In more than 20 years of participating in interfaith dialogue, guest lecturer Dr. Mohammad Shomali has travelled widely. He is the director of international affairs at Jami’at al-Zahra, a Shi’a Islam seminary for women, as well as director of the International Institute for Islamic Studies (IIIS). He resides in Qom, Iran.

“I feel at home in many places in the world,” Shomali said, “but ��ݮ���� is one of those places where I really feel at home.”

Peace and peacebuilding, along with interfaith dialogue, is one of the core Quranic principles, Shomali says. This was one reason why nine female seminarians from Jami’at al-Zahra studied at SPI this summer, escorted by Shomali and his wife, Mahnaz Heidarpour, who also teaches at the seminary. In prior years, SPI has hosted a total of 10 students from Iran, but never a group of this size all at once.

Interactions with SPI students from around the world provide a practical complement to required seminary coursework in comparative peace studies, Shomali said. “Theoretical knowledge can come through books, but when the students eat and talk together and go to churches, this is different. They learn about the way people think, live, behave, and plan. This is very valuable.”

The Iranian women praised the interactive style of teaching at SPI, where lengthy lectures are rare and role-playing is common.

“We do lots of exercises, many projects, in this class,” said Sabereh Ahmadi Movaghar, referring to “Leadership for Healthy Organizations” taught as a seven-day intensive by David Brubaker, PhD, and Roxann “Roxy” Allen Kioko ’04, MA ’07. She also took “Faith-based Peacebuilding,” taught by Roy Hange, a Mennonite scholar and pastor.

Movaghar’s home institution, Jamiat al-Zahra, is the world’s largest Islamic seminary for women, with 5,000 Iranian students, 1,000 international students and 10,000 enrolled in distance learning. The nine students at SPI are all linked to the postgraduate section of the seminary’s international department.

“These women are excellent, diligent students,” said J. Daryl Byler, executive director of EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. “They are devoutly religious as well as delightful – with great personalities, warm laughs, and deep insights. The friendships being built are priceless.”

Shomali told an EMU reporter that he hoped for better relations between the people of Iran and people of the United States and noted��similarities between Quranic and Christian teachings about the importance of peace. “God says about the Quran in the Quran itself that God guides with the Quran those who seek His pleasure to the ways of peace (5:15).” There are “lots of things we can learn from each other,” he added. Iranians are rational people and “when you are rational, you tend to dialogue with people of other faiths and other cultures.”

Shomali welcomed more exchanges of Americans and Iranians from a variety of fields, including artists and professionals.��He said that to reduce mutual misperceptions and encourage peace,��“Nothing can replace face-to-face encounters. Our first Imam, Imam Ali, is quoted as saying: ‘People become hostile towards what they don’t know.’”
— Lauren Jefferson and Bonnie Price Lofton

• Zehr is “distinguished professor” of restorative justice, a pioneer in international restorative justice field; author, co-author or editor of about 22 books pertaining to restorative justice
• Zehr’s bestselling Little Book of Restorative Justice (over 110,000 sold) was cited as a reference in Handbook on Restorative Justice Programmes, published in 2006 by UN Office on Drugs and Crime following UN conferences in 2000, 2002 and 2005.
• Former CJP director Vernon Jantzi served on Working Party of Restorative Justice, a major resource at UN Congresses on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in 2000 and 2005. WPRJ drafted basic principles on restorative justice adopted by UN Economic and Social Council.
• ��Jantzi, professor emeritus of sociology, now works for Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR).

Carl Stauffer, PhD��

• ��Assistant professor of justice studies and co-director of EMU’s Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice
• As regional peace adviser in Southern Africa for Mennonite Central Committee, 2000-09, Stauffer was associated with peace accords, community-police forums, truth and reconciliation initiatives, and local community development structures, often interacting with UN agencies involved with post-conflict stability.
• The UN Secretary General’s 2004 Report on The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-conflict Societies defines transitional justice as “the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempts to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses, in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation.”
• ��Stauffer elaborated on this theme in his “Restorative Interventions for Postwar Nations,” a chapter published in Restorative Justice Today – Practical Applications (Sage Publications, 2012).

