The Listening Ear

Other Ministries in Tanzania

Recently I talked about well-drilling project, Safe Water At Tanzania, that is being carried out by the Western Iowa Synod. There are some other ministries that WIS have also begun that are expressions of accompaniment, the desire to walk with our brothers and sisters in Christ in Tanzania.

Those ministries include:

• The Center for Agricultural Development: a newly-emerging center that works directly with the Tanzanian smallholder farmer through hands-on experiential learning to enhance their overall productivity, profitability, and human dignity. This is a major undertaking, with various collaborators, that will greatly affect the 80 percent of Tanzanians who are actively engaged in smallholder agriculture.
• Medical Initiatives: from scholarship support for Jason Mtokoma to become a doctor in the diocese, to the provision of microscopes for area clinics and dispensaries, to the supply of industrial laundry equipment for Ilembula Lutheran Hospital, much is being accomplished in enhanced and adequate health care in the Southern Diocese.
• Girls Lutheran Secondary Education: providing educational opportunities for young women who often do not have access to educational opportunities, yet are the proven strong sharers and distributors of such education, resulting in economic development of their families and communities.

I am glad to be part of a church that supports such ministries and I am looking forward to taking members of St. Paul Lutheran to visit those ministries as well as our companion congregation, Kidugala Lutheran Church. It will be exciting to see the things that God is accomplishing.

Safe Water At Tanzania

We recently received a newsletter from Ron and Phyllis Sterler (pictured below), updating us on the Well Drilling Project that is sponsored by the Western Iowa Synod. During the last year, the SWAT (Safe Water At Tanzania) team was able to purchased a new well-drilling rig and a truck to pull it. These are being shipped to Tanzania to replace equipment that was both inadequate for the task and is pretty much worn out. 

With this new equipment, the goal will be to drill 2 wells a month. Since each well costs $3000, as much as $72,000.00 will be needed in the next year to reach this goal. Many Tanzanians currently don’t have access to a clean water supply, resulting is much disease and death. 

Giving them a source of safe and dependable water makes a great difference in the lives of ordinary Tanzanians. For more information, the entire newsletter will be available in the Tower Talk. You can also find out more in the Companion Synod section of the Western Iowa Synod website.

 

New Well Drilling Rig

Creative Conflict 7

I’ve been thinking more about the question that was asked of me the other day: “I’m wondering how you open up a conflict in a relationship and make it an opportunity for resolutions when communication has shut down.” This is particularly a challenge in family relationships, friendships and working relationships where we want to do what we can to have the best relationship possible.

One thing that may make a difference is to act in a way that the other person doesn’t expect. It has to be a positive action, of course. It will change the dynamics of the relationship, although we don’t have control over how those changes will develop.

For instance, when someone has cut us off, they are expecting us to avoid them as well. Maybe we can look for a way to reach out to them to avoid the cutoff.

I remember a time many years ago when I was visiting my aunt Florence. I was in the process of interviewing members of my family to learn more about my family history. After I finished talking with Florence, I called my uncle Merle who lived in the same community.

When Merle answered the phone, I told him that I wanted to interview him about our family history. Merle respond that he wasn’t about to talk to me because what had happened years ago wasn’t any of my business. Then he hung up on me.

His reaction was a total surprise to me. My aunt Florence said, “Merle can be touchy like that. I think you should go over to his house anyway. Just tell him that you didn’t mean to upset him. You don’t really have anything to lose.”

Up to that point, my response would have been to leave Merle alone completely. Of course that would have made the situation even worse. So I took Florence’s advice, got in my car, drove over to Merle’s house.

As soon as he came to the door, I told him, “Merle, if you don’t want to be interviewed that’s OK. But I just couldn’t leave things the way they were.” That’s all it took to make him soften a bit. He invited me in and we talked a bit. The cutoff that had started never materialized.

I learned something from my aunt Florence that day. She was right to send me to Merle’s house to see if the cutoff could be avoided. When I showed up at Merle’s door it was something he didn’t expect. He could see that I wanted to try to salvage our relationship.

There’s no guarantee that acting in an unexpected manner will revive a relationship that’s been damaged, but it might give it another chance. When we make this attempt, its important not to assign blame for the cutoff. We just acknowledge what has happened and express our desire to restore the relationship. If we have reason to apologize we should do so. If we don’t feel that we’ve done anything wrong, we can just say, “I’m sorry about what has happened between us.”

My aunt Florence taught me a lesson in maturity. It is something that I’ve remember and have had a chance to up into practice more than once over the years. Sometimes it works quite well. And even if it doesn’t, I know that I have done what I could to restore the relationship.

