Church Conflict?

I am sitting in a class on church conflict thinking about how unneccesary this class should be. I might be naive but if we as the church allow God to have his place in church we will stop getting in the way and starting conflict. I knew when I was called into ministry it would be a challenge but my eyes have been opened to whole new set of realities.
We have begun to go down the road of the pharisees and sadducees and added our opinion, our garbage that we feel is important. We have set up rules of order in our churches based on what we like that never take into consideration what the Bible says. I guess why bring the Bible into it if we can handle it. Somehow we have allowed our opinions to become the primary focus of church.
I recently attended a conference, Sustainable Faith, that really seemed to put things in a refreshing perspective. My impression was that they believe if it is not in the Bible it really isn't an issue. It appeared as an almost lets get to the root of things and get to what matters to God. We have (in the church) fought more about carpet colors, music style, and buildings then which social injustice we are going to collectively try to help. In one of the breakouts the point was brought up that the church is notorious for taking more resources than it is giving back. I really realized how the scales have been tilted.
I am at a point where I have begun to question things that I was taught were scriptural (i.e. death penalty, politics). This has been a great struggle for me. I have been firm in these beliefs and even defensive of them. I have been really researching the Biblical view on these and I am not here to persuade or even discuss them at this point but will say the conference was one of a couple of reaffirming moments in my quest for a Biblical view.