Barry Hart, PhD��

• ��Professor of trauma, identity and conflict studies, former CJP academic dean
• Has conducted workshops on psychosocial trauma recovery and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Burundi and among Rwandan refugees in Tanzania.
• Lived and worked for years in Balkans, launching trauma and conflict transformation programs for schools, communities, religious leaders.
• Collaborated with UNICEF personnel in Liberia to create the Kukatonen (We Are One) Peace Theatre, along with a manual of the same title, centered on these themes: understanding conflict, active listening, conflict resolution, reconciliation and trauma healing.
• Developed a training manual Za Damire I Nemire (For Peace and Not for Peace: Opening the Door to Nonviolence) for UNICEF while in Croatia.
• Collaborated with UN humanitarian and relief agencies when working in Liberia, Tanzania and the Balkans.

��Lisa Schirch, PhD��

• Research professor
• Director of human security at the Alliance for Peacebuilding
• Senior advisor to “People Building Peace” conference held at UN headquarters in 2005, encompassing about 1,000 civil society peacebuilding delegates from 119 countries.
• Evaluator for the UN Peacebuilding Support Office to advise on grantmaking to support women in peacebuilding in 2011.
• Facilitated UNDP meeting in Fiji between military, government and civil society groups.
• Consultant to UNDP in 2012 to develop strategy for UNDP to fit into new UN Peacebuilding Architecture
• “The UN is central to the success of peacebuilding in many countries. UNDP has an opportunity to provide the link between short-term humanitarian response in the midst of a crisis and longer term support for building the foundations of peace. UNDP is also one of the few institutions that is positioned to bring together civil society, governments, international NGOs and donors to work together to support strategic peacebuilding.”

��Ron Kraybill, PhD��

• ��Founding faculty member of CJP (’76 graduate of sister college, Goshen), current Senior Advisor on Peacebuilding and Development United Nations, assigned by UNDP to Philippines, previously assigned to Lesotho
• ��Supports peace process in Mindanao.
• Worked behind scenes, 2009-13, to nurture peaceful elections in Lesotho.
• Supported process led by Lesotho heads of churches, working with gridlocked parliament to negotiate electoral agreement among political parties to pursue free and fair elections.
• Effort yielded Lesotho’s first free, fair and peaceful election since independence in 1966.
• Facilitated visit to Lesotho of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who oversaw signing of political pledge that committed parties to respect laws and accept outcome of election.
• “Mediation, facilitation and process design lie at the heart of almost all that I do; I strengthen human capacities to respond constructively to conflict.”

David Brubaker, MBA, PhD��

• ��Associate professor of organizational studies, co-author of The Little Book of Healthy Organizations.��
• Hired by UNICEF-Mozambique for peace education and conflict resolution trainings immediately after peace accord signed in 1992.
• On joint project of Mennonite Central Committee and World Council of Churches, interacted with UNHCR staff at Benako refugee camp in Tanzania in 1994.
• ��Applauds UN for work on human development, women’s rights, indigenous rights, and awareness of environmental perils. But adds: “The UN’s basic structure hasn’t changed since it was founded 68 years ago. Healthy organizations need to undergo a structural review process every three to five years to ensure that their structure is still meeting their mission and objectives.”
• “My main issue is with the UN Security Council, where the veto power of the five permanent members often blocks meaningful international action, as seen in the cases of Israel and Syria.”

Catherine Barnes, PhD��

• Associate professor of strategic peacebuilding and public policy
• Has been engaged with UN since the early 1990s, when helped conduct trainings in conflict analysis and resolution for diplomats and staff.
• Regularly involved in policy dialogue in the UN on peace processes, especially how to increase public participation for inclusive and comprehensive settlements and effective use of sanctions, incentives and conditionality.
• Served as advisor during 2002-05 to Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict and participated in UN discussions on roles of civil society in preventing armed conflict and building peace.
• ��Helped design and facilitate 2005 conference on this theme at UN headquarters in NYC, which involved about 1,000 people from civil society, governments and IGOs from around the world, including CJP alumni, faculty, staff, and partners.

