Author Archive

“Bullies, Victims & Bystanders: A Seminar for Youths and Adults” will be offered Saturday, Oct. 22, at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church here.

The Methodist Church has launched an appeal for donations to go towards communities that have suffered as a result of the civil disorder. The funds will be used to support the Church’s work in the areas of reconciliation and community rebuilding.

“And I am impressed with our church members who, on the day after the break-in, were already talking about forgiving and moving on and how God could bring something good out of this.”

We follow the process and go where the parties need to go. This might mean helping a young man save face after he refused to answer a question by creatively finding another way of asking it.

As school districts across North America – indeed perhaps across the world – struggle with how to enable students to study productively in safe, respectful school environments, more school personnel are checking into restorative justice and asking themselves whether the practices of “RJ” could be applied in their environments.

Emily Willie, seminary student at Boston University School of Theology and summer intern with JustPeace, delivered this message at a chapel service in D.C. on August 3rd. She talks about creativity, naming harm, truth-telling, James Brown, and the need to get creative in order to honor ourselves and our relationships.

Faith & Leadership: Conflict transformation doesn’t presume an inactive or non-active engagement with the world, and it doesn’t presume a non-confrontational stance with the world. But it does presume that we don’t have to stay in destructive conflicts, that they can be transformed to be creative and positive.

As a practicing attorney, Linda Warren Seely deals with a certain amount of conflict. But her Christian faith calls her to help people settle disagreements outside the legal process where possible and in ways that might be more satisfying and sustaining for all parties.

Rev. Ken Carter, District Superintendent of the Waynesville District in North Carolina, recently led a study of “The Journey: Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Restorative Justice” at the Western North Carolina United Methodist Women’s School of Christian Mission. He reflected on the experience on his blog.

In January, Krista Tippett began a new project called the Civil Conversation Project – an ongoing series of radio shows and a website that yearns for new and better way “to speak and listen to each other, to live forward together, even while holding passionate disagreements.”