Awhile ago one of the larger seminaries in the US found itself  being covered by media when an internal dispute between it’s president and board spilled past the campus.

Bible Belt Blogger has been covering the story and I find myself quite interested in a decision. The president took leave, refused a severance package and a few months later took another job elsewhere. The school called in a crisis management team. Crisis management particularly for organizations, requires different skill sets, which is why the work is done with a team.

Dr. Curt Bechler of Venture International has outlined how they are there to help.

First. They listen.
Open listening is a skill, and while some people embroiled in conflict may have those skills, outside help keeps communication clear.

 I and two other Venture team members had the privilege of interacting with over sixty different individuals from the Asbury community. In addition, I met in four different forums with faculty, staff, students, and board members.  The Venture team gathered information and listened to individuals that often had very different perspectives on what had occurred over the past several months.

As they listen they put together  systematic  historical ’how’ of the conflict, and present   it publicly. It gives those in the fray opportunity to frame what has been happening.

A preliminary overview of the critical issues that led up to and contributed to the current difficulties; and, time was spent responding to questions and concerns.

It is clear from my conversations that the board reflects the Asbury community with different members having different perspectives regarding what “truth” is in the midst of this conflict. As I said to the board, the critical issues that led up to this crisis involved: the president, the organization — its history and culture, and the board.

Crisis management teams communicate clearly to the people that are embroiled in the aftermath of conflict. When people are hurting and dug in, it is human nature to want a quick fix. So why reassurance and encouragement is given, options are offered.

To assume there are simple solutions or “one truth” regarding what happened is to engage in the behaviors that will only replicate the problem.

During times of conflict, there is a temptation to want to resolve it with quick fixes. This grows out of a culture where immediate gratification through easy solutions becomes the media message of the day. The difficulty is that these quick solutions often, under the guise of spiritualized language, embed the dysfunction deeper. The problems that have occurred within the Asbury community were not created overnight and they will not be solved overnight.

Crisis management teams give everyone: students, faculty, alumni, support staff, everyone - an opportunity to talk. Some people can’t and won’t be able to. It requires a vulnerability, a setting aside of self, and trust. An opportunity to see light at the individuals ‘bunker door’ and step back out into community is not possible for everyone and that is taken into consideration by any conflict resolution team.

In the coming months, I and a Venture team will be back on campus numerous times.  We will again be meeting with faculty, staff, students, and board members.   For those that did not have an opportunity to meet with us, we will take the time to meet with anyone who would like to talk about these issues. In addition, there will be small group forums to both listen and respond to questions and concerns.

While the team acknowledges everyone is part of Asbury, particular care is placed on management and organization personnel.

With regard to organizational issues of concern, there will be opportunities for stakeholders at all levels to be engaged in a process of identifying critical issues related to roles, boundaries, organizational direction, as well as working to restore health to the community. While this is seldom a fast or easy process, it has the potential to be a tremendous time of growth and change.

As part of the process, the board will also be taking time to review its own patterns of governance, its role as a policy making group, and the identification of appropriate boundaries and behaviors for individual members, sub-committees, and the collective whole.

This caught my attention.
Religious organizations are a peculiar sub-culture, and the very things that may dig people into their trenches and bunker mentality can help give them a hand out. This statement is a skillful blend - an acknowledgement of deeply held beliefs, a plea to rethink about how to exercise them, and use of good psychology. He makes it clear that love and respect require sacrifice.

He quotes from Stephen Carter. You’d think in a educational setting dedicated to teaching a group of people how to help others, this would be something everyone knows and tries to practise. But as in any walk of life, nothing comes quickly or is perfected, and in many interactions we have to practise healthy self-awareness when we interact with others.
“Civility does not focus on if we like the other person or agree with them. It is not about our rights. Civility and respect are about our willingness to act with a higher calling.”

In cases such as these, there will always be points upon which individuals disagree. However, disagreement and conflict are healthy and essential for organizations to change and grow. There are times when individuals must agree to disagree on how they perceive situations; but in doing so, it is important to do so humbly and with the acknowledgement that we may not be right.

I would also encourage individuals to follow a Biblical model for disagreement and conflict. In the midst of conflict situations, we cannot control the other person, but we can model the civility and respect that we desire in others.

Then he gets down to the core of how every individual needs accept responsibility to learn appropriate interaction with others and addresses a simple psychological concept that intentionally or unintentionally causes deep hurts in anyone who has ever been at odds and tries to find their way out - triangulating.

At all levels within the Asbury community, members have a pattern of targeting individuals or groups with disagreement using public forums. Public forums can be necessary to air concerns during times when organizations are not actively seeking to resolve issues; however, this can be dysfunctional when individuals continue to use these forums as a means of gaining personal gratification or attention-getting under the guise of problem-solving or seeking resolution.

As the board and various members of the community seek to work towards resolving these issues of concern, I would encourage individuals to reject the temptation to seek allies in a particular stance or position. 

Bechler made it clear that: “The difficulty is that these quick solutions often, under the guise of spiritualized language, embed the dysfunction deeper.”

Yes!
Man, who doesn’t identify with that statement?
I ran into that this week online.
Nothing gets my dander up faster than spiritualized language used to polorize, demean, exclude, shame, abuse someone (or thier pov) and defend one’s opinion and need to be right at the expense of the ‘other’.
I find that most people who practise this do so very well intentioned, thinking they are protecting the rest of us, giving people a teachable ‘cautionary’ moment, and putting the rest of us into our proper place for our own good.

I commend Ashbury Seminary.
This is an education students will be taking with them the rest of their lives, and their experience in resolution  has the opportunity to be more valuable throughout their lives than any academic degree. Ashbury Seminary is growing and expanding in it’s business interests and it’s campuses. The willingness of management to look outward for needed assistance, toward goals that don’t require litigation and lawyers, may make it a seminary worth watching.