“When you’re picking a spouse,” I tell my young disciples, “make sure you can play well together, work well together, and fight well together.” They always think that’s a little funny, but I’m dead serious; the closer you are to someone, the more you’re gonna fight; best you be able to do it well together. We need these same qualities in the church, and the need didn’t take long to manifest.
The first serious recorded disagreement in the church was over ethnicity. The presenting issue was about the church’s charitable care for widows who didn’t have anyone to provide for them, but it wasn’t all the widows who were being neglected. It was the Greek-speaking (Hellenistic) Jewish widows who were being treated as second-class citizens. That sort of second-class treatment to Hellenistic Jews would have been common enough in the general culture of Jerusalem, but it had no rightful place in the church.
Acts 6 records the story: the apostles declined to leave their posts in order to handle the charitable matters themselves, and instead called on the congregation to nominate some men who were above reproach to administer these charitable matters. The apostles commissioned these men–Philip and Stephen famously among them–to handle the distribution. Worth noting: all seven of the chosen men have Greek names, and presumably could be trusted to treat their Greek-speaking brethren fairly. The matter doesn’t come up again; this solution seems to have put it to bed.
The next big fight is recorded in Acts 15, and this one is very different. The presenting issue this time is more doctrinal. Everyone understands that Gentiles can come to Jesus without becoming Jews first; the conversion of Cornelius and his family in Acts 10-11 made that plain. The question is, once you’ve brought the Gentiles into the church, then what? Up in Antioch, they were having a lot of success winning Gentiles to Christ, so the question became pressing. Some — Paul and Barnabas among them — thought that the Gentiles could follow Jesus as Gentiles. Others argued that it’s fine for a Gentile to believe in Jesus, and they clearly receive the Holy Spirit as Gentiles, just like Cornelius did, but if they’re serious about following Jesus, then they need to keep the Law. WWJD, right? Jesus kept the Law; if you say you’re following Jesus, put down the shrimp!
That’s not actually an easy argument to answer, and the details of the argument are beyond the scope of our time together today, but you can find the early church’s answer in Acts 15. In brief, the Gentiles are children of Noah, and therefore accountable to keep the commands God gave Noah, but they’re not Jews, and they don’t have to keep Jewish Law.
The next major church fight in Acts is different again. This time it’s a personal squabble between two people: Paul and Barnabas. Some distance into their first missionary journey (after Cyprus but before most of Asia Minor) John Mark left them and returned to Jerusalem. The text doesn’t say why. In any case, when it’s time go out again and encourage all the churches they’d started, Paul doesn’t want to take Mark. Barnabas does. There’s not much room for compromise — take him or don’t, right? In the end, the disagreement gets so sharp that they split the team and the job. Barnabas takes Mark and goes to Cyprus. Paul takes Silas and goes to Asia Minor.
Note that this disagreement doesn’t rise to the level of the previous one. It’s largely a question of personal philosophy of ministry: do we give the kid another shot? Barnabas is all for second chances. Paul wants traveling companions he can count on. Who’s right? The text leaves us to work it out for ourselves.
I say they both are. Barnabas — remember that his name means ‘Son of Encouragement’ — is living into the role that God has given him in the church. He’s the one, you may remember, who brought Paul (the freshly-converted former terrorist) into the Jerusalem church when nobody would associate with him. Barnabas was caring for Mark, as he should have been. Paul’s first priority was the work, and he chose traveling companions he could count on to keep up with him.
This third fight doesn’t ever come before the apostles or a church council. It doesn’t appear to even end up before the leaders of the local church (which would have been Antioch, in this case.) It doesn’t rise to that level because each man is within his liberty. Nobody is proposing to do anything wrong, and there’s no doctrinal issue at stake. Paul is not required to take a traveling companion he can’t rely on; Barnabas is free to give Mark a second chance if he cares to. At the same time, clearly they fought about it. The contention grew so sharp, Luke tells us, that they parted company. The first-ever Gentile Mission dream team, and it breaks up over an interpersonal squabble about whether to take along a particular junior team member. Wow.
(In God’s providence, the result of breaking up the team is two teams both going back out to the mission field. Don’t miss God’s ability to turn a profit on absolutely anything.)
The point is that not every conflict is the same, or calls for the same kind of solution. The first conflict was practical; the applicable doctrine was “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and everybody agreed on that. The question was just how to make sure that it got implemented well. Choosing people that everyone could trust to implement it well solved the problem.
The second conflict was fundamentally doctrinal; there was nothing to do but get everybody together and have it out. They needed time and space to do that, but they persisted at it until they came to agreement on the right answer.
The third conflict didn’t have one right answer. As conflict of personal and ministry philosophy where each man was within his Christian liberty, there wasn’t a clear wrong party. Because there wasn’t really a right or wrong answer, there also wasn’t an authority they could appeal to for a final resolution. Nobody had competent jurisdiction to curtail either man’s liberty in Christ, and the leaders rightly left it up to Paul and Barnabas to figure out what they were going to do.
You’ll face all three types of conflict in ministry. The vital thing is to discern which kind of conflict you’re facing, and act accordingly.
Full Contact Christianity 
Excellent!
Thank you, Mike! Hope you and yours are thriving!