Conflict in personal, familial, congregational, and communal life are continuing problems and possibilities in Christian ministry. This course offers an experiential, clinical, theological, and pastoral approach to the management, resolution, transformation, and utilization of conflict in both personal and pastoral perspectives. As an interdisciplinary approach it will draw on communication theory, therapeutic process, conflict studies, and mediation skills. The capacity to go beyond survival of conflict to both transform it and utilize it in creative growth is essential in ministry as a pastoral counselor, caregiver, mediator, educator, or administrator. An integration of lecture, dialogue, experiential exercise, sociodrama, small groups, simulations, and class discussion of cases, theory, and theology will allow opportunity for personal as well as professional growth experiences to be processed and integrated into pastoral identity.
Class meets once each week for three and a half hours.
Conflict Mediation Across Cultures . Helping People to Forgive . Fisher, Roger and William Ury. Getting Together . Houghton Mifflin, 1988.