Sooner or later, disagreement and conflict come to every family. Even brothers and sisters who are genetically related to each other and growing up in the same household don’t experience the world in the same way, and their needs and perceptions sometimes clash (some of you are thinking, ‘Sometimes’? Gee, I wish…).

And if that’s true of biological families, what can we say about our church families?

We often talk about our church families in somewhat idealized terms. We want to belong to congregations where we feel we have a place, where we’re understood and accepted. It can be the family we’ve never had, filled with loving people who show up when we have a need. But often, disappointment and disillusionment follows. We’re mistreated in some way, or a scandal rocks the church. We feel betrayed; we feel lied to. And sometimes, we go in search of our next church family, the one where people really get it.

To be dis-illusioned is to have our illusions taken away — and sometimes that’s a good thing. Don’t get me wrong: there are things that shouldn’t happen in a church, among a group of people who claim to follow Jesus as Lord. But the plain fact is that they do happen, just like they happen in any family, and this is true even of the churches we read about in the New Testament. There was never a time, even in the book of Acts, when the church was conflict-free. Instead of looking for the church that always gets it right, we need to learn how to be people who respond well when things go wrong.

As we’ve seen, the apostle Paul’s handling of the situation in Philippi is instructive. He treats the two women, Euodia and Syntyche, as valued colleagues and encourages them toward the kind of humble Christian character that he urges upon the entire congregation. Moreover, he doesn’t get in the middle of the disagreement by taking sides or trying to pressure them into a particular solution. He gives them the ideal of humble unity, finds them a support person, and trusts them to figure it out.

His behavior reminds me of a concept that originated in the field of family therapy, and has since become quite popular in the ministry literature: triangles. The basic idea is simple. When two people are in tension, they often want to avoid the unpleasantness of talking directly to each other. What do they do instead? They talk to someone else, sometimes hoping to find a sympathetic ear.

Imagine that Euodia and Syntyche are both adamant that they’re right, but don’t want to talk to each other. Perhaps Euodia complains to Lydia: “That Syntyche is impossible!” she says, telling a one-sided story to prove her point. Lydia has been “triangled” into the conflict.

Syntyche may do the same with someone else, complaining about Euodia. The two outside people had nothing to with the original disagreement, but may now be carrying Euodia and Syntyche’s resentment. If they don’t handle it well, they may each triangle someone else. On and on it goes, in an ecclesial game of emotional hot potato. And though it would take too much space to explain it here, trust me: this way of dealing with anxiety and tension can lead to a church split.

That’s part of what impresses me about Paul’s approach. There’s nothing to suggest that either woman actually tried to triangle Paul in…though if they had had email or cellphones, who knows? But some leaders triangle themselves in. They get anxious anytime there’s disagreement or dissent. They want to jump in and control the situation, either by asserting power over the people involved or trying desperately to keep everyone happy. Even if that succeeds in calming things down for a time, it solves nothing long-term.

Paul doesn’t do that. He holds up the example of the humility of Christ to the community; he offers himself as a living example of what it means to follow that Christ. He encourages both women to point their moral compasses at Jesus. He gives them models of how to live without trying to force an outcome. And with a person waiting in the wings to help them if needed, Paul leaves it at that.

This is not a “technique” for “fixing” problems. There are no guarantees of strategies that will “work” in every situation. But Paul, I think, is able to not be overly anxious about the situation because he knows the inner workings of troubled churches all too well, and because he always thinks eschatologically. Whatever the difficulties may be today, tomorrow is ultimately in God’s gracious hands, and the end of the story will be eternity with God in resurrection bodies.

I want that same confidence, so that my own anxieties don’t have to tempt me to fix things I can’t fix — and really shouldn’t try to fix. Because in the end, it’s better for everyone if we all learned to manage our own anxieties, stop gossiping and dragging other people into our conflicts, and interact in ways that embody the humility of Jesus.