When Your Team Disagrees With You: Leading Through Tension in Ministry
Learn how pastors can navigate church staff conflict, receive healthy disagreement, address unproductive tension, and build a culture of trust and humility.
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You walk into a meeting thinking your team is on the same page.
You have prayed through the decision, thought it through carefully, and feel clear about the direction. But as the conversation unfolds, it becomes obvious that not everyone agrees. Questions surface that you did not anticipate. Hesitations come up that you cannot ignore.
And now you are not just leading a decision. You are leading through tension.
I want to talk about this honestly because I have been on both sides of it. I have been the leader trying to move something forward when the team was not fully aligned. I have also been the person in the room where disagreement did not feel safe to voice.
Moments like this make it clear that how you handle disagreement does not just affect one decision. It shapes the culture of your team and defines what is safe to say… and what is not. Left unattended long enough, those patterns harden into some of the clearest signs of an unhealthy church culture.
When tension shows up in a meeting like this, it rarely starts there. It has usually been forming over time.
The Church That Split Over the Color of the Carpet
My pastor-parents used to joke about churches splitting over something as small as the color of the carpet.
It sounds ridiculous, but it sticks because it points to something true. If church leaders are fighting about the carpet, it is rarely about the carpet.
More often, it is tied to something underneath the surface. Miscommunication. Lack of trust. The sense that a voice has not mattered for a while. What looks small on the surface is often connected to something deeper.
Scripture gives language to this with the image of the “little foxes” that spoil the vine (Song of Solomon 2:15). Small things, left unaddressed, can create larger problems over time.
That is why it matters to pay attention to tension early, not just when it becomes impossible to ignore. The health of a team is often shaped in those smaller moments, long before a major disagreement ever surfaces.
Noticing tension is only part of the work. Knowing what kind of tension you are dealing with and how to respond to it is where leadership really begins.
How to Discern Different Types of Tension on Your Team
Not all disagreement is healthy pushback worth leaning into. And not all tension is a sign that something is wrong with your team. Learning to tell the difference is one of the most important skills a leader can develop.
While tension can show up in a variety of ways on your church staff, there are three kinds of tension worth naming here:
A Healthy Disagreement
The first type of tension comes in the form of healthy pushback. Someone raises a concern that sharpens the decision. They are asking good questions, engaging the vision, and bringing something genuinely useful to the table. This kind of pushback is a gift, even when it does not feel like one at the moment. A team that never pushes back is a team that no longer trusts you enough to be honest.
A Leader Who Cannot Be Challenged
The second type of tension appears when a leader does not receive feedback well. I have watched a leader fire a staff member because of a disagreement. Whether or not that was the stated reason, the effect on the team was immediate. People went quiet. The unspoken message was clear: alignment means agreement, and disagreement has consequences.
I do not think that this leader woke up one morning and decided to become someone who could not be challenged. My honest read is that they cared deeply about the vision and genuinely believed they were protecting it. But the impact was real regardless of the intention. Staff members who had been vocal and engaged started measuring every word. The culture shifted from one where wisdom was pursued together to one where the leader's instinct was the ceiling. Once a team reaches that point, generating honest feedback from your staff takes deliberate work to rebuild.
None of us is immune to drifting in that direction, especially when we are tired, when our vision feels under threat, or when we have poured everything into a direction and someone questions it. The question is not whether you will ever face that temptation. You will. The question is whether you have built enough self-awareness to catch yourself before the culture pays the price.
A Team Member Who Brings Unnecessary Friction
The third kind of tension is perhaps the hardest one to navigate: the team member who is a source of unnecessary friction.
This person is not raising healthy concerns. They are bringing something else into the room. Maybe it is a personal agenda dressed up as a theological concern. Maybe it is unresolved hurt that makes every new decision feel like a threat. Maybe they are gifted enough to rally others around their frustration without ever naming it directly. Maybe they simply push back on everything, regardless of the issue, because that is how they are wired or because they have never been trained to know how to engage differently.
