What Is JUSTPEACE?
by Tom Porter
JUSTPEACE Center for Mediation and Conflict Transformation is in its second year of work in The United Methodist Church. Based in Evanston, Illinois, the center is governed by its own board of directors, with Bishop Susan Hassinger as president, Tom Porter as executive director, and Mark Mancao as director of the Evanston office (see article by Mary Logan).
Our mission is to prepare and help United Methodists engage conflict constructively in ways that strive for justice, reconciliation, resource preservation, and restoration of community in the church and world. More specifically, we are committed to working and learning with the church and others to:
Congregations in the midst of change know conflict and the toll it takes on individuals and on the resources of the community. Recent studies show that twenty-six percent of churches are highly conflicted and that one out of every fifty churches is sued each year. We all bear the scars and pain of destructive conflict. We all know its cost to financial and human resources. The staff and board of JUSTPEACE are interested in opportunities to help and to learn from congregations in conflict, and to promote healing in the church.
- Change attitudes toward conflict, seeing conflicts as opportunities for growth, learning, and even God's revelation.
- Choose processes that are constructive and genuinely engage us, such as dialogue, mediation, peacemaking and healing circles, appreciative inquiry, and communal discernment.
- Develop skills and spiritual practices, such as listening for understanding, speaking the truth in love, using the imagination, and being forgiving.
- Practice a ministry of reconciliation.
JUSTPEACE helps people and institutions in conflict through interventions, referrals, coaching, and training. We have a dream that churches can become reconciliation centers for their communities, and we are working with other church agencies to make this dream a reality.
The United Methodist Church is gifted with conflict transformers. JUSTPEACE hosts an annual "Gathering," an opportunity for conflict transformers to meet, learn from one another, and support one another. The first Gathering in March 2001 brought 130 United Methodists and other conflict transformers together at Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
The next Gathering will be March 18-20, 2002. Details are available at http://www.justpeaceumc.org. For help with a conflict or to join our network, call 847-425-6526 or e-mail justpeace@justpeaceumc.org. People on the JUSTPEACE mailing list receive the newsletter Pathways to JUSTPEACE and announcements of training opportunities and other events relevant to conflict transformation work in the church.
Thomas W. Porter, executive director of JUSTPEACE, is an attorney, a professional mediator, and former chancellor of the New England Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church.