Every family has that one topic. It's the conversational
landmine buried right beneath the surface of
an otherwise perfectly normal Sunday lunch. You
know the drill. You talk about the weather like
your life depends on it. Ask how school's going
and expertly step around the giant elephant sitting
on the living room sofa. Everybody knows it's
there. Nobody touches it. And after a few years,
that awkward dance just feels completely normal.
But here's the twist. We don't leave that survival
strategy at the front door of our homes. Even
our church families have these exact same issues.
In fact, I would say especially our church families.
We swap the dining room table for the church
lobby, but the playbook is exactly the same.
We grab our coffee, give a quick nod, and ask,
how'd the week go? Meanwhile, we are actively
navigating around sharp disagreements from the
last business meeting or the fallout between
two ministry leaders that everyone secretly knows
about, but... You know, nobody's explicitly naming
it. We've somehow been convinced by the modern
church culture that avoiding friction is the
ultimate form of spiritual maturity. We treat
a polite silence as if it's the fruit of the
spirit. Now, to be clear, we shouldn't go looking
for a fight. No one is advocating for us to become
relational firebrands who thrive on drama. But
treating avoidance like maturity doesn't build
a healthy church. It just builds a quiet one.
And a quiet room full of broken connections is
the exact opposite of peace. All we really have
done is become comfortable with the distance.
After enough time passes, we stop noticing the
gap at all. We just start calling it peace. Welcome
to an off -the -clock episode of Grace on the
Grind. This isn't our usual structured deep dive.
This is just a thought that's been keeping me
up at night. The more I look at the modern church
culture and my own tendencies to duck out of
awkward situations, the more I'm convinced that
we treat the local church less like a spiritual
family and more like a polite country club. We
settle for a holy hush, but quiet and peace are
rarely the same thing. We all know the vibe instinctively.
You walk into a committee meeting or a volunteer
group, and the tension is so thick you could
cut it with a church bulletin. No one is hurling
hymn books. Yet the silence is deafening. Christians
are remarkably talented at communicating pure
hostility through overly pious smiles and aggressive
prayer requests. We map out the sanctuary seating
chart to avoid certain pews, memorize the forbidden
topics, and convince ourselves that a lack of
fireworks equals spiritual health. But avoiding
the conversation doesn't lead to peace. Unresolved
hurt in a church body doesn't just disappear.
It goes underground, quietly. rotting the foundation
while we keep painting the facade. Now, Scripture
has an uncomfortable habit of dragging our hidden
church baggage into the light. In Matthew 18,
Jesus says out loud directly, face -to -face,
master class in sorting out friction. He says,
if your brother sins against you, go and tell
him his fault between you and him alone. Now
notice the distinct lack of modern church loopholes
there. He doesn't suggest leaving the congregation
to find another one with, you know, better vibes.
He doesn't recommend gossiping under the guise
of a heavy -hearted prayer request to your small
group. And he definitely doesn't endorse dropping
vague, passive -aggressive hints during the post
-service coffee hour. He says go. Move towards
the friction. Christ understood that avoidance
never birthed true reconciliation. Truth does.
Not when wielding it like a club to win an argument,
but when offered as a bridge to rebuild a connection.
The ultimate goal isn't personal victory, or
taking that personal victory lap even, or proving
a point to the leadership. The goal is restoration.
If we're being completely honest, we dodge these
moments because confronting someone in your church
feels terrifying. Personally, I've been the grandmaster
at rehearsing arguments in my head or to my steering
wheel on the drive home. Now, we map out 37 different
scenarios, draft biblical defenses that would
make a theologian weep, and whip ourselves into
a multi -week frenzy of anxiety. Then, you finally
muster up the courage to have the actual conversation
over coffee, and the other person just blinks
and says, Oh, wow. I had no idea that text came
across that way. I'm so sorry. All that mental
cardio and existential dread for a two -minute
chat, sometimes we call it picking our battles,
when really we're just terrified of a little
awkwardness. We have successfully downgraded
the biblical concept of peace into mere emotional
comfort. If nobody's causing a scene, and no
one is firing off angry emails to leadership.
We just assume the church is thriving. But true
biblical peace, what the scripture calls shalom,
isn't just a ceasefire. It's relationships being
brought back into the right order under God's
truth. This is why Ephesians 4 tells us to speak
the truth in love. Those two things have to hold
hands. If you pull them apart in a church community,
everything breaks down. Because truth without
love isn't actually discipleship. It's just a
blunt instrument. It's a club. You might be factually
right, but you're just beating people and calling
it righteousness. And love without truth? That's
just aspartame. It's that artificial sweetener
the health experts warn leads to cancer. But
we reach for it anyways. Because it saves us
from dealing with the real thing. It's a counterfeit
kindness that lets everything rot under the surface
all because we're more committed to avoiding
an awkward afternoon than we are to helping each
other heal. Real spiritual community demands
both. It requires the courage to say the hard
things and the grace to stay at the table while
we figure it out. One of my favorite examples
of this is found in Acts 15. The early church...
hit a high stakes theological crossroads. This
wasn't a minor disagreement over carpet colors
or service times. It was an existential crisis
that could have fractured the entire movement
before it even got started. They didn't form
passive -aggressive subcommittees, nor did they
split into rival house churches and ghost each
other. They sat in the same room. They argued
it out. They dug into scriptures and actually
listened to one another. The friction didn't
break them. It clarified what mattered and made
their bond tighter. The real danger to the early
church wasn't the disagreement. It was the temptation
to walk away from the table. It's shockingly
easy for a church to mistake functioning for
flourishing. The calendar stays full. The Sunday
songs get sung. The budget gets met. And the
machinery... keeps humming along perfectly. But
a ministry team can coast on autopilot for years
while carrying a mountain of unspoken resentment.
A congregation can meet every single Sunday out
of sheer habit while maintaining an emotional
canyon between the rows. Keep the gears turning
is not the same thing as being a healthy body.
A machine functions. The family heals. So the
question I've been focusing on myself is, where
am I settling for a ceasefire in my church instead
of real peace? Where have I accepted a comfortable
distance from a brother or sister because actual
reconciliation requires too much emotional heavy
lifting? Now let's be reasonable. Not every petty
slight requires a formal sit -down. You don't
need to call an emergency meeting because someone
forgot to greet you in the lobby. But the deep
stuff, the wounds that alter how you serve, the
ones that you think about later, how you pray,
how you view the body of Christ, those deserve
more than a polite avoidance. Peace isn't the
absence of tension. It's the presence of healing.
When Jesus called peacemakers blessed, he wasn't
praising people. who keep things comfortable
by staying quiet. He was honoring those willing
to wait in the mess to bring about truth and
connection. It's awkward, it's risky, and it's
incredibly uncomfortable. But perhaps the greatest
obstacle to real peace in our churches isn't
the conflict itself. It's our willingness to
live with the distance. Thank you for hanging
out with us on this Off the Clock chat. on Grace
on the Grind. Until next time, keep your coffee
strong and your fight stronger. And remember,
don't mistake a quiet sanctuary for a healed
heart.