How do you handle conflict without fighting back or running away? There is a simple and biblical way to resolve conflict and bring healing and Ken Sande, founder of the ministry called Peacemakers shares how to do it.
September 15, 2008
Peacemaking Made Simple
Welcome to Haven Today. I’m Charles Morris sharing the great story that’s all about Jesus. Life’s storms come and go but life’s true and lasting peace comes only from Jesus. As Texans start a new week they especially need our prayers that they find the peace of Jesus that passes understanding. What Hurricane Ike was is nothing compared to what Jesus is and may he be our all in all even as we start this new week. This is a program called “Peacemaking Made Simple”. Storms may rage outside but there are more storms raging inside, inside our hearts and inside our homes and that’s what we’re going to deal with today and tomorrow as we’re joined by Ken Sande, the head of Peacemakers and the author of a new book called “The Peacemaker: Handling Conflict without Fighting Back or Running Away”. This is the student edition but it’s not just for young adults. It’s for all of us to bring the peace of Jesus into our lives and those around us. Gordon Moat leads us to worship with “Don’t Miss the Glory”.
Song: Don’t Miss the Glory
Performed by: Gordon Moat
This is Haven Today and it’s that time of year when, well, kids are going back to school, young adults are going off to colleges and universities and it’s also a time when there is trouble in the home that maybe has lingered but is back again in full force. We’re going to be talking about peacemaking in families over the next couple of days. Ken Sande, welcome to Haven Today.
KS: Thanks so much, great to be here.
Cm: Tell us a little bit about how you got started. How did you found Peacemakers?
KS: Well, the concept for biblical peacemaking or Christian conciliation actually originated with the Christian Legal Society back in the early 80s. That’s a fellowship of Christian attorneys and we were just realizing that there’s not a very good structure in the modern church to help Christians carry out the mandate of 1 Corinthians 6 that says that if we have conflicts with each other, even legal conflicts, Christians should be turning to the church instead of civil courts. And so the idea came up in the early 80s. I founded the first Christian Conciliation Service in Montana. There were other services established around the country. Eventually our office became the national and eventually the international headquarters for this movement. Initially our focus was on mediating, arbitrating lawsuits between Christians and we handled a whole spectrum: partnership, personal injury, sexual abuse, corporate employment, contract, you name it, Christians can sue about it but what we learned in the early years Charles was that the same principles we used on multimillion dollar lawsuits, even the most horrible kind, those same principles apply very, very effectively in the little things of day to day life, a father having trouble getting along with a 15 year old son, tensions in a marriage, a church that’s got some fractures growing. And so we eventually began shifting a great deal of our focus in education and even though we still have a very active international network of mediators and arbitrators, most of our staff’s time is actually devoted to educating church leaders, families and now also teens on how to train themselves and practice and become proficient in living out peacemaking principles in day to day life.
CM: Now I guess we should just get this out on the table up front because you’ve been mentioning lawsuits and multimillion dollar lawsuits, you are by training, an attorney, aren’t you?
KS: Actually, I’m an attorney, before that I was a medical research and development engineer.
CM: Wow
KS: So I’ve applied these in corporate business settings, I’ve applied them as a lawyer and I’ve applied them in the church and it’s exciting to see how they work across that whole spectrum.
Cm: And you referred a moment ago to the Apostle Paul speaking to the church in Corinth as we have in our New Testament. Are you telling me Christians shouldn’t go to court?
KS: That’s what God’s Word says and you don’t have to do the original languages when you read it. It’s very straight forward it says, if you’ve got a conflict, go to your church instead of a civil judge. The trouble is, many Christians when they read that and they try to do it, they go to their church the pastor says, “Well, we’re not prepared to help you. I’m sorry.” And we’re not taking the time to build the structures and the training and the teams in our churches and so that’s a big emphasis of our ministry, its providing resources and counsel to pastors who want to change the entire culture of their local church so that every person in that church is prepared to be a peacemaker. They also know they can come to their church when they’ve got a conflict that’s beyond their personal strength. They’ve tried to resolve something and it didn’t work out. They can come to their church and right in that congregation find people who can provide conflict coaching or even mediation or even arbitration. Any kind of conflict, no matter what it is, come to the church, that’s where we can get help.
CM: I was preaching in a church just a few weeks ago and just before I preached the Sunday morning sermon someone, a friend of mine, leaned over and whispered and said, “We’ve got these terrible, terrible problems and we have called Peacemakers and they’re coming in and they’re going to help us.” And I know you have helped many, many people and so that’s what we want to do and if somebody is in a church or in a setting where there’s conflict going on right now, as we’re talking go ahead and give your website, how can people get in touch with you Ken?
