Glen's Church Blog | Mediation Blog Minnesota

Seasons of a Church for Mediation

The best time to mediate in churches is when members are not busy. Don’t try to mediate churches during December unless absolutely essential. If you’re in a farming community, don’t try to mediate in late fall harvest or spring planting time. If you have business people, tax time is not great. Unfortunately, when people are busiest,…

Systems’ Comfort: Resistance to Change

Most people love comfort: food, activities, people. What makes things “comfortable” is how familiar the thing is. The comfort food we all crave is usually foods from our youth; the activities that are comfortable we’ve done a hundred times. the reason I used comfortable in quotes above is because in systems whether family, work or…

Mediation and Transference

When I was a chaplain, there were occasionally times when I would meet a new patient and they would want nothing to do with me. Rarely, there were times when people even called me names or told me to leave using swear words. I soon realized this had little to do with me, as these…

Mediation and Self Involvement

Is it possible to mediate your own disputes, whether church or marriage? Yes, but it tends to be difficult as the role of mediator implies neutrality and it’s hard to be neutral when dealing with your own problems, especially if the other person is driving you crazy. Here are some tips if you want to…

Mourning in Conflict

Mourning in conflict can take on many forms. Most times the mourning can begin only when the relationship is severed or healed. Even if healed, one can mourn the loss of what you had before the change or rift, especially if one party to the conflict has changed dramatically. If the relationship is in bad…

Church Conflict

It is natural in a church conflict to want to has some power to control one’s own destiny. But it may not be in the best interests of the church, especially when its polity defines a clear process for conflict resolution. In Catholic churches, it may be the bishop who has the final say in…

Divorce Mediation Versus Church Mediation

People often ask me how I can stand to do divorce mediation. Actually, I find divorce mediation easier than church mediation. In divorce mediation, the parties tend to focus on two things: money and kids. Both parties have to have money to live on and both usually want what is best for the kids, though…

When Is Conflict Real?

Conflict can occur any time in a church or a family. But often times conflict can be a symptom of some other emotion or issue. We are all familiar with the “kick the dog syndrome.” A man takes out his frustration from work on his pet, or his family. A teen about to graduate lets…

Change of Seasons Influences

People get cranky this time of year. In Minnesota September weather gets frosty at night and it’s also often cloudy and rainy during the day. So it is that when this happens we fight. We fight in our marriages because we’re tired. We fight in our churches because we may want things to stay the…

Troublemakers in the Church

There are always folks in any congregation who are troublemakers. Usually it often wrecks a church, and rarely resthey want things their way and oppose leadership or the pastor. Many of these people are big givers (or thought to be big givers), or in smaller congregations charter members or members of the dominant family (often…