by Valerie Harkins, Executive Director, Maternity Housing Coalition 

Why Disagreement Is Not a Sign of Failure

Any organization that does meaningful work long enough will eventually face an uncomfortable but unavoidable reality: thoughtful, committed people will sometimes disagree about what should be done.

In maternity housing, those disagreements often arise at precisely the moments that matter most. A resident’s behavior may raise concerns about safety, accountability, community standards, trauma, or fairness. One staff member may feel the situation requires a firm boundary. Another may believe the behavior reflects distress rather than defiance. A third may worry about what message the decision will send to other residents. None of those instincts is necessarily wrong. In fact, the presence of competing concerns is often evidence that people are taking both the resident and the mission seriously.

We should stop treating disagreement as a sign of dysfunction. Very often, it is a sign of health.

A team that never disagrees may not be united; it may simply be unexamined. In a healthy organization, people bring different experiences, convictions, and discernment to the table. That can create friction, but friction is not always a threat. Sometimes it is the very thing that keeps us from making shallow decisions. As the saying goes, when we pray for rain, we should expect mud. If we ask God to grow a ministry, deepen its impact, and entrust us with vulnerable lives, we should not be surprised when some of the work becomes difficult to navigate. Ministry is sacred, but it is rarely neat.

Start with the Mission, Not the Rulebook

So what should a team do when it cannot agree on how to respond to a resident’s behavior or circumstances?

The first step is to resist the instinct to run immediately to the rules. Begin with the mission, not the program handbook.

That distinction matters more than many leaders realize. Policies and procedures are essential, but they are not the heart of the organization. They are tools meant to serve the mission, not substitutes for it. In moments of conflict, teams can become overly procedural, reaching for policy language as though it alone can answer moral, relational, and organizational questions. But before asking, “What does the rule say?” a wiser question is, “Why do we exist?” What is the organization called to protect, cultivate, and offer? What are we fundamentally here to do? When a team reorients itself to mission, it is far more likely to make a decision marked by both clarity and integrity.

Separate Facts from Emotion

After that, the group must review the facts of the circumstance as plainly and soberly as possible. This requires discipline.

Difficult resident situations generate strong emotions, and understandably so. Staff members may feel disappointed, protective, frustrated, fearful, or heartsick. Those emotions are real, and they should not be mocked or dismissed. But they must not be allowed to dominate the process. Good discernment depends on the ability to separate what is known from what is assumed, what is documented from what is inferred, and what actually occurred from the emotional atmosphere surrounding it. The question is not how the situation feels in the room; the question is what is true.

For Faith-Based Organizations, Pause to Pray

For faith-based organizations, this is also the moment to pause and pray together.

Not performatively. Not as a spiritual courtesy before continuing with a decision already made in everyone’s mind. Pray because wisdom is needed. Pray because human judgment is limited. Pray because leadership, especially in complex and emotionally charged situations, requires more than policy knowledge and professional instinct.

Invite the Holy Spirit to guide the conversation. Ask for discernment, humility, restraint, and unity. Ask to see the resident clearly, and to see yourselves clearly as well. Prayer does not always remove complexity, but it often changes the quality of attention we bring to it. That alone can alter the course of a conversation.

Take an Honest Inventory of Resources

From there, the team must turn to the practical question of resources. Even when a compassionate or creative response seems possible, the organization must ask whether it can responsibly sustain it.

Do we have the time? Do we have the staffing capacity? Do we have the financial margin? Could this situation be managed well, even if doing so stretches beyond ordinary program norms? These are not cynical questions. They are necessary ones. It is not merciful to promise what an organization cannot faithfully carry. Mature compassion is not simply generous in spirit; it is honest about capacity.

Ask Whether the Response Still Aligns with the Mission

This is where many leadership teams make their most important distinction. The issue is not merely whether something can be done. The issue is whether it should be done in a way that remains aligned with the mission.

Some circumstances fall outside normal expectations yet still represent a meaningful and mission-consistent opportunity to serve. There are also circumstances in which continuing to intervene may no longer reflect wise stewardship of the organization’s calling, people, or resources. The aim is not to protect institutional comfort. Nor is it to stretch grace beyond the point of responsibility. The aim is faithful alignment.

When Consensus Cannot Be Reached

And then comes the final, often overlooked principle: if the group still cannot reach a unified and collegial consensus, the matter should be escalated to the director for a final decision.

That is not a breakdown in the process. It is part of the process.

Healthy organizations do not require unanimous instinct; they require clear leadership. A team may do all the right things—return to mission, clarify the facts, pray, assess resources, deliberate thoughtfully—and still remain divided. At that point, someone must be entrusted to make the final call. That is one of the burdens of leadership.

Support the Final Decision

But once that decision is made, the team has a responsibility to support it, provided it does not bring harm to the resident or to staff.

Internal disagreement should not become ongoing internal sabotage. A team can hold differing personal views and still choose institutional solidarity. In fact, that kind of maturity is one of the marks of a trustworthy ministry.

This is especially important in maternity housing, where staff are constantly asked to hold compassion and structure in the same pair of hands. That tension does not disappear with experience. If anything, the longer one serves, the more one understands how rarely difficult situations fit neatly into policy language. But that does not mean the work becomes arbitrary. It means the work requires wisdom. It requires moral seriousness. It requires the kind of leadership culture in which disagreement is neither feared nor indulged, but carefully stewarded.

A Final Word

The strongest teams are not the ones that avoid hard conversations. They are the ones that know how to have them without losing their center.

Disagreement, in itself, is not the enemy. The real danger is a team that forgets who it is, why it exists, and how it is meant to lead when the path is unclear. If we can remain anchored in mission, honest about facts, dependent on God, realistic about resources, and respectful of leadership authority, then even our most difficult internal disagreements can become occasions for deeper clarity and stronger unity.

And that, too, is part of faithful ministry.