KS: The best way is through our website Charles. It’s www.peacemaker.net, that’s singular peacemaker.net and you can get quite a bit of information on just how to begin assessing whether it’s appropriate to have a team come in and then if you like what you see you can actually call our office and talk with one of our coaches who will just evaluate the situation. Very often we can just suggest resources, things a church can use without even calling a team in and that’s what happens in most cases, but if there is a need for a team we can do that and in fact I just got a marvelous testimony from a church down in Texas about a team that came in on a church who was on the verge of a split and that church is now growing and thriving and reaching out and they’re excited that they’re actually living out the Gospel and they can give personal testimony the Gospel is not a theory, it is a real power force that reconciled a church that was on the verge of exploding. And now we’re hearing how that is now moving out into the families in that church, affecting marriages, affecting teens in the church, going into the workplace. It’s exciting to see how God can take a messy conflict and turn it upside down and use it as an opportunity to exalt his Son and show the power of the Gospel.
CM: Ken Sande, founder and the head of Peacemaker Ministries on with us here on Haven Today talking about the big picture of what they do. Alright, let’s get down to the nitty gritty now. Ken we live in a time where even Christian homes, where there might even be 2 parents in the home, where there is conflict, just in the nature of teenagers being teenagers or teenagers who are now 25 or 35 years old. There’s conflict going on. And so when I read through your new book last week “The Peacemaker: Student Edition” it struck me that this could really bring peace to homes and in families and I thought, you know this isn’t just something for someone who’s 18 years old or 13 years old to read, this is somebody like me who’s 55 years old who needs to read this book and apply it in my life and with my kids and grand kids. And so, how did you come to write a student edition?
KS: Well, we published the original Peacemaker edition back in 1991 and that was a, it’s basically a practical or systematic theology or a roadmap to all that the scriptures teach about resolving conflict and restoring relationships and that book has gone through 3 revisions. It’s now translated in 13 different languages. It’s being used all around the world. But as we taught it we’ve had many people come and say, “You know this is a great book but can you develop something that’s specifically geared toward teens. It’s in their vocabulary, uses illustrations they relate to.” And so we spent some time, in fact Kevin Johnson, a pastor in Minneapolis did a marvelous job of converting the adult version into a student edition. And I’ve actually had many people tell me that adults who read this edition just find it so clear and simple because of its intended audience.
CM: Well, it speaks to us where we are today, especially in homes today.
KS: It does. And in fact it’s the other end of our teaching spectrum or I guess it fills the gap, we also have a children’s curriculum my wife wrote several years ago called “The Young Peacemaker” and that’s designed for grade school children and so between “The Young Peacemaker” and the “Student Edition” and our adult materials we’ve covered the whole spectrum age wise in terms of people can find a resource relevant to them no matter where they are.
Cm: Well, let’s get down to it here. I can remember times in my own home when my kids were young and then of course, the teenage years came. It could get almost physical at points. It certainly could get verbal and I can think of times when I’ve overheard other families, they didn’t know others could hear them but I happened to be nearby and hearing conflict going on. Let’s talk about how we tackle an issue when we’ve just got no hope. We’re at each other’s throats and we don’t know where to go and nobody’s happy but yet we’re angry and we’re mad and we storm out. What do we do about that?
KS: Well, it’s a very relevant question Charles, especially for teens because the teenage years are a time of tremendous transition, all sorts of changes going on in relationships, how they relate to their parents, peers, boyfriends, girlfriends, the coach, the employer. Teens are right in the middle of, it’s like standing in a crossroads, a busy intersection. So it is very relevant. But the good news is that the same principles that we teach to someone in first grade or to a pastor in the pulpit or to a lawyer in the courtroom, the same basic principles apply. And the way we’ve organized these principles, there’s many ways to do it, just one we found useful, we call it the “4 G’s”. We use a lot of alliteration in our training so people can remember these things. And these are the 4 things I would use whether it’s a church split or a multimillion dollar lawsuit or with my 14 year old or my 17 year old, so they’re relevant to teens in our family right now. Those 4 principles are: We are called to Glorify God. That’s 1 Corinthians 10:31. When we’re involved in a conflict our temptation is to focus on our own agenda, what we want, to vindicate ourselves, to get our way, we’re very much into glorifying ourselves, focusing on ourselves and so the first step in effective peacemaking, shift the focus from my agenda and my desires and wishes to God and say, “God I am here as your servant. You’re involved in this thing, this conflict didn’t take you by surprise. And I know you are giving me an opportunity right now to reflect your glory, your goodness, mercy, compassion, kindness, wisdom, humility. I can be like a mirror. You shine off me into the lives of other people and they see Christ in me.” And so to glorify God, when we make that our first agenda it radically changes everything else we do because we’ve got a different agenda.
