Dear Friends and Colleagues:
One of my ministries I have spoken little of is service on the Pacific Northwest District’s Healthy Congregations Team (HCT) for six years. One of the things we do is work with congregations that have become mired in conflict. Yes, it does happen and when it does it can be emotionally devastating to the members and hugely damaging or fatal to the organization. Most UU congregations have developed what are called “Covenants of Right Relations” that spell out norms of acceptable behavior and procedures for resolving issues that arise. Usually, adoption of such covenants are reactive to a conflict experience.
As a member of the HFC I received training in conflict management. For this month’s Bulletin I thought I would go through my notes and extract a list of what I will call “maxims of right relationship.” Each one suggests an attitude or context that might be helpful in framing human conflict within community. I offer them not as essential “truths”, but as invitations to reflection.
- Given UU principles we should be trailblazers in the art of building and sustaining beloved community.
- There is a wondrous and healing quality when I am heard by another person without fear of them trying to fix me.
- Whenever I think it is “all about me”, I’ve lost my way.
- To manage conflict well, you need to give another person the same credit for integrity of purpose as you would claim yourself—It’s a principle, a point of honor.
- We must ask and expect that people will take issues directly to each other and not to third parties (seeking allies), will listen compassionately and deeply, and will do what they can–then let go of the outcome.
- “If we agree in love there is no disagreement that can do us injury, but if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good.” (Josea Ballou)
- UU congregations must deal with a problematic reality: They attract lots of “alligators”—people who can’t stand anybody else having authority.
- 40% of church issues are polarities. That is, they cannot be resolved; there is no “A or B”; it’s “A and B”. Polarities need to be held in creative not destructive tension.
- We have an Anabaptist heritage of shared ministry: “We don’t want to abolish clergy; we want to abolish laity.
- “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” (Rumi).
May all be well,
Rev. Bill