How to Handle Controversy and Conflict in Ministry

"We have met the enemy, and he is us".

Perhaps a quick way of stating this is that when another church or pastor disagrees with us on a fundamental or a significant doctrine, they become at worst a "mission field". They are not an enemy per se, and when we start treating them as enemies, what we will find is that we abandon basic Biblical norms like honesty, courtesy, and the like. Basically, we go from being David to being Joab--a man who would brutally murder any and all rivals to his position.