CM: And I might mention here even though this is just your first “G” out of 4 “G”’s you’ve developed, this is kind of backwards from how we always want to do it. Usually it’s let’s take care of ourselves and then serve God but you’re approaching it biblically aren’t you?
KS: Absolutely, and well the thing is, this is how God tells it. In passage after passage in scripture that deal with conflict resolution you’ll see the first step is get your focus back up on God. A good example is Philippians 4:2-9, a passage where there’s some people in conflict and the first thing Paul says, “OK, you’ve got a conflict, what’s step number one?” He says, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I’ll say it again…” He says it twice because he knows it is not our nature there.
CM: double emphasis there.
KS: That’s right.
CM: Well, OK alright, so we should glorify God and then you say this yourself, we have an opportunity to see healing by glorifying God.
KS: Absolutely, in fact let me give you a great example of that. The first place I taught our materials before anything was in a book form was 26 years ago in a high school youth group in my church. And they were my guinea pigs. There was a young man named Jay and he just took this stuff to heart. He had a passion for sharing Christ. He was in a public high school and he came to me one day and he said, “You know those things you’re teaching us in youth group has gotten me in trouble.” And I said, “What’s going on?”
Cm: wow
KS: He said, “Well, you shared that thing about how to confess our wrongs more effectively. My dad and I got in a conflict. I remembered that, I did it and it was just so cool instead of us getting into a big fight my dad was real kind to me and for the first time he said he was wrong too and we just had this great conversation. So I told a friend about it at school the next day and he said, ‘Well, how? What did you do? What was the confession?’ I shared with him the steps andhe did it with a coach on the football team he had a conflict with. It worked well. Well, he told everybody about it, pretty soon kids are grabbing me in the hall between classes and I’ve been late to class so many times because I’m doing peacemaking the principal called me down to the office.” At this point, you know he still looked sort of grim. I thought, Oh dear, he’s in some kind of trouble. Well then he got this smile on his face and he reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper and it was the principal’s personal note stationery and it said, “If Jay is late to class because he is doing peacemaking it’s an excused tardy.”
Cm: Wow
KS: so here’s a Christian kid, 16 years old in a public high school applying the promises and the principles from God’s Word. Word gets around among his peers that he knows how to deal with conflict and Jay uses that as a platform both to minister to their immediate need, their conflict with their girlfriend or whatever it is but then through that to share Christ with them. That glorifies God.
CM: It certainly does. So, that’s “G1”, Glorify God. Go ahead. Keep us going here.
KS: The next one is really the hardest one and this is Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 7, “Get the log out of your own eye.”
CM: I’m not so sure I’m wanting to hear you talk to me about that Ken but OK, you’re right.
KS: Jesus says before you try to get the spec out of someone else’s eye get the log out of your own eye and this, again Charles, is against our nature. I can see other people’s thoughts with microscopic clarity
CM: Yes
KS: But my own is like looking at binoculars backwards, they seem so far away and so vague and Jesus knows that. And this is really the exciting point in most mediations when I’m working with parties when one person starts to respond to the working of the Holy Spirit, when one person remembers what Christ has done to him and to realize he doesn’t have to cover up his sins or put on a charade. He’s been forgiven in Christ already. He’s forgiven for his sins. He can be transparent about them and confess them. When one person starts to say, “You know, here’s what I did to contribute to this conflict,” and the vast majority of those cases the other person’s response is not to rub their nose in it, which is what we fear will happen, but instead to say, “Well, now hold on a minute, it wasn’t all your fault. Here’s some things I did.” And I’ve actually seen two parties who have been suing each other for years in a mediation and one of them starts to get the log out of his own eye and someone says, “Well, you know it’s sort of my fault too,” and they start a whole new argument, “Well, it’s mostly my fault,” “No, it’s mostly my fault.” And the attorneys are sitting there with these puzzled look on their faces like,
CM: They can’t believe it.
KS: “What’s going on?” It’ the power of Jesus Christ to turn us upside down and do things his way and the world takes notice and again, that glorifies God.
CM: Yes, it certainly does. So we need to get the log out of our own eye. Thank you for reminding all of us of that. That’s “G2”.
