Christianity Today has an excellent article detailing the restorative justice movement in Detroit, Michigan. Here’s an excerpt from the article with some great quotes by Henry McClendon, a Christian minister and Michigan Regional Coordinator for the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP).

Talking circle / photo by Christianity Today

From the article:

“It’s my personal mission to see Detroit become the first large, urban restorative city,” says Henry McClendon, a Christian minister and executive of the Skillman Foundation, a private nonprofit focused on improving schools and neighborhoods for children. He has spearheaded implementing restorative practices in schools and among law enforcement and community groups.

Although not a faith-based program, restorative practices reinforce Christian principles of forgiveness and peaceful problem-solving, McClendon says.

He and other Christians see biblical roots in a philosophy that expands on the concept of restorative justice, a system of victim-offender restitution and reconciliation that has been embraced by many faith traditions. The Mennonite Central Committee established the first restorative justice program in the mid-1970s, and Prison Fellowship founder Charles Colson championed it.

Detroit schools are tackling broader problems with an array of proactive practices that include but go beyond restorative justice. By bringing people together to address wrongs, hurts, and misunderstandings, these practices can resolve or prevent conflicts and promote cooperation, proponents say. They have been used in many settings, from courts and schools to family disputes and ethnic divides.

Restorative school programs like Detroit’s are “probably the most exciting and promising area of the restorative justice movement,” says  “It helps teach kids how to fight fair and deal with conflicts in a more open way.”

Leaders of the movement in Detroit hope to help transform a struggling city with a different way of handling problems, from student fights to neighborhood gangs.

…

McClendon hopes to see the restorative mindset flowing from schools into churches, social services, and the criminal justice system. He sees “a huge amount of openness” to the approach given the magnitude of Detroit’s problems.

Click here to read the entire article on Christianity Today‘s website. 

When prosecutor and devout Christian Preston Shipp began teaching in a Nashville prison, he never thought he’d be the one to get schooled. But the friendship he forges with one young prisoner puts his faith in the justice system—and in Jesus—to the ultimate test.

“Redemption of the Prosecutor” is a short documentary by Brave New Foundation’s Beyond Bars campaign, which produces videos and engages social media to fight mass incarceration. Running time is 22 minutes.

GET THE FILM (IT’S FREE!) TO HOST A SCREENING AT YOUR CHURCH! Print the discussion guide and fact sheet to accompany your screening.

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Qualities that Embody Ministry Excellence 

Be kind—for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
~Philo, 1st Century Jewish Mystic 

When he (Jesus) saw the crowds, he was deeply moved with compassion for them.
~~Matthew 9:36 

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
~~Viktor E. Frankl 

One of the most important books that I have ever read is Martin Buber’s book, I and Thou. Though I first read I and Thou in seminary where it was assigned reading, I did not really examine it with care. Years later a mentor suggested that, in his opinion, it is an all-time classic. I reread it and still wasn’t grabbed. But years afterwards, I picked it up from my bookshelf, began reading it yet again, and the light switch turned on. I sat down mesmerized with and captured by the text and responded, Wow! From that day forward, it has become a tethered, page-worn book that I go back to for reference and grounding over and over again.

From my experience, one of the best ways to engage Buber’s I and Thou is to read a few pages at a time. The book is extremely dense and painfully difficult. It is filled with made-up words, sentences you can spend a year thinking about, and ideas that surface and re-surface over the course of a life and make more sense with each new appearance. It is not fast food but a five-course gourmet meal that takes precise presence, exquisite attentiveness and savored taste.

In a changing, complex culture where the institution feels threatened and the anxiety is high, I-Thou speaks to one of the deepest needs of people in our culture, congregations and other organizations. It invites questions such as: What does it mean to see people as people made in the image of God to be loved and valued? What does it mean to see people in an I-Thou way in spite of the anxious culture of I-It that is so pervasive? How do we open and hold space so that through conversations of compassion and creativity, an I-Thou awareness can be cultivated and deepened? How do we make space for an alternative way of being and doing—a way that honors people, human dignity, civility, respect and grace?

If I can risk putting Buber’s philosophy into a small package, I’d say it has to do with seeing people as made in the image of God to be valued and loved. To do this, three things have to happen. First, we have to see ourselves as made in the image of God to be valued and loved. We have to appreciate the miracle of our own existence. We have to believe that we are lovable and loved—by other people and by the Spirit who created us. Second, we have to get past the self-absorption of the person who goes around thinking: What a miracle I am! How wonderful! How special! How unique! Third, we have to believe that we have the capacity to love genuinely, to be and do in an I-Thou way toward others and ourselves.

