Pockets focuses on conflict resolution
The theme of the newest issue of Pockets, Upper Room Ministries’ magazine for tweens 8 to 12, is “resolving conflict”. The 48-page devotional magazine for children contains photos, stories, daily scripture readings and mission-focused activities. The online website for Pockets includes additional resources for parents interested in resolving conflicts within families and dinner conversation starters to help initiate discussion about conflict and how to engage it.
Here is the introduction to the issue:
“Conflict is an inevitable part of life. We won’t always agree with others. People (seemingly especially those with whom we must spend a lot of time) annoy us at times. We don’t want to suggest to children hat being in conflict is bad or that they should violate their own beliefs to avoid conflict. Instead, we want to help them learn to deal with conflict in ways that foster the kinds of relationships God want us to have with others. Respect, openness to other points of view, and learning to regard others as beloved children of God are key aspects of this theme.”
You can find information on how to order issues of Pockets on their website here: http://pockets.upperroom.org
2012 Lake Junaluska Peace Conference (Nov 8 – 11)
Is there a place for nonviolent action in our world? The 2012 Lake Junaluska Peace Conference, “Love in Action: The Transformative Power of Nonviolence,” will draw upon the lessons of nonviolent campaigns and their leaders who discovered a force that can change the world. Participants will explore the principles and learn the applications of nonviolence as taught by Gandhi, King, and many spiritual leaders who offered this alternative paradigm for resolving conflict, achieving justice, and building peace.
Click here to learn more and register!
2012 Speakers include:
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Leymah Gbowee, Liberian Peace Activist and Nobel Peace Prize Winner
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Rev. Dr. Bernard Lafayette, Jr., Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, Candler School of Theology
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Michael Nagler, President of the Metta Center for Nonviolence
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Alan Storey, Central Methodist Mission in Cape Town, Africa
- More to be announced.
Ben Gosden: Babel or Pentecost?
(Ben Gosden is an Associate Pastor at Mulberry Street United Methodist Church in Macon, GA and a prolific blogger on his blog, Covered in the Master’s Dust).
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:12-15, 17)
We live in a world that puts a high price on expressing one’s opinions. The evening news that used to report the facts of the day is now geared around a 24-hour machine churning our facts slanted by bias opinion. Hot button issues of our day—homosexuality, abortion, war, etc.—can’t seem to be discussed without some sense of emotional baggage being attached. It’s so easy to get caught in the echo chamber of our own opinions that we forget the fact that edifying dialogue is an art.
John Wesley believed holy conferencing—Christians conferring together for the sake of peace and truth seeking—was a “means of grace.” The question before us as the Church is this: What kind of world do we want to live in? Will we accept living in a world of Babel—where opinions are shouted so loudly no one can hear or understanding one another (Gen 11)? Or will we seek to live into the world of Pentecost—where the grace of God empowers us to celebrate diverse voices in the formation of the Kingdom of God (Acts 2)?
Coaching: A Great Appointment
(Dr. Patricia K. Suggs of Coaching Church Leaders is a life coach who specializes in coaching clergy and church lay leaders. Her goal is to help church-affiliated individuals and groups uncover and re-discover their strengths so they can achieve the results they need and want.)
In my ministry I have engaged in several different types of appointments. My journey in ministry looks like the curviest road in San Francisco! I have pastored churches, been on faculty in geriatrics at a medical school, served as an interim minister, and worked with churches in conflicting situations. I still work in conflict and reconciliation but now I am also a coach.
I am an elder in the United Methodist Church and have been in ministry for over 34 years. Recently I became an International Coaching Federation (ICF) certified coach and endorsed as a coach by the United Methodist Church (one of 16 in the country). It has been some ride. My call has never been static which is something that suits me and my personality well. Through coaching, God has led me in a direction that utilizes all of my gifts and talents. Coaching offers many benefits to all those who utilize the service. According to the ICF, those who engage in coaching experience fresh perspectives on personal challenges and opportunities, enhanced thinking and decision making skills, enhance interpersonal effectiveness and increased confidence in carrying out their work and life roles.
I have found coaching to be extremely valuable to clergy. The clergy I have trained in coaching skills and those I have coached, find that coaching has enabled them to work more effectively with their congregations (committees, boards, etc.). Coaching also works well in the conflict/reconciliation process by going deeper within participants and allowing them to open up more effectively. Coaching has taught them how to better utilize the gifts and talents of their members. It also enhances their individual sessions with members. I believe that if every clergy person had a coach their leadership effectiveness would dramatically increase. I truly love coaching and helping persons, especially clergy, to become the persons God intended them to be. What a gift!
Conflict Transformation for Christians
Jesus had a remarkable gift for seeing through everything superficial, for peeling back the layers of the dusty, superficial robes of identity we wear, to peer into a person’s inner soul. Whether speaking to a Roman Centurian, to a Samaritan adulteress, or to a distinguished Rabbi, Jesus always seemed to see beyond title or position and to respond to the deeper thoughts and real need of the individual he was relating to.
This is no surprise, is it? We expect God to know us! Moreover, since there is no chance we will be embarrassed by meeting God in the supermarket tomorrow, it is relatively low risk for us to reveal in quiet prayer the yearnings of our deepest, secret places.
But wait! What if, as the song says, God were one of us? Would we be willing to reveal ourselves to God, in that case?
Consider Matthew 25:37-39:
Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?
What if God is among us, gauging us and knowing us even more, by every response we make to an other. What if, by our responses to others, we reveal our self to God? What if God is, in a real sense, in the other person? And, if God is present in our interactions with an other, what does that say about how we ought to relate to that other?