KS: Now let me just add quickly, on our website people can find, or in our Student Edition book, a little list of ways to get the log out of our own eye, to make a thorough confession. We call it the “7 A’s of Confession”, 7 specific things that you can add if you want a really effective, powerful confession, if you really made your dad mad last night about something and you really need to be reconciled, use those 7 A’s, make a good confession, sincere from the heart, cover all the issues of your heart, your behavior, how you want to change, how you’re going to heal any damage you’ve done and it’s so amazing when people make a thorough, heartfelt, sincere confession how it will trigger forgiveness and reconciliation.
CM: Wow, alright. “G2” Get the log out of your eye. What’s “G3”?
KS: G3 is to Gently restore. This is Jesus’ teaching, or rather Paul’s teaching in Galatians 6 where he says, “Brothers, if someone among you is caught in a sin, those of you who are spiritual should gently restore them.” So here’s an idea that after you confess, take responsibility, if the other person doesn’t respond or doesn’t see clearly what they have done, how do you bring correction to them in a loving and winsome way? Not to embarrass them or back them into a corner, not pounding them into submission but actually doing it in a way that when you’re done they would actually say, “Thank you. You’ve really helped me to see something in myself I was blind to and I can see where I need to grow and change.” Now here again this is very relevant to teens because teens are often bumping up against each other, offending each other, you know gossip, bragging, boasting, all the little irritating things they can do be affecting their relationships and if you’ve got a buddy who’s doing that and doesn’t realize he’s turning everybody off and losing friends, if you go to him in a loving, gentle, thoughtful way and help him to see that and he has the humility to receive that, you know the end result he says, “Man you are really a friend to come and talk to me about that.”
Cm: Wow and then the final one, “G4”
KS: The final one is “Go and be reconciled,” Matthew5:23 and 24. Jesus says if we’re going to worship God and on the way we remember there’s someone who’s got something against us he says, “Stop. Don’t go worship God. You really can’t worship God acceptably if you know that there’s an un-reconciled relationship out there that you have not made every reasonable effort to reconcile. And so he says, “Leave your gift in front of the offer. Go and be reconciled to your brother.” And so there’s 2 components here Charles, one is how do we negotiate on the substantive issues. There’s almost always in most conflicts a substantive issue, for example a girl is concerned about what she can wear to school, a boy wants to be able to stay out later at night or wants to have the keys to the car. There’s all sorts of substantive issues that teens deal with and that requires negotiation. We have what we call the “Pause Principle” which we lay out in this Student Edition very clearly. How do teens negotiate in a respectful way with their parents but the other element is how can we actually then be reconciled and have true forgiveness when that relationship is restored? And on that level we practice what we call the “4 Promises of Forgiveness” that mirror the promises we have with God through Christ and how can we forgive one another and actually imitate the forgiveness we have in Christ?
CM: And I’m going to be so bold as to recommend to every parent, or even grandparent out there because there are grandparents parenting today, get this book and read it first and then give it to whoever you want to have it. Know what’s in it because what’s in this book is in this book is for you too. Ken, I’d like to ask you to come back on our program tomorrow. Let’s talk about peacemaking and you’re the one to do that.
KS: You bet. Thank you Charles.
CM: Ken Sande here with us on a Haven Today we’re calling “Peacemaking Made Simple”. I want to thank Ken for taking time from his busy schedule to join us and I want you to have a copy of “The Peacemaker”. The brand new student edition is just out “Handling conflict without fighting back or running away”, it’s written by Ken Sande and Kevin Johnson. Sooner or later conflict will come but how you handle it makes all the difference and that’s what we’ve been hearing in the last few minutes. I would like to suggest for peace in your life and peace in your home that you get a copy of this book from us today. We’ll also send a bonus CD of the two days of interviews with Ken Sande with more helpful material that I think can make a big difference in your life and the lives around you. So, give us a call would you, at 1-800-654-2836, that’s not just for a copy of the brand new book “the Peacemaker” but it’s also for the bonus CD with the two interviews with Ken Sande, 1-800-654-2836. We ask for your gift to help this listener supported ministry and we’ll get the book as well as the CD out to you right away. You can also go online to read more about the book if you’d like. Our web address is haventoday.org, that’s h.a.v.e.n, haventoday.org. When you get in touch with us let us know the station you’re listening to as well. And if this is a program that someone you know needs to hear, maybe someone in your church, maybe someone in your family, maybe someone that’s going through a terrible conflict right now, you can easily pass this program on to a friend. When you go to haventoday.org there near our “Listen” button you’ll see an easy way for you to send this program on to a friend or a group of friends that need to hear it.
Well, I’m Charles Morris and thanks for being with me. Would you come back again tomorrow when again we’ll pick up this very important topic again? And we’ll do it in light of the great story that’s all about Jesus and we’ll do it together here on Haven Today.
