A pastor once walked out of a parish pastoral council meeting visibly unsettled.

Voices had been raised. People had disagreed openly. The conversation had grown intense in a way that made the room uncomfortable.

Afterward he pulled me aside and asked me whether the meeting had "gone badly.”

But what had actually happened was something very different.

For the first time, the council had begun wrestling honestly with mission. They were asking real questions about discipleship. They were naming programs that had been running for years but no one could clearly point to them bearing fruit in evangelization. They were noticing the gap between what the parish said it valued and what was actually shaping parish life.

The conversation carried weight.

What the pastor initially experienced as dysfunction was actually a sign that the council was beginning to discern. The Spirit was inviting the parish into a more honest conversation.

Nothing had gone wrong. Something had finally become real.

Mission often introduces pressure before it produces clarity. When that pressure first appears, many teams assume something has gone wrong. In reality those moments are often the first sign that a parish is beginning to tell the truth.

A leadership team once told me, almost proudly, that they never really had conflict.

They meant it as evidence that things were going well. Meetings were smooth. People were nice to one another. Decisions came easily and disagreements rarely lasted long.

Niceness, however, is not a fruit of the Holy Spirit. 

On the surface it looked like a healthy team.

But over time it became clear that nothing in the parish was actually moving.

The same programs continued year after year. Conversations about evangelization stayed mostly theoretical. Everyone agreed that discipleship mattered, but no one pushed very hard on the questions that might reveal whether it was actually happening.

The atmosphere was calm and predictable.

But calm and healthy are not always the same thing. Sometimes calm simply means no one is saying what they actually see.

The moment mission becomes more than a slogan, that silence rarely lasts. 

Mission Changes the Atmosphere

The moment a parish starts asking what is actually forming disciples, meetings start to feel different.

Someone asks why a program continues when its fruit is unclear. Someone wonders why so many young people disappear after Confirmation. Someone notices that the calendar is full of activity but the number of people growing as disciples seems small.

Those moments almost never come as bold speeches. More often they arrive quietly, in a comment that sits in the room longer than expected.

Someone looks down at their notes. Someone else starts flipping pages in the binder. The pastor leans back in his chair and you can almost feel the room wondering whether the conversation will keep going or quietly move on.

And suddenly everyone feels the weight of what has been said.

Because questions like that touch people’s work, their effort, and sometimes their sense of faithfulness. Pastors, staff, and council members often feel responsible for keeping the peace and making sure no one leaves the meeting discouraged. The instinct is often to smooth the moment over and return quickly to safer ground.

Sometimes we even tell ourselves that avoiding the tension is the pastoral thing to do.

When tension rises in a meeting, people rarely respond neutrally.  Some become overly nice in order to smooth things over.  Others withdraw into silence.  Some start giving speeches or trying to win the argument.  Some crack jokes and make sarcastic comments to try to "lighten the mood."

These reactions are often less about the issue being discussed and more about our own discomfort with tension.  

In reality, we may simply be hiding our fear of conflict behind a false sense of what it means to be pastoral — sometimes behind niceness, sometimes behind anger, sometimes behind jokes.  But real pastoral leadership is not avoiding difficult conversations. It is the willingness to remain in them when the good of the parish and the growth of disciples requires it.

Jesus Was Not Afraid of Tension

Jesus does not dissolve the tension of the moment. He allows it to reveal what needs to be revealed.The Gospels show repeatedly that Jesus did not avoid tension when truth or conversion were at stake.

When the woman caught in adultery is brought before him, the moment is charged with accusation and pressure. The crowd wants condemnation. The law is being used as a weapon.

Jesus does not dissolve the tension. Instead, he allows it to expose what is happening in the hearts of the people gathered there.

“Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone.”

One by one the accusers leave. Then Jesus turns to the woman and speaks words that hold both mercy and truth together:

“Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.”

Both are spoken in the same breath. Mercy and truth, held together in a way that leaves no room for cheap grace and no room for condemnation.

Jesus does not erase the tension of the moment. He allows it to reveal what needs to be revealed.

