Ideas and opinions. Experiences away from home or outside of our communities—and the development of what is technically called "formal operations"—may lead us to distinguish our own opinions from those of the community. This level of ideas tends to be more individualistic and rationalistic. We are able to debate our own opinions on rational grounds and may be quite critical of the commonly held opinions of our community. Many a college freshman new to this level of awareness has explained the "right" way of viewing the world to bemused parents.

To deal with the level of ideas and disagreement in the church, we need to introduce some concepts of conflict management, especially tools to help people move from a paradigm of win/lose to win/win. We know that many churches avoid any topic on which people might disagree because they have a "no-conflict norm," that is, an unwritten rule that "we never disagree here," but there are various tools for dealing with conflict in other ways than avoidance. Of course, the whole process is designed to help people identify common feelings, stories, and community loyalties before dealing at the level of ideas and strategies.