Peacemaking Practices

Kay >> Hi. I’m Kay Daigle of Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries. Welcome to the third in a series of our videos on conflict with Dr. Sue Edwards from Dallas Seminary. You can read her bio online.

We began by discussing Be Prepared for Conflict. And in our last video, we talked about just the Tendencies of Women—not for all women, but many women tend to deal with conflict in a certain way.

And in this video, we’re going to talk about Peacemaking Practices for Sisters. And I’m excited about really getting into how to take care of conflict.

I’d also like to let you know that we did a series with Oletha Barnett that really gave the foundational principles that Sue’s going to kind of take some of those apart in a practical way for us no—to how to make peace and what the Bible says about conflict.

And so that really is important for you to have those principles you may need to go back. That would be the third video in that series called Fight Right with Oletha Barnett, which you can find on our website. And also on our Vimeo page.

So, Sue, as you think about this, what are the peacemaking practices for sisters?

Sue >> Well, of course, as Oletha said, Matthew 18:15-17 gives us some really three different steps and that helps us know that we want to master that. Although it’s easy to make things formulaic when you’re in real situations. It’s not quite that easy. But still the principles in these steps that Jesus taught us are wonderful.

Kay >> Well, let me ask you, before you even get into those, how do you decide that you need to go to one of those practices? How do you know when you have to sort of attack the problem rather than let it settle?

Sue >> Well, I know when there’s a possible relational disconnect. That to me, relationships are so important for the unity of the body—that we women work together, that we love each other, we support each other. So if there is a possibility, if I see that woman at the grocery store and I go the other aisle or I’m still having imaginary conversations with her three or four days later, then I know that this needs to be dealt with. Or if I even get a sense that she’s hurt or she’s avoiding me.

And what we want to do is come together, but in a sense of a learning conversation. In other words, I want to sit down with you because you are important to me. I love you as a sister in Christ, and I don’t want anything to interfere with our relationship.

And so if there’s anything that might, so there’s ways to do it that are not so scary. So, a lot of times we hate this. We think it’s going to get mean and confrontational. It doesn’t have to. And if that person is a healthy person, then you come at it with that kind of tone of voice and hard attitude because you think there’s some issue, whether they did it, whether you did it, whatever.

I would go and try to work that through. And if they’re healthy, then you work that out and nobody else knows and on you go. And that’s the way Jesus planned it.

Now there’s where, though, you find out the emotional health of someone because if they are not healthy, then you’re going to find them gossiping afterwards. You’re going to find their responses are kind of off, are very defensive.

You might apologize. They won’t. You’ll seek the kinds of things that show you, okay, I’ve got a person here who is not healthy, and emotional health is so important. In fact, I would say that the most important thing that we can do to be peacemakers is to work on our own emotional health. Because if you attack me on something and I am able to know that that is not true, or it might be a little true, but I’m in process and I can work on that without feeling so threatened in the core of my being. Then we can work on this.

If I am so threatened in the core of my being that my identity is based on whether or not you like me, I’m setting myself up for all kinds of poor responses. So our own emotional health.

And then I think it’s important to know how to identify women that are likely to be unhealthy and there are a number of characteristics.

A woman who is adversarial. And I’ve known a few women like this, they just kind of like to be in a back and forth. They do it in their family.

I was in a church. I went in this woman’s home and they interacted like that and they kind of liked it. And I thought, this is really weird, and I need to be careful. And sure enough, there were problems down the road. Women— who I call them unbalanced women, women who see everything through their own lens.

And we see this—let’s say a woman is gifted and she’s a Christian and but she’s not a healthy Christian yet. And let’s say her heart is for the downtrodden. And she does a homeless ministry, and that’s fabulous. But because if I’m leading and all of my resources don’t go into ministry for the homeless, she thinks I’m a bad leader because she can’t see beyond her narrow perspective. And so she will come and actually attack me because I want ministries in evangelism. I want to train women up in God’s word. I want good Bible.

See what I’m saying? There’s this unbalance. And if that’s the case, there often are serious problems. She’s not healthy.

Very intense, ultra-intense women. Now, there can be ultra-intense women that are fabulous, but it’s always a red flag. At the seminary one of our past professors used to say to the men, “Be careful of the man who meets you at the train. The person who first comes to you.”

And I experienced this at the church where we were where that big conflict was. I had this woman come to me when I first got there. Oh, my goodness. She sat down. She said, “We have been praying for you. This is what we need. And I just want you to know that I am there for you.