Creative Conflict-5

For this final post on creative conflict I want to return to what James says in his letter. He mentions two related principles for Christians to use as they deal with conflicts in the community of faith.

The first is to humble ourselves before God, to submit ourselves to God’s will. When we find ourselves in conflict, focusing on the discernment of God’s will takes us beyond personal preference. We seek the common good, what’s best for the community.

This emphasis on discovering God’s will helps us manage our anxiety. It reminds us to trust in God, not in ourselves. We believe that God is going to lead us and we act on that belief.

That means that we trust God to give us what we need. James says, “You do not have because you do not ask.” (4:2) When we don’t rely on God to give us what we need to do God’s will, it is no wonder we feel anxious. Then we have only ourselves to depend on and we should be anxious. Trust in God is the way to overcome our anxieties.

Another basis for the approach James recommends is to “Love our neighbor as ourselves.” James gives us a picture of what this looks like. He says, “ the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.” (3:17)

We need to be able to look beyond our own desire to seek the common good—the good of the neighbor, the community of faith. One of the ways that love for neighbor will manifest itself is that we will put the best construction on all that our neighbor says and does.

When we humble ourselves to seek God’s will and we focus on the needs of the neighbor,hhhh those attitudes and practices will help us deal with the conflicts that inevitably arise in all our relationships.

Creative Conflict-6

I received an email in response to my posts on creative conflict. Here’s the question, disguised a bit to keep the questioner anonymous and my response.

think you ask a good question. I know it is painful to deal with the kind of cutoff that you describe, especially when it involves a family relationship.

The Question: “I’m wondering how you open up a conflict in a relationship and make it an opportunity for resolutions when communication has shut down.”

My Response: I think it is important that we do what we can to keep the possibility of communication open from our side of the relationship. For instance, I know of one family member who always sent a Christmas card to another family member, even though he never got a reply and once got the card back unopened.

The truth is that we have no control over another person's behavior. We can't prevent them from cutting themselves off from us. It is tempting to ignore them as well, but I think the healthier, more mature response is to continue to indicate that our door is open to communication and relationship. Sometimes people surprise us by walking through that door even when we don't expect it.

I think it is good to ask ourselves whether there is anything in the other person that we also find in ourselves. We might learn something about ourselves by that question. Once we've considered that, we may simply have to adjust our expectations, realizing that as sad as it is for us, we may not be able to have the kind of relationship that we'd like to have with another person.

I hope this helps, even though it doesn't give you the 'magic' solution.

Creative Conflict—4

When we are able to look at conflict and disagreement as a creative opportunity and a chance for personal learning, we begin to see conflict differently. Here are some of the changes that occur:

• Conflict is no longer personal. Its about what’s right, not who is right.
• The mission of the organization (church) becomes the most important thing
• We work hard to protect the team and the church
• We understand and acknowledge our emotions
• The situation is reframed into a more useful construct
• We are thoughtful
• We are reflective
• We listen to understand what the underlying issues may be
• We do not see negative intentions in other persons

These attitudes and behaviors enable us to employ conflict to reach a creative and useful end. We learn more about ourselves and we discover solutions to our common problems that are more effective.

Creative Conflict-3

We have acknowledged that conflict is escapable. Differences in background, life experience, perceptions result in different opinions on almost any subject.

It is true that conflict can be very painful and can produce negative consequences. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The problem isn’t conflict itself. The problem lies in how people relate to one another in conflict.

Conflict has some very important functions. When different points of view are expressed, we often discover information that wouldn’t be available to us if we didn’t express those differing views. Healthy conflict can clear the air. And it can lead to a more creative and more effective solution to whatever problems we face as individuals and as groups.

Another benefit of conflict is that we learn something about ourselves. We need to consider resistance as our ally. When we meet resistance its is tempting to ignore it and push ourselves into denial. Or we can wage war on resistance, trying to force things through.

But a third approach is often more productive: we can stop and reflect on why what we are doing isn’t working and then change our approach.

One of the things that we often don’t realize is that when we react strongly and negatively to characteristics in other persons, it is usually an indication that we are reacting to something in ourselves. Somehow this other person reminds us of our own shadow side. Our strong reaction indicates that this is a trait that we deny in ourselves. It makes us anxious to confront this part of ourselves so we focus on the behavior of someone else.

Conflict, then, becomes an opportunity to learn something important about ourselves. Often this is painful learning; yet it can also lead to healing. It can lead to growth and greater maturity for us.