Leading this person well is genuinely hard. It requires you to hold two things at the same time: staying open enough to receive legitimate concerns while also being discerning enough to recognize when the pushback is not really about the decision at hand.
Practical Ways to Lead Through Tension on Your Church Team
There is no formula for these moments, but there are a few things that tend to make a real difference regardless of which kind of tension you are dealing with. For a wider framework, our guide to church conflict resolution walks through the biblical principles underneath these practices.
1. Create space before trying to resolve the issue.
When tension shows up, the temptation is to move quickly toward a conclusion, especially if you feel confident in the direction. But often what people need first is simply to be heard. Ask better questions before you defend your position:
What feels off to you about this? What concerns are coming up that we should name? Is there something we have not considered yet?
2. Revisit the why.
Leaders often carry the full picture while the team is only seeing part of it. Walking back through the purpose and the heart behind the direction can close a lot of that gap. People can disagree with a decision and still feel connected to the vision, but if they do not understand your church's vision, they have nothing to connect to.
3. Name what you are observing, directly and kindly.
If someone is bringing repeated, unproductive friction to your team, the most pastoral thing you can do is address it honestly in private before it becomes a pattern that affects everyone else. That conversation is uncomfortable, but it is far less costly than letting the tension accumulate until it forces a harder decision.
4. Know when to wait and when to move forward.
Discernment in ministry is not just about making the right call. It is about making it in a way that brings people with you. Sometimes that means slowing down and staying in the tension a little longer than feels comfortable. Sometimes it means making the call anyway and leading people through the discomfort with enough clarity and care that trust is not broken in the process. Leaders who consistently make better decisions in ministry are usually the ones who build room for counsel before the call gets made.
5. Clothe yourself in humility.
Tension can shift a leader into a defensive posture. You start protecting your perspective instead of remaining open to what God might be doing in the moment. This is the point where servant leadership stops being a concept and becomes a daily practice.
Scripture calls us to something different: “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another” (1 Peter 5:5). Humility keeps your heart soft when conversations feel sharp. It creates space for others to speak honestly without fear, and it allows you to listen without needing to win. In moments of disagreement, humility is often what preserves both the relationship and the integrity of your leadership.
6. Stay rooted through it all.
Tension has a way of pulling a leader’s attention toward managing the room instead of seeking God. The most grounded leaders I have seen in moments of disagreement are the ones who refuse to let the pressure of the moment disconnect them from prayer, from Scripture, and from the people they most trust to speak truth into their lives.
Lead the Tension Well
Unity is not something you arrive at simply because people are on the same team. It is built slowly, in moments like these, through humility, honest conversation, and a shared commitment to the mission. Those quiet habits do more to promote unity in the church than any single announcement from the platform.
There will be moments when you have to make a call, even when everyone is not fully there yet. There will be moments when you need to slow down and recognize you were wrong. That is part of leadership. But how you handle the hard moments will shape your culture far more than any single decision ever will.
Looking for more free resources to help you lead your church staff? Check out the Tithely blog for fresh, practical content written for ministry leaders like you.
Sign Up for Product Updates
Susanna is a theological content writer with a Master of Arts in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary. She is passionate about ministry, running, and exploring new cultures through international travel. In her free time, you’ll find her surfing, obsessing over the Olympics, or enjoying the San Diego sunshine!
You walk into a meeting thinking your team is on the same page.
You have prayed through the decision, thought it through carefully, and feel clear about the direction. But as the conversation unfolds, it becomes obvious that not everyone agrees. Questions surface that you did not anticipate. Hesitations come up that you cannot ignore.
And now you are not just leading a decision. You are leading through tension.
I want to talk about this honestly because I have been on both sides of it. I have been the leader trying to move something forward when the team was not fully aligned. I have also been the person in the room where disagreement did not feel safe to voice.
Moments like this make it clear that how you handle disagreement does not just affect one decision. It shapes the culture of your team and defines what is safe to say… and what is not. Left unattended long enough, those patterns harden into some of the clearest signs of an unhealthy church culture.
When tension shows up in a meeting like this, it rarely starts there. It has usually been forming over time.