If things are going badly, we have to somehow remember that we are not alone in our suffering. If things are going well, we have to learn to enjoy and appreciate our good fortune, without giving ourselves all the credit for it. To put it another way, as a wise mentor and friend once shared with me, “Do not get too high with the positive or too low with the painful or what appears to be destructive.” In other words, the spiritual journey is about keeping steady and holding a “paradoxical curiosity” 1 Thus, we are living a kind of spiritual balancing/blending,2 holding a paradoxical curiosity, keeping a full sense of the wonder of our own existence without losing weight of the wonder of others.

1. John Paul Lederach used the phrase “paradoxical curiosity” in his book, The Moral Imagination: The Heart and Soul of Building Peace (pp: 35-37). I was reminded of this phrase by David Hooker, a friend and colleague on the staff team at JustPeace Center for Mediation and Conflict Transformation.
2. Photojournalist Dewitt Jones uses “blend” in the place of “balance”—I use “both/and”.

In a similar kind of balancing/blending act, the Christian monks of long ago used to say “suffering is grace.” It’s a strange concept, especially for people of the modern world who’ve developed a million ways of avoiding or lessening pain. But I think the idea behind it is that, when we suffer, when things don’t go the way we want them to go, we are being given an opportunity to feel compassion for anyone and anything that suffers. We can learn to see the I there in that other pair of eyes, and to feel the Thou of that other soul inside and between ourselves. In Buber’s language, in the in-betweenness, we find the Thou. In this sacred space of in-betweenness, our and others’ humanness are invited to meet. When that encounter is authentic, human and real, the third other appears or incarnates. In my language, this is the God whose middle name is Surprise! Buber writes, “When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.” This learning to see the I there in others and to feel the Thou of the other’s soul within, between and among us might be at the heart of what the Dalai Lama meant when he commented, “My religion is kindness.”

I-Thou, creativity and compassion are connected to what it means to be human beings. This path is a choice. As Kierkegaard comments, “We create ourselves by our choices.” I can choose my own way of the heart/soul/being, as can those with whom and to whom I minister. We call this ability to choose, agency. It cannot be taken from us. We are free at this deepest level to make this choice.

We have tremendous freedom and grace in terms of how we see and respond to each other. We can utilize agency in a way that honors, invites and evokes an I-Thou awareness, a way that is filled with grace, creativity, honor, dignity, integrity and compassion. Such a way fosters excellence. To the level that an I-Thou consciousness is present, the anxiety is lower, thus, the potential for high levels of creativity, compassion and excellence increases. Jesus models this I-Thou way. I-Thou, compassion, creativity, excellence and authentic acts of kindness are rooted in secure being and grow out of love and acceptance of self and others.

Another option or choice is to invite resistance in others through an I-It way that dishonors or even shames people and treats them as if they are insignificant, as if they are objects (I-It). The anxiety that stifles genuine creativity and excellence is often in direct proportion to the level of the I-It attitude in an individual and community. I-It is driven by insecurity, anxiety, shame, coercion, reactivity, resistance and self-absorption. I-It emerges out of fear, mistrust and at times, indifference toward the other.

Rather than getting stuck in old, destructive patterns of anger or selfishness or shame or greed or self-absorption or jealousy or envy or destructive use of power or cut-off, we can find creative ways of responding or changing our choice of habits/reactions and resistance, especially the habits of our thoughts. We can find an I-Thou path embracing creativity and compassion.

Jesus models a different way. I believe he models and invites us to dare a path of I-Thou awareness, creativity and compassion. He believes, as humans, we have the capacity to choose this alternative path. A mother can be creative in terms of how she speaks to her child. A teacher can be creative in terms of how he or she conveys information to students. A minister can be creative in the way he or she responds to a parishioner who is resisting or acting out against him or her. A lay-person can be creative in the way she/he responds to a minister with whom he or she disagrees. A person buying a cup of coffee can be creative in the way he or she speaks to the person working behind the counter, even if that person is resistant or acting rude. When a congregation is not responding in the manner the clergy person thinks they should, he or she can be grace-filled, instead of shame filled, and through creative engagement, find compassionate, I-Thou ways to engage, converse and respond.

When I can see people in an I-Thou way, it makes space for creativity and compassion and life becomes a co-creation, an art form, giving our days and the people we encounter a richness that is the opposite of boredom and seeing people as objects for our or the system’s use/desire (I-It).

