Conflict Workshop in Cincinnati October 30

Deborah and I are leading a one day workshop on "Hope in Conflict" for the Presbytery of Cincinnati, Saturday, October 30, 9-3:30, at Lakeside Presbyterian Church, 2690 Dixie Highway, Lakeside Park, KY 41017 (in northern Kentucky, suburb of Cincinnati).  Church phone 859-341-1963.  Directions to Lakeside are on the Presbytery and Church websites.

Registration:  $10.00 per person /maximum $25 per church. Registration fee includes lunch. Checks payable to Presbytery of Cincinnati

Register through the Presbytery Office:  Speak to Marian at 513-221-4850  OR Register through Lakeside Presbyterian Church:  by e-mail to lakeside@lakesidechurch.org.

e-mail me for more information:  dsawyer@lpts.edu.  See our website at http://www.flourishingchurch.com/

Objectives for the Workshop

1. Establish in the Presbytery an ongoing learning environment about congregational conflict using the book as a learning tool.
2. Encourage a shift in perception that conflict is expected and potentially lifegiving for a congregation.
3. Learn tools of conflict utilization that can be used by any church leader to interpret conflict and learn from it.

Siblings Wrestling Over Homosexuality

Hearing Margaret Farley, the Grawemeyer Prize winner in religion, talk about sexual ethics, prompted me to ask her what she thinks has made homosexuality the key issue in denominational and cultural battles in the last 30 years. "Why this particular issue at this time?"

She gave her usual calm, clear but well qualified and nuanced response about the loosening of sexual norms in the sixties and early seventies, which led to some people being able to recognize and talk about the fact that they love someone of the same gender. That experience and the co-relative experience of those who have family and friends who are gay and learn to love and except them, led to a deep shaking of the foundations of sexual identity. This shaking, because it is so fundamental, has become extremely threatening to some who "pull the shades" on that topic and insist on holding on to and enforcing the old norms and moralities. This identity crisis makes dialogue about the topic very fraught with difficulties.

I appreciate that Farley's notion of identity crisis is much more generous and graceful than my thinking. I think my thoughts are similar, however, in that I recognize that the acceptance of homosexuality challenges traditional standards of male dominance in which the male is active and the female is passive (also part of Farley's analysis), and the assumption that a man engaged in sexual activity with another male makes one of them "passive," and thus threatening to male identity.

This helps fill out my image for what's happening in the mainline denominations, particularly my own PC(USA). It seems to me that one way of understanding the conflict over homosexuality is that we are having an ongoing fight between siblings, well known in family circles, in which the siblings have engaged in the battle for so long that they cannot imagine either stopping the fight or separating. The background for the two positions could be simplistically put that one side is holding on to traditional moralities due to the threat of gender identity crisis, and the other side is pushing for loosening the traditional moralities due to their experience with persons who are gay or lesbian.

The Biblical story of the sibling rivalry between Jacob and Esau is the model. They struggled within the womb (Gen. 25:22), they were born with Jacob refusing to let go of his brother's heel, and they spent their lives in a wrestling match. It is not accidental that Jacob dreamed of wresting the angel on the night before he met his brother again after many years (Gen 32:22ff).

It's not a pleasant image, and I'd be happy to replace it with a more hopeful story (although the last word on the Esau-Jacob match is that they cooperated in burying their father--Gen. 35:29).

Reflections on Mormon Territory

In a week and a half in Utah, including six days in Salt Lake City I could not avoid reflecting on the phenomenon of the Mormons, "The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. Their culture and influence is powerful in that territory. Although I can't find a lot about their current expression to agree with, and think it was a desolate place for them to settle just to get away from critics, I still admire the spirit of Joseph Smith's willingness to critique the Christianity of his time and to take the risk to believe that God could still speak to humanity with some new insights.

The Mormons emerged during the time and spirit of the 19th Century Great Awakenings that also produced the Campbellites, the Shakers, and the Harmonists of New Harmony, Indiana. My wife's family are descendants of another of those spiritual/social experimental groups, the Icarians, who settled in Nauvou, Illinois after the Mormons left.

What hits me now is that old-line protestant groups like my own Presbyterian Church are currently in conflict that may just be a resistance to any new inspiration from God on social and spiritual issues. We are so caught up in that fight that we are missing the opportunity to stretch and grow and be transformed by discernment of God's moving in the world. The United Church of Christ has it right with their motto "God is still speaking."

I'm wishing for more zeal and enthusiasm and risk-taking to move us into new possibilities to become a spiritually awakened and attuned church for the 21st century. If we don't, the zeal and enthusiasm of the Mormons and the evangelicals and the emerging churches will simply move on and leave us in the desert!

Church Conflict

This may fall under what NPR's Car Guys call the "shameless commerce division." As I get ready to head for the PC(USA) summer conference in Salt Lake City, I'm wanting to be sure my new book continues to have a presence on the Internet.

Hope in Conflict: Discovering Wisdom in Congregational Turmoil (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2007, http://www.thepilgrimpress.org/) offers a new approach to church conflict. Instead of a problem to be solved or managed, i urge leaders to look deeper into conflict and see how conflict calls our attention to changes God desires for the church and ways the congregation either resists the changes or is rocked by them. The book is both practically and theologically grounded with plenty of real case studies (fictionalized to protect the identity of the congregations and their leaders) for clarity. In contrast to many current writers and consultants, I have drawn from the structural and strategic family systems theory to focus on structures, stories and symptoms as ways to look beneath the surface for the inner wisdom of the conflict. The leader and the consultant need to find loving, positive and hopeful frames (hypotheses) for the conflict before trying to challenge the accepted realities of the congregation.

This approach works well for judicatories to "train" conflict teams in helping congregations utilize conflict. Contact me if you'd like me to come to your area and work with your team. I would also like to continue to consult with congregations along with judicatory teams to keep proving and improving this approach.

For two opportunities to study with me using my book see the LPTS website, http://www.lpts.edu/ . The first is an online seminar this September with the Wayne E. Oates Institute (http://www.oates.org/), and the other is a seminary class offered this Spring every other weekend, Friday evening and Saturday morning, Feb. 8-April 26: "Church Conflict Utilization." Register through the Registrar's Office at LPTS.