The Church That Split Over the Color of the Carpet
My pastor-parents used to joke about churches splitting over something as small as the color of the carpet.
It sounds ridiculous, but it sticks because it points to something true. If church leaders are fighting about the carpet, it is rarely about the carpet.
More often, it is tied to something underneath the surface. Miscommunication. Lack of trust. The sense that a voice has not mattered for a while. What looks small on the surface is often connected to something deeper.
Scripture gives language to this with the image of the “little foxes” that spoil the vine (Song of Solomon 2:15). Small things, left unaddressed, can create larger problems over time.
That is why it matters to pay attention to tension early, not just when it becomes impossible to ignore. The health of a team is often shaped in those smaller moments, long before a major disagreement ever surfaces.
Noticing tension is only part of the work. Knowing what kind of tension you are dealing with and how to respond to it is where leadership really begins.
How to Discern Different Types of Tension on Your Team
Not all disagreement is healthy pushback worth leaning into. And not all tension is a sign that something is wrong with your team. Learning to tell the difference is one of the most important skills a leader can develop.
While tension can show up in a variety of ways on your church staff, there are three kinds of tension worth naming here:
A Healthy Disagreement
The first type of tension comes in the form of healthy pushback. Someone raises a concern that sharpens the decision. They are asking good questions, engaging the vision, and bringing something genuinely useful to the table. This kind of pushback is a gift, even when it does not feel like one at the moment. A team that never pushes back is a team that no longer trusts you enough to be honest.
A Leader Who Cannot Be Challenged
The second type of tension appears when a leader does not receive feedback well. I have watched a leader fire a staff member because of a disagreement. Whether or not that was the stated reason, the effect on the team was immediate. People went quiet. The unspoken message was clear: alignment means agreement, and disagreement has consequences.
I do not think that this leader woke up one morning and decided to become someone who could not be challenged. My honest read is that they cared deeply about the vision and genuinely believed they were protecting it. But the impact was real regardless of the intention. Staff members who had been vocal and engaged started measuring every word. The culture shifted from one where wisdom was pursued together to one where the leader's instinct was the ceiling. Once a team reaches that point, generating honest feedback from your staff takes deliberate work to rebuild.
None of us is immune to drifting in that direction, especially when we are tired, when our vision feels under threat, or when we have poured everything into a direction and someone questions it. The question is not whether you will ever face that temptation. You will. The question is whether you have built enough self-awareness to catch yourself before the culture pays the price.
A Team Member Who Brings Unnecessary Friction
The third kind of tension is perhaps the hardest one to navigate: the team member who is a source of unnecessary friction.
This person is not raising healthy concerns. They are bringing something else into the room. Maybe it is a personal agenda dressed up as a theological concern. Maybe it is unresolved hurt that makes every new decision feel like a threat. Maybe they are gifted enough to rally others around their frustration without ever naming it directly. Maybe they simply push back on everything, regardless of the issue, because that is how they are wired or because they have never been trained to know how to engage differently.
Leading this person well is genuinely hard. It requires you to hold two things at the same time: staying open enough to receive legitimate concerns while also being discerning enough to recognize when the pushback is not really about the decision at hand.
Practical Ways to Lead Through Tension on Your Church Team
There is no formula for these moments, but there are a few things that tend to make a real difference regardless of which kind of tension you are dealing with. For a wider framework, our guide to church conflict resolution walks through the biblical principles underneath these practices.
1. Create space before trying to resolve the issue.
When tension shows up, the temptation is to move quickly toward a conclusion, especially if you feel confident in the direction. But often what people need first is simply to be heard. Ask better questions before you defend your position:
What feels off to you about this? What concerns are coming up that we should name? Is there something we have not considered yet?
2. Revisit the why.
Leaders often carry the full picture while the team is only seeing part of it. Walking back through the purpose and the heart behind the direction can close a lot of that gap. People can disagree with a decision and still feel connected to the vision, but if they do not understand your church's vision, they have nothing to connect to.
