When I was growing up, I remember some of my greatest fears involved conflict.

Conflict between loved ones, conflict between members of larger communities, conflict at a more regional, national, or global level, or as was mostly the case—conflict in my own life, big or small. When I was young there were global conflicts such as the Cold War, the Falklands War, the war in Iraq, the Rwanda Genocide, as well as ongoing resistance in the Middle East. In Canada there was the Meech Lake Accord, the Oka Crisis, and a riot after many Stanley Cup wins (or losses!).

There was often conflict in my home growing up. Certainly not broken, but we were like most families with two parents raising four children close in age (my siblings and I can spin some pretty impressive stories of our childhood and the things we did to each other that we couldn’t imagine our kids ever doing 😊). I even remember conflict in our church when we were calling a new pastor. My parents were vehemently against a decision the church was going to make and this tension made its way into our home quite regularly.

Fight Or Flight?

Conflict is inevitable. I hear this a lot. Especially these days.

Human psychology teaches us that there are two basic instincts that people default to when confronted with conflict. We call this the “fight or flight syndrome.” Most of us can identify ourselves as more likely to choose one or the other. I certainly know my chosen posture…and I’m not proud of it.

Recently, our Leadership Team gathered together at a conference to learn about navigating conflict led by The Colossian Forum. The Colossian Forum specializes in supporting organizations as they deal with conflict. It was excellent for us as a leadership team to learn from them; they helped us with many wonderful tools.

Our Guiding Star

The Colossian Forum spends a great deal of their time centering their work on bringing people towards what they called “their North Star.” And they used Mark 12:30-31: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then love your neighbour as yourself.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of our theme for the school year: Love God, Love Others. It’s been our North Star all year long. I could go a step further and say that this is where our mission statement is derived from:  engaging minds, nurturing hearts, shaping God’s world or MIND HEART SOUL! What’s interesting is that layering this “North Star” onto conflict seems to be difficult because so many of us have chosen “fight or flight.”

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

A New Way of Being

In Ephesians, Paul helps define what unity ought to look like. In chapter 4 (after three chapters of Paul gushing about how amazing God is because he sent his Son to die for us) Paul writes, “I urge you to live a life worthy of the unity that you have received in Christ. Be completely humble, gentle, and patient, bearing with one another in love.”

We are already unified through Christ. Unity is not agreeing about everything, but we’ve already attained unity because we agree that Christ is our risen Saviour! As for the rest of our lives (and especially in conflict) we should be humble, gentle, patient, and forbearing. Paul wrote these words especially for those who are in conflict.

We wouldn’t need to be patient if things were going our way. We wouldn’t need humility if not for a situation that doesn’t call for it. We wouldn’t need to be forbearing if there wasn’t a cross to bear.

I don’t think it’s any secret as to why we chose this theme for this year…our North Star. We had a hunch that conflict was going to be on the move in our community 😊. We knew that dealing with conflict is hard and that most of us choose “fight or flight.” We felt we needed a theme verse to remind ourselves of who we really are: our North Star.

It appears our hunches were correct—we do find ourselves amidst conflict at many levels.

My new go-to passage regarding conflict now resides from Ephesians as Paul provides a way of being while we navigate conflict. Our Leadership Team certainly came away from this conference with a renewed spirit of moving to a posture of humility, gentleness, patience, and forbearance when it comes to conflict because our North Star says to “love God, love others.”

Mind Heart Soul.