Consider Matthew 7:12: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”
This is getting tough. Does it make a difference if the other is my enemy? Peter already asked that question. God does not let us off the hook. Jesus’s reply to Peter (in Matthew 5:46) was, in so many words, “no excuses:”
If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? . . . And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others?
Herein is the root of our calling to engage in Christian conflict transformation, not just conflict “resolution”. Resolution may find a superficial solution, but it does not heal the conflict. Resolution may address causes, but Christians are more or less directly instructed to go deeper, to see the other as Christ sees the other. We aim to see, and to be seen, on a deeper and less superficial level. Which is, more or less, to say that when we rise to this challenge, perhaps we begin to see ourselves and the other more like God sees us.
When we do this, we enable the cause of conflict to be addressed on a deeper and more fundamental level. Our experience of the conflict is transformed. This is what is called “conflict transformation.” When our understanding is transformed, our positions and views shift, and this new viewpoint often can cause shifts in how we respond to the conflict. To call this merely “compromise” is trite. It is the difference between the earth shifting as the result of an earthquake, versus moving a fence line. Perhaps when the earth moves, the fence is no longer even needed.
Can we do it? Yes, by the Grace of God, yes, it is possible. The principles work whether we are Christian or not. Kenneth Cloke, a secular mediator, speaks about conflict transformation in his book The Crossroads of Conflict as follows:
Every conflict presents the parties… with a… choice. They can cling to safe territory, keep the conversation focused on relatively superficial issues and avoid mentioning deeper topics, remaining locked in impasse and placing their lives on hold.
Or they can take a risk, adopt a more open, honest, empathic approach and initiate a deeper, more dangerous, heartfelt conversation that could change their lives and result in transformation and transcendence.
Which path they take will depend partly on their willingness to engage each other in heartfelt communications.
A heartfelt conversation that could change our life. Are we ready for it? Cloke explains the secular side:
Transcendence occurs when people gain insight into the attitudes, intentions and perceptions that sustained their conflict, improve their ability to learn from it, work collaboratively to prevent its reoccurrence and evolve to higher levels of conflict and resolution.
On the spiritual side, we are doing nothing less than what our Lord demands. We begin to see the other, and to see ourselves, more like God sees us. And, through this new revelation and by developing skill in relating to one another with love, we grow and learn more about how to exist as the transcendent, spiritual creatures that we are.
Bill Moyers on conflict and division
On a recent episode of Moyers & Company, Bill Moyers responded to a viewer’s question about why the United States is so divided. ”Is it because we’re so diverse,” the viewer asks, “or is there something else at work here?”
Moyers does an excellent job pointing out that conflict and disagreement are in no way new. From the Bible’s first family to the early colonists of America – conflict is an integral part of human nature and has been part and parcel of our journey since day one.
Politics, he says, “is an alternative to fratricide but it’s no pacifier of our conflicts over issues that touch our deepest emotions, like: taxes, abortion, immigration, sexuality – you name it.”
Isn’t this also true of the Church? You don’t need to have a doctorate in Church History to realize that our past has been fraught with theological differences, divisions, schisms and excommunications (and, that’s not even mentioning the violent conflict).
“We are a querulous people,” Moyers says. ”Civilization is but a thin veneer of civility stretched across the passions of the human heart. And civilization doesn’t just happen; we have to make it happen. And that’s not easy.”
The issues that “touch our deepest emotions” and cause conflicts within the national political arena don’t disappear when we enter our churches. Nor should they. Conflict is natural, normal and inevitable. It will always be with us. But, it doesn’t have to divide us.
Conflict gives us the opportunity to grow and transform – as individuals and as a community. It gives us the opportunity to learn, listen and seek understanding from those with whom we disagree and, in the process, grow our relationships stronger. Conflict also enables us to go deeper in conversation – to discuss the things that really matter and to share with others what’s on our hearts. As we discuss controversial and sensitive issues in the Church, let’s meet disagreement with love and an emphasis on community and relationship. As Ellen Ott Marshall says, “we must not allow the light of a gracious and loving God to be hidden under the bushel of antagonistic politics.”
To echo Moyers – it is not easy, but we can make it happen.
The Art of Peace: From “Conflict Resolution” to “Conflict Transformation”
Be sure to visit the On Being Blog and listen to Krista Tippett’s most recent interview with John Paul Lederach as he talks about his work in conflict transformation.
As we’ve mentioned in a previous blog post, from when he was on Krista Tippett’s program last time, Lederach who is now a professor of conflict transformation at Notre Dame, was part of the design team for this organization and argued successfully at its inception for its name to be “JustPeace”.
Below is from the introduction on the On Being blog:
John Paul Lederach is one of the most esteemed names in conflict mediation in the world today. He is also Mennonite, an icon of this tradtion that passionately embarces the biblical command to “be peacemakers.” In our conversation in “The Art of Peace” he calls his work “conflict transformation” rather than the more commonly used term of “conflict resolution.” Across three decades, in over 25 countries on five continents, he has sought to help people transform their relationships with their enemies.”
The interview is well worth your time. You can listen by clicking here and/or read the transcript of the interview here.
Holy Conversation at Pre-General Conference
On Saturday, January 21st 2012, Stephanie Hixon (Co-Executive Director of JustPeace) participated in a panel discussion in Tampa, Florida as part of the United Methodist Church’s pre-General Conference press conference.
Led by Minnesota Bishop Sally Dyck, the panel also included the Rev. Mike Slaughter, lead pastor of Ginghamsburg UMC in Ohio, the Rev. Bruce Robbins, pastor of Hennepin Avenue UMC in Minneapolis, the Rev. Thomas Lambrecht, vice president and general manager of Good News and Erin Hawkins, the General Secretary of the United Methodist Commission on Religion and Race.
You can watch the entire video of the plenary (as well as other plenaries) on the UMC.org website by clicking here.
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