{"id":2485,"date":"2022-10-12T17:41:42","date_gmt":"2022-10-13T00:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=2485"},"modified":"2022-12-07T17:59:17","modified_gmt":"2022-12-08T01:59:17","slug":"transforming-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=2485","title":{"rendered":"Transforming Conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Transforming Conflict:  The Blessings of Congregational Turmoil<\/em> by Terasa Cooley<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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&#8217;m not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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&#8217;s &#8220;BRAVING&#8221; acronym.  She also shared some ideas from other sources I had not been exposed to before, such as a &#8220;ladder of inference&#8221; and something called &#8220;polarity management&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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, <em>Wholeness after Betrayal<\/em>, which Teresa quotes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;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.&#8221; (p. 76).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Transforming Conflict: The Blessings of Congregational Turmoil by Terasa Cooley I read this book as helpful support for my current&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=2485\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Transforming Conflict<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-diary","category-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2486,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2485\/revisions\/2486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}