![]() ![]() This work, leadership and ministry is about listening to and being present with both the spoken and unspoken, the light and the shadow, the visible and invisible, the conscious influences and unconscious impacts and engaging those respectfully, with honor and dignity, while sometimes having to make courageous, difficult decisions. They are about commitment, patience, integrity and diligence to hold the space, respect the stories, love the people, honor the spirit and timing, listen into the conversation, connect with their humanity and watch for God, whose middle name is Surprise!-this third other who is trying to emerge. They are not about quick fixes or magic wands. Neither conflict transformation, organizational leadership nor ministry in general is about the consultant, facilitator, guardian, leader or minister being the fix-it person or savior. As we listen to the conversations and stories, additional questions that often emerge are: What is the dominant narrative and is it helping or hindering the community and individuals in it? Are their alternative narratives trying to emerge, not being heard or told? Also, we are listening for the components that can help an organization or congregation move through the conversation in a vibrant, discerning, honest, responsible way. We listen into the given system, context and culture for what are some of the variables that are impacting the conversation and making it difficult. Our role is to pay attention with a kind of fierce attentiveness to those conversations and why they are so difficult and what is happening along the way. In other words, we pay attention and walk with and alongside people into and through those conversations they are having within themselves, with God, and with others around them. We enter the organization, community and conversation through the portal of a present unknowing, a different ear, a perceptive eye, an imagination refusing to come too early to a conclusion. At a deeper level, it is about the phenomenology of conversation. Ministry in general and our work in conflict transformation in particular is not as much about conflict, fixing problems or the next program for an organization or congregation. Leadership, conflict transformation and ministry in general are about conversations and relationships. Who are the people, what are the stories they carry that want to be told or need to be told-happy stories, sad stories or glad stories what are the conversations emerging, and how do we help to create the space for those stories to happen? Where is the generative conversation trying to be spoken? Where is the “quickening yeast”? Where are the sunflowers and the hummingbirds? ![]() When congregations or organizations invite us into their world to help them rediscover their way when they have been jarred from their paths while experiencing some loss, grief, hurt, sadness, stuck-ness, conflict or pain, the questions we ask to each are similar. Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into/the conversation. To feel abandoned is to deny/the intimacy of your surroundings. As if life were a progressive and cunning crime/with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions. Your great mistake is to act the drama/ as if you were alone. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. ![]()
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