3. Name what you are observing, directly and kindly.
If someone is bringing repeated, unproductive friction to your team, the most pastoral thing you can do is address it honestly in private before it becomes a pattern that affects everyone else. That conversation is uncomfortable, but it is far less costly than letting the tension accumulate until it forces a harder decision.
4. Know when to wait and when to move forward.
Discernment in ministry is not just about making the right call. It is about making it in a way that brings people with you. Sometimes that means slowing down and staying in the tension a little longer than feels comfortable. Sometimes it means making the call anyway and leading people through the discomfort with enough clarity and care that trust is not broken in the process. Leaders who consistently make better decisions in ministry are usually the ones who build room for counsel before the call gets made.
5. Clothe yourself in humility.
Tension can shift a leader into a defensive posture. You start protecting your perspective instead of remaining open to what God might be doing in the moment. This is the point where servant leadership stops being a concept and becomes a daily practice.
Scripture calls us to something different: “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another” (1 Peter 5:5). Humility keeps your heart soft when conversations feel sharp. It creates space for others to speak honestly without fear, and it allows you to listen without needing to win. In moments of disagreement, humility is often what preserves both the relationship and the integrity of your leadership.
6. Stay rooted through it all.
Tension has a way of pulling a leader’s attention toward managing the room instead of seeking God. The most grounded leaders I have seen in moments of disagreement are the ones who refuse to let the pressure of the moment disconnect them from prayer, from Scripture, and from the people they most trust to speak truth into their lives.
Lead the Tension Well
Unity is not something you arrive at simply because people are on the same team. It is built slowly, in moments like these, through humility, honest conversation, and a shared commitment to the mission. Those quiet habits do more to promote unity in the church than any single announcement from the platform.
There will be moments when you have to make a call, even when everyone is not fully there yet. There will be moments when you need to slow down and recognize you were wrong. That is part of leadership. But how you handle the hard moments will shape your culture far more than any single decision ever will.
Looking for more free resources to help you lead your church staff? Check out the Tithely blog for fresh, practical content written for ministry leaders like you.
podcast transcript
Susanna is a theological content writer with a Master of Arts in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary. She is passionate about ministry, running, and exploring new cultures through international travel. In her free time, you’ll find her surfing, obsessing over the Olympics, or enjoying the San Diego sunshine!
You walk into a meeting thinking your team is on the same page.
You have prayed through the decision, thought it through carefully, and feel clear about the direction. But as the conversation unfolds, it becomes obvious that not everyone agrees. Questions surface that you did not anticipate. Hesitations come up that you cannot ignore.
And now you are not just leading a decision. You are leading through tension.
I want to talk about this honestly because I have been on both sides of it. I have been the leader trying to move something forward when the team was not fully aligned. I have also been the person in the room where disagreement did not feel safe to voice.
Moments like this make it clear that how you handle disagreement does not just affect one decision. It shapes the culture of your team and defines what is safe to say… and what is not. Left unattended long enough, those patterns harden into some of the clearest signs of an unhealthy church culture.
When tension shows up in a meeting like this, it rarely starts there. It has usually been forming over time.
The Church That Split Over the Color of the Carpet
My pastor-parents used to joke about churches splitting over something as small as the color of the carpet.
It sounds ridiculous, but it sticks because it points to something true. If church leaders are fighting about the carpet, it is rarely about the carpet.
More often, it is tied to something underneath the surface. Miscommunication. Lack of trust. The sense that a voice has not mattered for a while. What looks small on the surface is often connected to something deeper.
Scripture gives language to this with the image of the “little foxes” that spoil the vine (Song of Solomon 2:15). Small things, left unaddressed, can create larger problems over time.
That is why it matters to pay attention to tension early, not just when it becomes impossible to ignore. The health of a team is often shaped in those smaller moments, long before a major disagreement ever surfaces.
Noticing tension is only part of the work. Knowing what kind of tension you are dealing with and how to respond to it is where leadership really begins.
How to Discern Different Types of Tension on Your Team
Not all disagreement is healthy pushback worth leaning into. And not all tension is a sign that something is wrong with your team. Learning to tell the difference is one of the most important skills a leader can develop.