Paulette Moore, MA ’09��

• Associate professor of the practice of media arts and peacebuilding
• As MA student, did practicum with Community Development Gender Equality and Children, an agency within UNHCR. There created a blog – itbeginswithme.wordpress.com – launched on International Women’s Day in March 2009.
• Next, as UNHCR consultant, worked on films in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, along with a blog, in collaboration with a young woman filmmaker in that camp named Kate Ofwano, who is now in film school in Geneva.
• Moore recalls leaving career in corporate media to become more invested in community. “I didn’t want to keep being the kind of person who would helicopter in somewhere, do something, and helicopter back out,” as she thought UN personnel often did.
• ��Experience at UNHCR made her aware of a third way: “To partner with people who I really, really trust. Big organizations and community-based work aren’t necessarily exclusive.”

Amy Knorr, MA ’ 09��

• ��CJP practice coordinator
• Worked and lived in Haiti for 7.5 years total
• Worked with UNDP “disarmament, demobilization and reintegration”program 2006-07, on team to reintegrate gang members into society, often using stipends, vocational training, and cash to start small businesses.
• Didn’t work – community members were fearful; program heightened conflict rather than transformed it – i.e., it was not “conflict sensitive.”
• UN workers were required to wear bullet-proof vests and helmets, circulating with armed escorts when in dangerous urban areas. “This sent an uncomfortable message – were the UN workers’ lives more important than the Haitians’?’’
• With the UNDP at that time, “relationship-building and trust weren’t really there. There were civil society groups in existence in the communities where this project was working. But the UNDP didn’t work directly with these groups. They created new ones that conformed to the vision they’d dreamed up for the project – without the input of local groups that knew what things were really like.”
• The UNDP had $14 million to spend in this Haitian case: “The UN has a huge potential to reach many stakeholders, but attention must be given to conflict analysis.”

Ali Gohar, MA ’02

• Founding director Just Peace Initiatives (JPI) in Pakistan
• Was commissioner, 1987-2001, on UNHCR-funded project for 258 Afghan refugee camps, concentrating on community development, peacebuilding, drug use and HIV/AIDS, the plight of street children.
• Has partnered with UNDP, UNICEF, UNHCR and UNFPA to address humanitarian situations – when much of Pakistan was affected by devastating flooding; when 50 primary schools in Bajur Tribal Agency needed clean water and sanitation facilities; when four areas were assisted in restoring their livelihoods, building community-based infrastructure, and improving their governance.
• With UNICEF funding, JPI now working on two unprecedented projects on social cohesion and resilience in three areas – SWAT, DIR, and Bajur.
• With UNFPA funding, JPI addressing gender-based violence cases through alternative dispute resolution in camps housing large numbers of host-community and internally displaced peoples.

Manas Ghanem, MA’06��

• ��Project Development Officer, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), now based in London, England
• Native of Syria employed by UNHCR, 2006-11, delivering direct support to refugees and displaced peoples due to violent conflict in such countries as Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen.
• “My work now [beginning in 2012] is more of coordination of private sector fundraising in support of various operations around the world, because most of the operations are underfunded, and refugees and displaced are in dire need of every support, even if little.”
• “UNHCR is present in every conflict area to help, with dedicated and passionate staff.”
• “The agency does not have a political mandate to influence political peacemaking. But I see it as one of the most effective peacemakers on the ground, with its efforts to reduce the suffering and to call the international community to show compassion and participate in sharing the burden of helping.”
• “Often when I am in the middle of something problematic, I find myself recalling CJP classes or a discussion with a CJP professor regarding organizations, theory, human rights, practices in conflict transformation, mediation and restorative justice.”
• “Most importantly, I remember STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) – I try to always find ways to take care of myself and to recall that self-care is important, if I am to help others.”

