Healthy conflict can be good! It often clears up misunderstandings and helps everyone deal with negative feelings if handled in a positive biblical way. Unfortunately, many of us go through life trying to avoid conflict, while others might try to create conflict, yes even in the church. Neither response is biblical or beneficial in our relationships.In my Bible study, Euodia and Syntyche: From Conflict to Community, I discuss the short passage in Philippians 4:2-3, where we meet two Christian women who experienced conflict while serving in Paul’s ministry in Philippi. They couldn’t work it out on their own and needed a mediator. They hadn’t yet learned the art of agreeing to disagree biblically. Now I appeal to Euodia and Syntyche. Please, because you belong to the Lord, settle your disagreement. 3 And I ask you, my true partner, to help these two women, for they worked hard with me in telling others the Good News. They worked along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are written in the Book of Life. Phil. 4:2-3 NLTEuodia and Syntyche probably were charter members of the church at Philippi. They worked with Paul as church planters and were influential women for Paul to mention them by name. Their argument was a big enough issue that Paul heard about it 1000 miles away in a Roman jail. We cannot minimize the significance of Paul addressing these two women in a letter he knew would have a public reading to the entire church, and quite possibly to surrounding churches. Arguments among Christians in churches are a big deal!Often we’re unprepared to deal with conflict because we never learned healthy conflict-resolving skills and react in ways the Bible calls sinful. Whatever the root cause of conflict in the church, if it’s not resolved biblically, the result can resemble carnal secular culture, the opposite of how God wants us to respond.Here are 5 sinful ways you might recognize that congregants react to church conflict. Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/RyanJLane