Transforming Conflict: The Blessings of Congregational Turmoil by Terasa Cooley

I read this book as helpful support for my current work as an interim minister in a congregation that has experienced conflict lately. Rev. Cooley is a colleague of mine doing interim ministry at the Neighborhood Church in Pasadena. She is a specialist in interim ministry. I’m not.

I found the book to be a helpful summary of several concepts and methods that I have learned elsewhere: systems theory, adaptive leadership, Brene Brown’s “BRAVING” acronym. She also shared some ideas from other sources I had not been exposed to before, such as a “ladder of inference” and something called “polarity management” developed by Barry Johnson, where a honest consideration of the positives and negatives of one side of an either/or situation can then lead to a balanced view of the counter-positives and negatives of the other side, complexifying a situation and leading to more creative solutions, or at least a less fraught situation.

I had lunch with Teresa shortly before I read her book. At lunch we were talking about ministerial misconduct and she offered a succinct definition of misconduct which I found very helpful, that misconduct occurs when a person uses the power of their position to serve their own needs rather than the needs of the organization they serve. It turns out that definition comes from Robin Hammeal-Urban in her book, Wholeness after Betrayal, which Teresa quotes:

“At its core, congregational misconduct is a betrayal of trust by a leader who puts his or her needs before those of the people to whom he or she ministers. In essence, the leader abuses the power bestowed by virtue of holding a position of leadership in a church. The opportunity to commit congregational misconduct arises from this trust. The trusted leader an be an ordained or a lay minister.” (p. 76).