I hate conflict. Seriously, I avoid it like the plague. My personality is very people-pleasing and it takes me forever to work up the courage to confront someone about an issue, especially if I feel like they won't like me as much afterwards.

So we have these two high school volunteers who have been butting heads for a while now. I've yet to really see the conflict happen, but hear the reports from each of them after it does. Well, it finally hit the fan yesterday morning and I had one volunteer crying and another who was just pretty mad. So I comforted the cryer and touched base with the other one. And now we're going to have to do a little sit-down in my office this week to work through all this junk.

I think both of them at some point said they needed to work it out "for the kids." Now I agree that they need to work it out so we can minister in a healthy way to students. But that sounds like the angry married couple who sticks it out "for the kids." I don't want people sticking it out for the kids. I want them to stick it out because it honors God and honors the relationship they have as a result of being a part of the same spiritual family.

I hope that healing will happen here. I'll try to post again after the meeting.

Labels: volunteers, youth ministry

This entry was posted by Mike Lovato, on Monday, September 04, 2006. You can leave your response.