“I will do anything in the ministry you want me to do. You need to call me at 4 a.m. in the morning. I will be on your doorstep,” and she got out her checkbook and she wrote a great big fat check just to our ministry.

Now, I’m naive. I’m dumb at this point. And I think, oh, my goodness, I need her. I need a whole team of women like that. And I put her in a very influential place, and I was really sorry several years later, because as intense as they are for you, they will be that intense against you if they don’t agree with you.

Kay >> And are they partially that intense for you because they want to have that influence and if they don’t…

Sue >> Yes. And if they’re unhealthy and they don’t know it. So I think a lot of these women are blind. I really don’t think they know it.

And then the other is this super spiritual woman and I have had that. The woman who everything is “God told me.” And I mean, you just get this language and you’re thinking and it’s really a way not to be accountable to anybody because, my goodness, if God told you, then who am I to say different?

We must let’s do it your way.

Kay >> Well, and that’s the way she feels. That’s the problem. God told me so. You’re wrong.

Sue >> Yes. And you have to do it. It’s a way to manipulate. It’s a way not to have to work on a team. When I left the church where I was before I came on faculty at DTS, and I announced to all the women that I would be leaving and there was a woman there who had these tendencies, and I knew it, and she’d been caught gossiping and we’d had all kind of problems with her.

Well she made an appointment with me, and she came into my office and she said, “God told me that I’m supposed to take your position when you leave.”

Kay >> How convenient. How convenient that God told you this.

Sue >> And so, you know, you’re always so taken aback. And I think I said something like, well, why do you want to do this ministry? She said, “Oh, I don’t want to. I don’t want to. God wants me to”. Well, you know, these are the kinds of things that and she would have been the last person that the staff would have hired.

But you get these tendencies. And as a leader, you just have to be aware. They’re red flags. They don’t mean that you blackball somebody, but you don’t put them in positions of real influence until you know that they are emotionally healthy, spiritually healthy. And there are lots of ways—I have a whole chapter on this topic of what do we do? How do we interact, our body language, our voice, there’s so many ways that we want to learn to interact with people in general so that we’re ready when this kind of conflict comes along.

Kay >> Well talk about your book just in a few minutes here at the end. So that they know if you need more help the book is a great resource.

Sue >> The book is a wonderful resource, not because we wrote it or we get much for it, but just because it’s a number of experiences and then principles, and it’s dealing with women. There are some great books on conflict out there, but most of them are dealing with men, or they’re more general. This one, and it was so funny when we were writing it, we thought, “Oh my goodness, we’re going to have to go all over.”

And we wanted a lot of personal examples and we changed up all the names and everything. But when you’re writing something, people ask you what are you writing on? And we tell them and they go, “Oh, my goodness, do I have a story for you!” We don’t have to go anywhere, right in our own circle, but we never talk about these things.

Kay >> Yeah.

Sue >> So, yes, the book has all the women that tend toward these things, how to identify women, how to deal with unhealthy people.

And there in the Book of Proverbs, we have the scoffer, the simpleton, the fool. They are all different and we have to learn to love them. But there’s a tough love, and we deal with them differently in conflict.

I have a whole chapter for men on how to help women and one of them is—don’t do that 15-minute meeting, that kind of thing to help them know how to deal with conflict as well.

And I think, and I end the book with—and this is I think a good thing for me to say here—is that I never thought that I could have gone through that year if you’d asked me at the beginning could I have weathered that. I don’t think I probably would have said I don’t think so. But I learned so much going through that year, and it prepared me. It strengthened me.

And I didn’t do everything perfectly, but I learned and I saw how God comes alongside when you go to him and you say, ”Help me do this well and help us have peace at the end that honors you, keeps the unity of the body, doesn’t allow the name of Christ to be defamed.” God really does—he empowers you; he strengthens you.

And I’ve used it, like I said, and to write the book, in my classes, I’m actually quite grateful and I’m much stronger as a result of something that certainly the enemy wanted to use to destroy me basically. And it could have happened. There were times I thought I don’t think I’ll ever be able to minister again.

Kay >> Right.

Sue >> But God had different plans, and I’m so grateful.

Kay >> I am, too. I’m grateful for how you have used that for ministering to others.

So you can look on our website, we have one document just resources for leaders that has a section on conflict with all the books that both Oletha and Sue have recommended. And Sue’s book is on there as well.

And we also have a document that is just specifically for conflict. You should be able to link to it below the videos where they are posted on our website at BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org. Look under Resources, look under Leadership, and I believe you’ll be able to find all of these things to help you as well.

So thank you so much.