The Church is facing tremendous amounts of conflict, both among Christians and with other groups in our communities. The work of peacebuilding requires recognizing when our community bears responsibility for the very sources of division, inequity, and violence that are at the root of the conflict. Learning to see our role in the problem of conflict opens up the possibility for us to see how we can be part of the solution. Failing to recognize our own complicity makes it difficult for other communities to trust our intentions.

Conflicts typically include both presenting situations and underlying relational patterns and history. Conflict also plays out on various levels: personal, relational, structural, and cultural. Conflict can be constructive, yet we know its potential for destructive violence, whether that violence is direct, structural, or cultural. In order to address conflict as healers, we must learn to engage with such complexity, identifying harms and unmet needs along the way.

Christian theology has often been overly intellectual, oriented toward correct beliefs, and even escapist. Instead, Jesus called his disciples to follow him with real-world practices, skills, and approaches to help them cross ethnic and religious divisions as healers. Christians often experience their theology as an anchor that holds them back from living as peacebuilders, rather than as convictions that motivate love for neighbor and enemy. Participating in God’s peacebuilding mission requires us to reimagine our theology to liberate us and motivate us into peacebuilding.

Even with the best peace-oriented theology and understanding, we require the concrete skills and capacity to listen deeply across divisions, recognize wounds and unmet needs, articulate our own needs, discuss hurts and harms in ways that bring healing, identify common goals, advocate for just policies, and much more.

Conflict not only hurts individuals; it ruptures and divides communities. In the same way, it takes a community to work out how we might work for healing and to make it real.

So much conflict is about some groups holding onto power and privilege, while pushing other groups to the margins. Tackling conflict requires learning how to become better allies to marginalized communities and centering the voices and leadership from people on the margins.

Conflict has deep roots historically, and we must learn to heal pain, trauma, and harms from the past in order to end cycles of violence. We must also resist efforts by some to weaponize past harms and incite divisions and conflict for political gain.

Working to mend relationships individually is important, but an incredible amount of conflict comes from inequality, greed, wrongdoing, and injustice. Peacebuilders must become more effective at mobilizing communities to advocate for structural changes and just policies.

Conflict is not merely a challenge for a few of us; the culture of the church is steeped in unhealthy approaches to interpersonal and social conflict. Whether avoiding conflict and ignoring dissent, or “winning” through exclusion and aggression, our dominant culture and theology lead us to perpetuate harm even when we intend good. Following Jesus as participants in God’s peacebuilding mission requires that we as individuals and faith communities choose to reimagine the culture of our faith communities and to be equipped for the sacred, healing work of peacebuilding

Conflict is a challenge for all of us. Every person experiences conflict and contributes to it. This happens in our families, neighborhoods and is very close to home. We also, often unknowingly, contribute to systems and structures that foster conflict, even if we ourselves are not actively but only passive participants. Every Christian must humbly acknowledge that they are part of the problem, and we are all invited to follow Jesus as part of God’s peacebuilding mission.