I-Thou, creativity and compassion also give us a healthy flexibility and adaptability to how we relate to the world around us. After facilitating a seminar on Living and Leading from an I-Thou Place, I remember visiting with a minister. He began to talk about a conflict he was having with a leader in the congregation where he served. He was not the kind of person from whom I was expecting to hear such reflective thinking. We talked about the situation for a little while, and the last thing he said was, “I’m just trying now not to have bad thoughts about this person. I am trying not to make this person an It. I am trying to figure out the loving, responsible thing to be and do.” What a creative and compassionate response to an everyday situation. This minister was living in the space about which Frankl speaks, “the space between stimulus and response. “ In this sacred space lies our potential for soulful engagement, growth, responsibility, freedom and from this moist, fertile soil blooms the I-Thou encounter between and among us.

In the previous illustration, many of us (at least my tendency) would be to go over and over the argument in our minds, finding ways to justify our point of view and tear apart the argument and behavior of the other. We would be making them an object or a person of less worth. Maybe we’d apologize or make up eventually, but there would be a bruise, and it would take awhile for the blood beneath the skin to fade away. But here was an ordinary minister who’d come up with an extraordinary response to his domestic, upset situation.

Being alive in human form is a constant opportunity and invitation to be in an I-Thou way of the heart, acting and being compassionate and creative. Every day, every minute, we’re presented with situations good and bad, easy and difficult, mundane and exceptional. In those situations, we have a choice of how we will be toward another.

Another of my favorite writers, Thomas Merton, used the phrase, “the perfection of freedom.” I think what this means is that, even given the limitations we are born into, we always have perfect freedom in terms of how we respond to people and situations. We are growing in love. We can break our old, negative patterns. We can build on our positive ones. We can learn new ways to be toward and do in old things. “A human being is a deciding being,” according to Victor Frankl. We can use our time creatively and compassionately that can lead to our reaching a new level of I-Thou awareness in service of God and our fellow human being. Jesus challenges us to love others as ourselves and according to the golden rule, to treat them and ourselves accordingly. But first, we have to value and love ourselves.

It is not fair to expect the I-Thou of ourselves in every encounter. Even Buber thought an unblemished I-Thou approach was too much to ask. According to Buber, a place exists for I-It, but not as a chronic way of being and doing. He comments, “. . .without It a human being cannot live. But whoever lives only with that is not human.” It’s probably not possible, realistic or desirable to be absolutely compassionate and marvelously creative and blindly I-Thou in every situation. We are all still growing in grace towards ourselves and one another; this is not a excuse, but a paradox and reality. In the words of the poet T.S. Eliot, “For us, there is only the trying./The rest is not our business.”

I-Thou awareness, creativity and compassion embody ministry excellence as well as the art of being a fully alive human being. And all are a choice. As the poet Mary Oliver muses:

Truly, we live in a mystery too marvelous
to be understood. . .
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they know the answers.
Let me (us) keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads. 

Agree or disagree, we invite you into the conversation! 

Peter Bregman has a helpful blog post on the Harvard Business Review blog. Whether it’s on purpose or by accident, we can all find ourselves guilty of making someone angry. What’s the best way to react when this happens?  How can we repair the relationship?

“It’s stunningly simple, actually. When you’ve done something that upsets someone — no matter who’s right — always start the conversation by acknowledging how your actions impacted the other person. Save the discussion about your intentions for later. Much later. Maybe never. Because, in the end, your intentions don’t matter much.”

Read the entire blog post here

In the Huffington Post, Harvard Divinity School student, Pierre R. Berastain, reflects about the recent Boston tragedies and about the importance of restorative practices and the circle process in healing trauma.

“However, restorative practices also help us deal with trauma, as these practices call us to sit in circle to process and connect with each other through the common thread of our experiences. This is an invitation, then, for principals, managers, and parents to find a talking piece — any object, really — and sit in small circles with their respective communities.”

Read the entire article here

Bishop Hee Soo Jung

Bishop Hee-Soo Jung of the Wisconsin Annual Conference, and Vice President of the JustPeace Board of Directors, has issued a letter urging peace in Korea.

From the United Methodist News Service:

“It is a painful reality that North and South Korea have remained at war for over 60 years,” the Wisconsin Area bishop noted in a letter distributed April 11 by the Council of Bishops. “Hundreds of thousands of families are divided by the demilitarized zone and experience the violation of the basic human right to live in peace as family. Military confrontation stirs up the culture of mistrust and hatred between people.”

