There is a bad atmosphere in my church between two groups and I keep getting pulled into it. How do I address it, and when should I just stay out of it?

“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”

This is a pilgrim song, sung by families walking up to Jerusalem for the festivals and arriving alongside people they had fallen out with all year. The psalm calls unity good and pleasant, which is an oddly modest pair of words. It does not call it easy or automatic. It is the kind of line you sing on the road precisely because the reunion at the end of it is going to be awkward.

“I beseech Euodias, and beseech Syntyche, that they be of the same mind in the Lord. And I intreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellowlabourers, whose names are in the book of life.”

Paul names two women, Euodias and Syntyche, in a letter he knew would be read aloud to the whole congregation. He does not say which of them was right. He asks them to be of one mind and asks a third person to help them get there. The most striking thing is how ordinary it is. Two good, hardworking believers had fallen out, and the church needed somebody willing to stand between them.