When we begin to understand ourselves at a deeper level, we develop an increased ability to understand and to empathize with others. We learn to be more compassionate about ourselves and that leads to greater compassion for others. This is an important way that conflict can be a creative force for us and for others as well.

Creative Conflict-2

There’s no doubt that conflict and disagreement can lead to some very negative consequences. It’s my contention that those negative results are not inevitable, but they certainly are a possibility whether conflict happens in our marriages, our families, our friendships, our community or our church.

What can happen in conflict is that we focus more on feelings and personal issues. We become discouraged and depressed when we are faced with conflict. When we fail to recognize the part we play in problem and so we start to think of ourselves a victims.

Often blame enters the picture. If we blame others, we don’t look inside ourselves to see how we can change. Or we blame ourselves, loading ourselves with guilt and recrimination, feeling powerless to change. Either way, changes we need to make don’t take place.

Here’s a list of things that happen when our anxiety over conflict leads to into unproductive responses:

• We view conflict as personal
• We think that its all about me
• Emotions rule our behavior without being acknowledged
• We believe that we need to protect ourselves because we feel weak and vulnerable
• We deny our emotions, projecting them on others
• The situation escalates
• We disengage, avoiding people and situations
• We are easily annoyed
• We are resentful
• We procrastinate
• We resort to personal attacks on others
• We use alcohol as medication

James writes, “where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind (3:16). Conflict can easily become destructive. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In my next post, I want to talk about the benefits of conflict and disagreement and to follow that up with some ways that we can seek to make conflict truly creative.

Creative Conflict

I recently finished a series of sermons based on the book of James. One of the issues that James examines has to do with conflict and disagreement in the Christian community. Since one of the sermons I preached in my series on James had to do with how Christians can deal with conflict, I have decided to write a series of posts on that topic.

I think the first thing to recognize is that disagreement and conflict are a normal part of human relationships. We can expect to experience conflict in our marriages and our families, in our community and even in the church.

Conflict is inevitable because we are human beings. Humans are sinners. We are imperfect so there are times when our sinful nature keeps us from seeing the truth. It happens to us all. We need to realize this and to hold our convictions lightly. There’s always the chance we may be wrong and not know it. Or maybe we do know it, but our selfish nature causes us to persist in following the wrong path.

Nevertheless, there more than self-centeredness that leads to conflict. Often conflict results from human limitations. It may be the case that none of us can see the whole picture by ourselves. We may need to hear the views that differ from our own because those views may contain information we need in order to make good decisions and to discover the best solutions to the problem that face us.

Once we recognize that conflict and disagreements are bound to occur, it won’t take us by surprise when it happens. I think that conflict can lead to a crisis that can actually produce positive results.

I have read more than once that the Chinese character for crisis is a combination of two other characters—the characters for danger and opportunity. I don’t read or write Chinese so I have to take the word of others that this is true. Nevertheless, I have come to realize that conflict is both dangerous and an opportunity for us. It can be dangerous if we allow conflict to harm relationships and divide the Christian community. That is not what God wants for us.

On the other hand, conflict offers us an opportunity to grow in our faith and to come up with better solutions to the challenges that we face. In my next post on conflict, I’ll look at the negative impact that conflict can have on us as individuals and as a faith community. Following that I want to explore the ways that conflict and disagreement can be put to positive use.

Other Issues At The Meeting

At least two other issues surfaced at the semiannual meeting that are important to note. Questions were raised about the congregation’s baptismal policy. The purpose of the policy has been to encourage parents to follow through on the promises they make at baptism so that when children are baptized, they are raised in the Christian faith. The intent has never been to deny baptism to anyone. The policy was crafted out of concern for children and their families.
Unfortunately the purpose has been misunderstood and the policy hasn’t always achieved its goal. As was reported at the semiannual meeting the policy is already currently under review and the council hopes be able to adopt a policy that is more effective in expressing concern for children and their parents and is more easily understood.
Another question was raised regarding the best way to strengthen our ministry to children and their families. Although the solution suggested may not be the best way to strengthen that ministry, asking the question assumes that this is a good goal for our congregation to pursue. I think that is absolutely right.
We have strong ministries in our preschool, our confirmation ministry and among high school youth. In each case, these ministries are strong because we have invested resources, include significant church staff time, in them.
I think that our ministry to grade school-aged children would profit from a similar investment. It is the reason that members of the congregation have suggested that we need a part-time staff position responsible for children’s ministry. It is also the reason the church council is investigating this possibility.