindle to one-tenth of that number.
Another church down the street from Pete's had 500 members: "They have just closed the doors and sold the property. The church is gone".
He has seen a significant number of nearby churches " both evangelical and Pentecostal " fold in recent years.
The reason? Pete says there is "a systemic problem' in a suburban culture especially susceptible to "the consumer mentality'.
In the modern "consumer culture' of 21st-century Australia, people instinctively move on to the church down the road whenever conflict arises.
Pete may pastor a vibrant evangelical church on the Bible-belt fringes of one of Australia's largest cities, but many have joined it as a result of divisions in three nearby churches.
"Every time you have a church split, people fall out of church life," says Pete. "Others do go on to other churches, but when they move on they haven't dealt with the issues and the conflicts pop up again down the track in their new church."
With this history, it's not surprising that unresolved past conflicts continue to undermine ministry at Pete's church.
He says tackling conflict within churches is "the critical issue' for Christian mission in the new suburbs surrounding his church.
"By your love, they will know you," says Pete. "People come looking for genuine relationships."
Lessons from overseas
Mediation expert Bruce Burgess has just flown into Sydney from an international peacemaking conference in Charlotte, North Carolina.
He said it was "greatly moving' to hear how the "principles of biblical reconciliation' are changing lives across the world. Delegates came from the four corners of the globe: South Americans, Africans, Europeans.
A keynote speaker, Victor Nakah from Zimbabwe, spoke of the power of Christian reconciliation in his own life.
In a story with echoes of the Shakespearean tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, the speaker described how he, from a lowly tribe, fell in love with a girl from a princely tribe. Her father said they would be dead before he would allow him to marry his daughter.
"It was such a moving story," says Bruce, explaining how the speaker witnessed to his girlfriend's parents with patient love and grace.
"He told how her family eventually came to the church he pastored, sat at the front of the church, and said, "That's my son'... there was not a dry eye in the house."
The profundity of peace
A few days later, Bruce Burgess is being commissioned at his church, St James', Croydon, in recognition of his decision to lead a new Christian peacemaking organisation called PeaceWise.
Operating nationally as a cross-denominational ministry, it is the first organisation of its kind in Australia.
"Bruce feels a real calling to this work," says the Rev Barry Dudding, rector of St James', who has just finished reading the book that helped inspire Bruce to move directly into Christian peacemaking ministry. It is by American Ken Sande who leads Peacemaking Ministries.
Barry Dudding describes the approach as "profound'.
"It doesn't ignore the reality that differences of opinion can be helpful."
In essence, PeaceWise provides congregations with the tools to deal with conflict in a healthy way. These tools help to create a culture of peace, so that when conflicts arise in a church, they do not escalate.
"We want to help people understand that the Bible does not teach that conflict is inherently negative or destructive, and certainly not inherently sinful," says Bruce Burgess, "rather it's our responses to conflict when it arises in our lives that determine its character.
"When we respond in ways that involve things such as avoidance, denial, aggression, power abuse, lack of honesty or brutal honesty, unwillingness to forgive or show love, these are the kinds of behaviours that can turn conflict into something harmful and scary."
Bruce explains that PeaceWise uses "the rich resources of the Bible and the power of the gospel of Jesus' to help people identify their "automatic' responses to conflict.
"We help people see that God is in the midst of conflict too and seeks to use it redemptively, challenge people to seek to please and honour God in how they respond and, importantly, give people practical tools" and strategies to deal healthily with conflict when it arises in their lives."
As Bruce points out, for churches, there is enormous potential to change the "conflict cultures' that have sometimes built up over decades.
Learning from past mistakes
In the 1990s, church leaders like Pete Stone flocked to church growth conferences such as Willow Creek. He believes churches are now reaping a bitter harvest.
"We tried to feed people's independence. Our aim was to encourage people to be spiritually self-sufficient," he says.
"Our people know the teaching on being a peacemaker from the Scriptures" but they just don't do it. The bottom line is that it's just too difficult. People don't have the confidence even to deal with low-level conflict."
Indeed, the American who inspired Bruce Burgess and his fellow directors to launch Peacewise has identified the same phenomenon that Pete Stone has observed in the Australian suburbs.
A Leadership Weekly poll found that just 38 per cent of American churches have membership requirements, and Ken Sande from Peacemaker Ministries believes the low levels of trust between congregational members results in an inability to deal with conflict effectively.
This is the cost of running a casual, come-as-you-like "seeker-sensitive' ministry.
A key part of the solution is for churches to take membership more seriously. Ken Sande believes it is vital that every member genuinely knows they are fulfilling a vital function in the church's mission.
"The membership process will be different in every church, but it is important to treat it as a significant event," Sande said in an interview with Christianity Today. "When we treat it casually it sends the message that membership is casual."
Making membership work
Sande advises churches to highlight membership by having a special Sunday service to honour all members.
"It is a serious ceremony that communicates the importance of membership," he said.
Sande explains that there are also legitimate legal reasons, at least in America, for tightening membership criteria.
In his mediation work he has seen church leaders facing the possibility of being sued because they failed to curtail the misbehaviour of pewsitters.
In one case an attender used his church networks to defraud unsuspecting congregation members. For this reason, Sande says, it is important that all members actually sign a covenant document agreeing to a certain code of behaviour.
"Our church did this," he told Christianity Today. "We said to the congregation, "Times have changed from years ago when you could have a loose relationship with the church. Our society and our laws have changed. It's time for us to renew and tighten up the covenant'."
With education about the legal issues, Sande says, the initiative was very well received by his congregation.
Not one family left the church as a result of having to sign a covenant document.
Breaking the conflict cycle
I hear a real urgency in Pete Stone's voice. He wants to know how to help his congregation break through the cycle of conflict.
The latest National Church Life Survey, fast on the back of other research data, has shown Pete and his congregational leadership team the extent to which past hurts are impacting the ministry.
"We have really struggled to develop a small group life," says Pete.
The research has helped them identify the root of the problem: people have been so hurt by bad church experiences in the past that they don't really have the trust to commit to the rawness of small groups.
"The pain is just too real, so people prefer to just come along on Sunday and not get too involved," he says.
In desperation, Pete asked a contact in theological education if they knew someone with expertise in healing church conflict. Pete was put in touch with Bruce Burgess from PeaceWise.
"When PeaceWise came up it seemed like a Godsend. We have sent a group of people from our church to the conference. The hope is that it will equip our group leaders with the necessary skills."
* Not his real name