While tension can show up in a variety of ways on your church staff, there are three kinds of tension worth naming here:
A Healthy Disagreement
The first type of tension comes in the form of healthy pushback. Someone raises a concern that sharpens the decision. They are asking good questions, engaging the vision, and bringing something genuinely useful to the table. This kind of pushback is a gift, even when it does not feel like one at the moment. A team that never pushes back is a team that no longer trusts you enough to be honest.
A Leader Who Cannot Be Challenged
The second type of tension appears when a leader does not receive feedback well. I have watched a leader fire a staff member because of a disagreement. Whether or not that was the stated reason, the effect on the team was immediate. People went quiet. The unspoken message was clear: alignment means agreement, and disagreement has consequences.
I do not think that this leader woke up one morning and decided to become someone who could not be challenged. My honest read is that they cared deeply about the vision and genuinely believed they were protecting it. But the impact was real regardless of the intention. Staff members who had been vocal and engaged started measuring every word. The culture shifted from one where wisdom was pursued together to one where the leader's instinct was the ceiling. Once a team reaches that point, generating honest feedback from your staff takes deliberate work to rebuild.
None of us is immune to drifting in that direction, especially when we are tired, when our vision feels under threat, or when we have poured everything into a direction and someone questions it. The question is not whether you will ever face that temptation. You will. The question is whether you have built enough self-awareness to catch yourself before the culture pays the price.
A Team Member Who Brings Unnecessary Friction
The third kind of tension is perhaps the hardest one to navigate: the team member who is a source of unnecessary friction.
This person is not raising healthy concerns. They are bringing something else into the room. Maybe it is a personal agenda dressed up as a theological concern. Maybe it is unresolved hurt that makes every new decision feel like a threat. Maybe they are gifted enough to rally others around their frustration without ever naming it directly. Maybe they simply push back on everything, regardless of the issue, because that is how they are wired or because they have never been trained to know how to engage differently.
Leading this person well is genuinely hard. It requires you to hold two things at the same time: staying open enough to receive legitimate concerns while also being discerning enough to recognize when the pushback is not really about the decision at hand.
Practical Ways to Lead Through Tension on Your Church Team
There is no formula for these moments, but there are a few things that tend to make a real difference regardless of which kind of tension you are dealing with. For a wider framework, our guide to church conflict resolution walks through the biblical principles underneath these practices.
1. Create space before trying to resolve the issue.
When tension shows up, the temptation is to move quickly toward a conclusion, especially if you feel confident in the direction. But often what people need first is simply to be heard. Ask better questions before you defend your position:
What feels off to you about this? What concerns are coming up that we should name? Is there something we have not considered yet?
2. Revisit the why.
Leaders often carry the full picture while the team is only seeing part of it. Walking back through the purpose and the heart behind the direction can close a lot of that gap. People can disagree with a decision and still feel connected to the vision, but if they do not understand your church's vision, they have nothing to connect to.
3. Name what you are observing, directly and kindly.
If someone is bringing repeated, unproductive friction to your team, the most pastoral thing you can do is address it honestly in private before it becomes a pattern that affects everyone else. That conversation is uncomfortable, but it is far less costly than letting the tension accumulate until it forces a harder decision.
4. Know when to wait and when to move forward.
Discernment in ministry is not just about making the right call. It is about making it in a way that brings people with you. Sometimes that means slowing down and staying in the tension a little longer than feels comfortable. Sometimes it means making the call anyway and leading people through the discomfort with enough clarity and care that trust is not broken in the process. Leaders who consistently make better decisions in ministry are usually the ones who build room for counsel before the call gets made.
5. Clothe yourself in humility.
Tension can shift a leader into a defensive posture. You start protecting your perspective instead of remaining open to what God might be doing in the moment. This is the point where servant leadership stops being a concept and becomes a daily practice.
Scripture calls us to something different: “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another” (1 Peter 5:5). Humility keeps your heart soft when conversations feel sharp. It creates space for others to speak honestly without fear, and it allows you to listen without needing to win. In moments of disagreement, humility is often what preserves both the relationship and the integrity of your leadership.