Throughout the Gospels Jesus repeatedly allows people to wrestle with what he says. Some lean in and grow. Others walk away. But he never preserves artificial harmony simply to keep people comfortable.

The Tensions Leaders Carry

There is the responsibility to remain faithful to the tradition of the Church while responding to the pastoral needs of people in front of them. There is the constant pull between administrative responsibilities and the deeper call to accompany souls. There is the tension between caring for individuals and shepherding the larger vision of a parish.

Many pastors carry those tensions invisibly. Parishioners often see only the homily on Sunday, not the conversations and decisions that fill the rest of the week.

Many of these tensions cannot be solved neatly. They must be carried with patience, prayer, and discernment.

This is why leadership in the Church requires more than strategies or pastoral plans. It requires ongoing human formation that allows leaders to remain steady when conversations become complicated or emotionally charged.

Part of the work is learning how to stay in the conversation when things get uncomfortable.

Regulating the Tension

Anyone who leads a parish meeting eventually realizes they are constantly adjusting the temperature in the room - consciously or not.

Sometimes the tension in a community is too low. Everything feels comfortable, but little is actually being examined. Over time complacency settles in and important questions remain unasked.

When the pressure in the room gets too high, people stop listening and start defending themselves.

Good leaders eventually realize the goal is not eliminating tension. The real work is learning how to hold it in a way that leads somewhere.  

Healthy leadership regulates tension so genuine discernment can happen.One helpful way to think about it is the relationship between tension and responsibility.

When there is too little tension, communities drift toward complacency.
When there is too much tension, the environment becomes chaotic and people shut down.  

Healthy leadership means learning to align the two so that the right people carry the right problems.  

When tension is too low, leaders may need to raise it by asking honest questions or naming realities that have been avoided. When tension becomes too high, leaders may need to slow the conversation and help people listen again.

Both movements require discernment.

When Tension Turns Unhealthy

Not all tension leads to growth.

Sometimes the signs of unhealthy pressure begin to appear. Leaders grow exhausted. Cynicism creeps into conversations. People stop speaking honestly in meetings and begin talking about issues only in hallways or parking lots.

Healthy teams do not live at either extreme.  

On one end is artificial harmony, where everyone remains polite and "nice" but difficult truths remain unspoken.  
On the other end is destructive conflict, where disagreement stops being about mission and becomes personal.  

Neither environment produces the kind of discernment that mission requires.

Growth almost always happens in the space between these two extremes.  

When tension is aligned with mission, something different often begins to appear. Leaders grow in virtue. Decisions begin to change the direction of the parish. And communities discover again how deeply they depend on the Holy Spirit.

Staying in the Room

From the beginning, the Church has discerned truth through difficult conversations.Most leaders feel the instinct to escape tension.

Some try to control everything so that difficult conversations never arise. Others withdraw and allow problems to drift unresolved.

Mission often requires something harder:

It requires staying in the room long enough for truth to surface.

Long enough for defensiveness to soften, and long enough for the Holy Spirit to work in ways that quick agreement never produces.

The early Church lived inside those tensions constantly. The Acts of the Apostles is full of disagreement, confusion, and difficult discernment. Yet through it all the Holy Spirit formed the Church.

He still does.

Questions for Leadership Teams

When tension appears in a leadership meeting, it may be worth pausing before trying to resolve it too quickly.  Tension is inescapable, and it can be where growth and change happen.  Moments of tension can be an opportunity to let the Holy Spirit reveal what is really happening in our parish.

Not every tense meeting is a red flag.

Sometimes it is simply the moment when a parish begins telling the truth.  And the Holy Spirit has always been able to work with that.

The presence of healthy, managed tension does not mean the Holy Spirit has left the room. Sometimes it is the moment when people finally begin listening to what he is saying.

Helping leadership teams remain in those moments – rather than rushing to smooth them over – is a central part of the leadership formation we offer at Burning Hearts Disciples. We work with parish and diocesan leaders to regulate tension, listen together for the movement of the Holy Spirit, and discern what mission requires next.