2 Corinthians 5:18 (GW) “(God) has restored our relationship with him through Christ, and has given us this ministry of restoring relationships.”

Relationships are always worth restoring. As leaders we are called to restore relationships for the glory of Christ. Because the Christian life is all about learning how to love, God wants us to value relationships and make every effort to maintain them instead of discarding them whenever there is a hurt or a conflict. God has given us the ministry of restoring relationships. That’s why a significant amount of the New Testament is devoted to teaching us how to get along with one another.

Paul taught the New Testament church that our ability to get along with others is a mark of spiritual maturity. Since God wants His family to be known for our love for each other, broken fellowship is a disgraceful testimony to unbelievers. Never has there been a day like today for the church and its leaders to be united like never before for the Kingdom of God. John 13:35 (KJV) “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

Matthew 5:9 Jesus doesn’t say, “blessed are the peace lovers” because everyone loves peace. He didn’t say, “blessed are the peaceable” because some people are too clueless to be disturbed by anything. Jesus said, “blessed are those who work for peace, who actively seek to resolve conflict.” Peacemakers are rare because peacemaking is hard work.

It is not AVOIDING the problem. Running from a problem, pretending it doesn’t exist or being afraid to talk about it is cowardice. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, was never afraid of conflict — sometimes He even provoked conflict to introduce truth.

It is not APPEASING the problem. Always giving in, acting like a doormat and allowing others to run over you is not what Jesus meant. He refused to back down on many issues, and stood His ground in the face of opposition. As leaders, this is where we have to know our vertical relationship is strong because the crowd will always rise up against the one who stands for truth.

I am learning as a leader it is our job to sympathize with their feelings. We have heard it before, but we have to learn to use our ears more than our mouth. Begin with sympathy, not solutions. Focus on their feelings, not the facts. Listen while they unload without being defensive. You can understand even when you don’t agree. Wisdom comes from hearing the perspective of others, even when we do not agree with them.

Disagreement is not the same thing as disunity. You can disagree with someone and still be unified together. The world is looking for a place of unity in spite of our disagreements.

We would rather defend our part but we must learn to confess our part of the conflict rather than defending our part. Admitting our mistakes will always help us see things more clearly. We all have blind spots, and if we’re not careful, how we handle a conflict creates a bigger hurt than the original problem. We all have hurt someone by what we said and we never knew that his or her feelings were hurt.

It is our human nature to stand and fight when we are backed into a corner. Learning how to attack the problem and not the person is one of the greatest lessons any person can learn. You cannot fix the problem if you’re consumed with fixing the blame. You must choose between the two. In resolving conflict, HOW you say it is as important as WHAT you say. If you say it offensively, it will be received defensively. You are never persuasive when you’re abrasive.

Albert H. Mehrabian experimented in the late 60s and early 70s and came up with this calculation in terms of how important the nonverbal movements, signals and gestures are when it comes to the overall effectiveness of our communication in relaying our message to others. Words account for only 7%, one of voice accounts for 38%, body language accounts for 55%. How we say it is just as important or more important than what we are saying.

To come to a point of healing, it takes both sides to cooperate as much as possible to find a resolution — but I can only control what I do, not what they do. Peace always has a price tag — sometimes it costs us our pride, and almost always it costs us our self-centeredness. “Romans 12:18 (TEV) Do everything possible on your part to live in peace with everybody.”

Emphasize reconciliation, not resolution. It is unrealistic to expect everyone to agree about everything. We can reestablish a relationship even when we can’t resolve our differences. We can disagree without being disagreeable. Resolution focuses on the problem, while reconciliation focuses on the relationship. When we focus on reconciliation, the problem loses significance and often becomes irrelevant. This doesn’t mean that you give up on finding a solution; it just means that you do it in a spirit of harmony.

There are so many broken people in our world today the church has to be in a place we can heal relationships. The church is the place people run to in need of safety and protection in their life. There is a call on the body of Christ to be a place broken relationships come to heal and find strength.

Tony Bohrer is the pastor at Lighthouse of Craig.