Click here to read the entire article on UMC.org.

Click here to read Bishop Hee-Soo Jung’s full letter.

Be sure to visit the New York Times website and look at the photo essay, “Defusing Conflict in Schools” by Jim Wilson.

“Mr. Butler passed a “talking stone” to a student during a circle, indicating that the student had the floor.

The approach taking root in 21 Oakland schools, and in Chicago, Denver and Portland, Ore., tries to nip problems and violence in the bud by forging closer, franker relationships among students, teachers and administrators.

It encourages young people to come up with meaningful reparations for their wrongdoing while challenging them to develop empathy for one another, often through “talking circles” led by facilitators like Mr. Butler.”

Click Here to view the entire photo essay on the New York Times website.

photo by Jim Wilson / New York Times

Title: JustPeace 101 – 2013 Annual Gathering

Location: Nashville, TN

Description: JustPeace 101—October 30^th to November 2^nd, 2013 in Nashville, Tennessee–Announcing the debut of JustPeace’s new and renewed resource and training in conflict transformation– the theory, theology, principles, practices and skill development.  This educational gathering is for anyone (lay or clergy) at any level of training or interest in conflict transformation from those who have no training to those who have been active practitioners for years.  We hope you can join us for this opportunity of learning, exploration and growth.

More information coming soon.  Mark your calendars! 

Start Date: 2013-10-30
End Date: 2013-11-02

Keep me Informed!

We’ll be periodically updating this page with more information as details are finalized.  If you want to make sure you get all the latest information, fill out this form and we will email you the latest news.

Title: Ecumenical Korea Peace Conference
Location: Atlanta, GA
Description:

Bishop Hee Soo Jung

Bishop Hee-Soo Jung, the Vice President of the JustPeace Board of Directors, will be a keynote speaker at the upcoming Ecumenical Korea Peace Conference in Atlanta, Georgia on May 15-17.

The event is being sponsored by key organizations in the Korean faith community: Korean American National Association of the UMC, Committee on the Korean Reunification and Reconciliation, General Board of Global Ministries, UMC, United Methodist Women, Korean Ministry Plan, UMC, National Council of Churches in Korea, National Network of Korean United Methodist women.

Click here to find out more information about this event!

Start Date: 2013-05-15
End Date: 2013-05-17

Keynote speakers will include

• The Most Rev. Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Schori (Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church, USA), 
• Rev. Syngman Rhee (former President, National Council of Churches USA /former Moderator of the General Assembly of the PCUSA), 
• Dr. Christine Ahn (Executive Director, Korea Policy Institute /Senior Research and Policy Analyst, Global Fund for Women), 
• Rev. Dr. Jaejung Lee (Chair Professor at the Sungkonghoe University, Seoul /former Minister of the Ministry of Unification, Republic of Korea), and 
• Bishop Hee-Soo Jung (Resident Bishop, United Methodist Church Wisconsin Area /Chair, 2013 Ecumenical Korea Peace Conference Planning Committee).

Announcement from the Duke Divinity School about their Summer Institute:

Deepen your practical faith.  Expand your Christian network.  Refresh your spirit.

“As a senior leader in a Christian organization that is committed to ethnic reconciliation and justice, I was energized by the biblical teaching and theological reflection, enriched by the diversity of the participants and experienced faculty, and inspired to continue the journey as we celebrated the wonders of reconciliation and lamented the deep places of pain and division in our world. I highly recommend the Summer Institute for leaders who are in search of biblical instruction, relationship-building with experienced practitioners, and personal renewal.” — Paula Fuller, Vice President and Director of Multiethnic Ministries, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship

Rooted in a Christian vision and directed by the Center for Reconciliation, this one-of-a-kind intensive institute nourishes, renews, and deepens the capacities of U.S. and international Christian leaders in the ministry of reconciliation, justice, and peace-building.

The Summer Institute creates a community of worship, learning, friendship, and reflection, drawing on the vibrant spiritual and intellectual resources of Duke Divinity School, including a world-class faculty of theologians and ministry practitioners. Participants will experience in-depth teaching, prayer and worship, shared meals, wrestling with real-world contexts and challenges, and an opportunity to reflect on their vocation and ministry context.

Come expand your theological imagination, grapple together with practical problems, and be equipped to continue a journey of faithfulness within a wider community.

Click here for more information and to register.  There are scholarships available!