6. Stay rooted through it all.
Tension has a way of pulling a leader’s attention toward managing the room instead of seeking God. The most grounded leaders I have seen in moments of disagreement are the ones who refuse to let the pressure of the moment disconnect them from prayer, from Scripture, and from the people they most trust to speak truth into their lives.
Lead the Tension Well
Unity is not something you arrive at simply because people are on the same team. It is built slowly, in moments like these, through humility, honest conversation, and a shared commitment to the mission. Those quiet habits do more to promote unity in the church than any single announcement from the platform.
There will be moments when you have to make a call, even when everyone is not fully there yet. There will be moments when you need to slow down and recognize you were wrong. That is part of leadership. But how you handle the hard moments will shape your culture far more than any single decision ever will.
Looking for more free resources to help you lead your church staff? Check out the Tithely blog for fresh, practical content written for ministry leaders like you.
VIDEO transcript
You walk into a meeting thinking your team is on the same page.
You have prayed through the decision, thought it through carefully, and feel clear about the direction. But as the conversation unfolds, it becomes obvious that not everyone agrees. Questions surface that you did not anticipate. Hesitations come up that you cannot ignore.
And now you are not just leading a decision. You are leading through tension.
I want to talk about this honestly because I have been on both sides of it. I have been the leader trying to move something forward when the team was not fully aligned. I have also been the person in the room where disagreement did not feel safe to voice.
Moments like this make it clear that how you handle disagreement does not just affect one decision. It shapes the culture of your team and defines what is safe to say… and what is not. Left unattended long enough, those patterns harden into some of the clearest signs of an unhealthy church culture.
When tension shows up in a meeting like this, it rarely starts there. It has usually been forming over time.
The Church That Split Over the Color of the Carpet
My pastor-parents used to joke about churches splitting over something as small as the color of the carpet.
It sounds ridiculous, but it sticks because it points to something true. If church leaders are fighting about the carpet, it is rarely about the carpet.
More often, it is tied to something underneath the surface. Miscommunication. Lack of trust. The sense that a voice has not mattered for a while. What looks small on the surface is often connected to something deeper.
Scripture gives language to this with the image of the “little foxes” that spoil the vine (Song of Solomon 2:15). Small things, left unaddressed, can create larger problems over time.
That is why it matters to pay attention to tension early, not just when it becomes impossible to ignore. The health of a team is often shaped in those smaller moments, long before a major disagreement ever surfaces.
Noticing tension is only part of the work. Knowing what kind of tension you are dealing with and how to respond to it is where leadership really begins.
How to Discern Different Types of Tension on Your Team
Not all disagreement is healthy pushback worth leaning into. And not all tension is a sign that something is wrong with your team. Learning to tell the difference is one of the most important skills a leader can develop.
While tension can show up in a variety of ways on your church staff, there are three kinds of tension worth naming here:
A Healthy Disagreement
The first type of tension comes in the form of healthy pushback. Someone raises a concern that sharpens the decision. They are asking good questions, engaging the vision, and bringing something genuinely useful to the table. This kind of pushback is a gift, even when it does not feel like one at the moment. A team that never pushes back is a team that no longer trusts you enough to be honest.
A Leader Who Cannot Be Challenged
The second type of tension appears when a leader does not receive feedback well. I have watched a leader fire a staff member because of a disagreement. Whether or not that was the stated reason, the effect on the team was immediate. People went quiet. The unspoken message was clear: alignment means agreement, and disagreement has consequences.
I do not think that this leader woke up one morning and decided to become someone who could not be challenged. My honest read is that they cared deeply about the vision and genuinely believed they were protecting it. But the impact was real regardless of the intention. Staff members who had been vocal and engaged started measuring every word. The culture shifted from one where wisdom was pursued together to one where the leader's instinct was the ceiling. Once a team reaches that point, generating honest feedback from your staff takes deliberate work to rebuild.
