Re-Imagining New Communities was started in Nairobi after the violence that followed Kenya's 2007-8 election. Led by Sahlim Charles, its Faith for Peace programme now works with churches across seven counties, many of them small independent congregations with no wider structure to lean on when disputes arise.
One of those is Pastor Joseph Ndoli's church in Korogocho, an informal settlement in Nairobi that lives with chronic insecurity, where the church faces disputes both inside and around it.. After Faith for Peace training, he told RNC that learning to mediate changed not only how he led his church, but how he served the community around it.
Across Kenya, churches are being asked to do what Pastor Joseph learned to do. In 2023, Kenyan evangelical leaders launched a Code of Conduct asking churches to have a way of resolving disputes. Having a document is one thing, having processes that meet this need is another. Many churches, especially smaller ones, have no one trained to do it, and Sahlim has seen that it's often pastors' spouses who end up doing this work without recognition or training. Re-Imagining New Communities is working to change that, and we've been supporting Sahlim to develop and fund the next stage of this work.
What about your context?
Sahlim's work has made us think closer to home. A process for resolving conflict only helps if people are willing to use it, and that depends on what a church believes conflict is.
Many of us grew up thinking conflict in church means something has gone wrong, that a healthy church is one where nobody disagrees. So we don't talk about it, and call that unity.
In the Unity material we've been writing, the first idea we start with is that conflict is neutral. Look at Cain and Abel. God speaks to Cain before anything violent happens, warning him that sin is crouching at the door. God doesn't tell Cain his anger is wrong. He warns him about what he does next. Conflict is where our relationships get tested, and what we bring into it decides whether it does damage or leads somewhere better. Unity doesn't mean we all agree.
Help us test it
We'd like to try this out with a small group. We're looking for 6 to 8 people to work through the Unity material together over 8-10 fortnightly 90 minute online sessions. It isn't a curriculum, it’s more like a workshop.
Each person brings a conflict from their own church life, one that's in the past and that you can talk about calmly. We will use the concepts in the Unity material as lenses to reflect on these real life situations together session by session. What's shared stays in the group (provided it’s not a safeguarding concern). By the end we’ll all have a clearer idea of what conflict postures, skills, and processes help to transform conflict into something positive.
This is a pilot, and it's unfinished. We want your honest feedback on what helps and what doesn't, so it's better for the churches we’ll be sharing it with later.
If you'd like to be part of this pilot, send an email to John.Hodge@seekpeace.co and we’ll be in touch to see if it’s a good fit.