None of us is immune to drifting in that direction, especially when we are tired, when our vision feels under threat, or when we have poured everything into a direction and someone questions it. The question is not whether you will ever face that temptation. You will. The question is whether you have built enough self-awareness to catch yourself before the culture pays the price.
A Team Member Who Brings Unnecessary Friction
The third kind of tension is perhaps the hardest one to navigate: the team member who is a source of unnecessary friction.
This person is not raising healthy concerns. They are bringing something else into the room. Maybe it is a personal agenda dressed up as a theological concern. Maybe it is unresolved hurt that makes every new decision feel like a threat. Maybe they are gifted enough to rally others around their frustration without ever naming it directly. Maybe they simply push back on everything, regardless of the issue, because that is how they are wired or because they have never been trained to know how to engage differently.
Leading this person well is genuinely hard. It requires you to hold two things at the same time: staying open enough to receive legitimate concerns while also being discerning enough to recognize when the pushback is not really about the decision at hand.
Practical Ways to Lead Through Tension on Your Church Team
There is no formula for these moments, but there are a few things that tend to make a real difference regardless of which kind of tension you are dealing with. For a wider framework, our guide to church conflict resolution walks through the biblical principles underneath these practices.
1. Create space before trying to resolve the issue.
When tension shows up, the temptation is to move quickly toward a conclusion, especially if you feel confident in the direction. But often what people need first is simply to be heard. Ask better questions before you defend your position:
What feels off to you about this? What concerns are coming up that we should name? Is there something we have not considered yet?
2. Revisit the why.
Leaders often carry the full picture while the team is only seeing part of it. Walking back through the purpose and the heart behind the direction can close a lot of that gap. People can disagree with a decision and still feel connected to the vision, but if they do not understand your church's vision, they have nothing to connect to.
3. Name what you are observing, directly and kindly.
If someone is bringing repeated, unproductive friction to your team, the most pastoral thing you can do is address it honestly in private before it becomes a pattern that affects everyone else. That conversation is uncomfortable, but it is far less costly than letting the tension accumulate until it forces a harder decision.
4. Know when to wait and when to move forward.
Discernment in ministry is not just about making the right call. It is about making it in a way that brings people with you. Sometimes that means slowing down and staying in the tension a little longer than feels comfortable. Sometimes it means making the call anyway and leading people through the discomfort with enough clarity and care that trust is not broken in the process. Leaders who consistently make better decisions in ministry are usually the ones who build room for counsel before the call gets made.
5. Clothe yourself in humility.
Tension can shift a leader into a defensive posture. You start protecting your perspective instead of remaining open to what God might be doing in the moment. This is the point where servant leadership stops being a concept and becomes a daily practice.
Scripture calls us to something different: “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another” (1 Peter 5:5). Humility keeps your heart soft when conversations feel sharp. It creates space for others to speak honestly without fear, and it allows you to listen without needing to win. In moments of disagreement, humility is often what preserves both the relationship and the integrity of your leadership.
6. Stay rooted through it all.
Tension has a way of pulling a leader’s attention toward managing the room instead of seeking God. The most grounded leaders I have seen in moments of disagreement are the ones who refuse to let the pressure of the moment disconnect them from prayer, from Scripture, and from the people they most trust to speak truth into their lives.
Lead the Tension Well
Unity is not something you arrive at simply because people are on the same team. It is built slowly, in moments like these, through humility, honest conversation, and a shared commitment to the mission. Those quiet habits do more to promote unity in the church than any single announcement from the platform.
There will be moments when you have to make a call, even when everyone is not fully there yet. There will be moments when you need to slow down and recognize you were wrong. That is part of leadership. But how you handle the hard moments will shape your culture far more than any single decision ever will.
Looking for more free resources to help you lead your church staff? Check out the Tithely blog for fresh, practical content written for ministry leaders like you.
Sign Up for Product Updates
Susanna is a theological content writer with a Master of Arts in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary. She is passionate about ministry, running, and exploring new cultures through international travel. In her free time, you’ll find her surfing, obsessing over the Olympics, or enjoying the San Diego sunshine!
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