Amy Rebecca Marsico, MA ’09

• Manager of NYC-based stage productions; conflict and peacebuilding consultant
• Presented arts-based approaches to peacebuilding to UN Interagency Framework Team for Preventive Action
• Did practicum for her MA at UNHCR in the Community Development, Gender Equality and Children section.
• Promoted AGDM (age, gender and diversity mainstreaming), whereby refugee women, men, boys and girls contribute to the design and implementation of programs, identify own protection risks, and participate in finding sustainable solutions.
• Helped develop the Heightened Risk Identification Tool, a field tool used to identify refugees at risk.
• “To be part of work that was engaging in long-term change processes – seeing refugees as active partners instead of passively waiting for a handout – was incredibly meaningful.”

Sarah Crawford-Browne of South Africa was one of these people. She took Strategies in Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) Level I in August 2005, followed by STAR Level II in April 2006.

In a first-person piece posted on the CJP website September 7, 2012, she tells part of her story:

One day, I witnessed a double murder/assassination whilst looking out my living room window. I had just spent five years working with trauma in Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uganda and Sudan. Now I was head of service at a trauma center in Cape Town.

The center runs a 24-hour response service to crises in the city, so when I saw the murders, I grabbed my neon-colored response jacket and my response backpack and went down to help. I was involved the full night. Due to the demands of my resource-challenged center, I went right on to work the next day without sleeping.

This incident proved to be the tipping point for Crawford-Browne. She had worked at the Cape Town trauma center for ten months, and she continued working there for another eight months in an effort to fulfill the center’s contractual obligations.��But she began to exhibit classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

I woke up at about 1 a.m. completely confused. My mind swirled in a series of primitive emotions. Nothing was making much sense. The emotions were not linked to language and I could not access words. Eventually at about 5 a.m., I thought, “I am going mad.” And that thought somehow linked me to the psycho-education pamphlets that I’ve given out so frequently which list common experiences of people who have witnessed violence.��One of them is feeling like you’re going mad. I then realized that I was traumatized.

Drawing on her training as a trauma expert and clinical social worker, Crawford-Browne knew she needed to ease the “hyper-arousal” that is typical of PTSD by unwinding regularly and removing herself from situations that set her off.

Unwinding required that I ground myself, consciously getting back in contact with my center, getting back into my body. What specifically helped me to do this was listening deeply to music, meditation, knitting, journaling – activities where I could be engaged whilst unwinding the layers of caught-up energy. Being in spaces where I could be alone and have quiet, not noise, helped, too. Sometimes it meant creating a small ritual to divert energy that was distressing. It took about eight months until the PTSD abated.

As active practitioners��in the fields of peace and justice, most of the faculty and staff of CJP have themselves faced the challenges of “burnout.” After the arrival of Ron Kraybill as a faculty member in 1995, the curriculum of CJP expanded to include recognizing the signs of burnout and addressing it, as well as improving day-to-day interactions. In Kraybill’s words:

It took 15 years of full-time work with peace initiatives before it dawned on me that it is not lack of skill or money that most severely limits the organizations I know best. Rather it is the struggle of staff in those organizations to get along with each other and with other organizations around them, compounded by fatigue and burnout of individuals in them.

Kraybill developed a course called “Disciplines for Transforming the Peacebuilder” and drafted a book titled Self-Care for Caregivers. Restorative techniques taught by Kraybill, embraced and enlarged upon by other faculty members since the 1990s, include an afternoon nap, regular exercise, yoga, meditation with breath work, having mentors or counselors, adequate sleep, involvement in a faith community, relaxing activities such as dancing, playing music and doing art, keeping a journal, and reserving time for quality relationships with family members and friends.

In 2004, CJP brought David Brubaker aboard as the faculty member focused on teaching ways to build “healthy” organizations, where leaders and team members have the self-awareness and skills necessary to address inevitable conflicts in a positive manner.

In the 2013 Summer Peacebuilding Institute, out of 20 courses offered, four pertained to understanding psychosocial trauma and nurturing resilience for sustained peacebuilding. Toward the end of one of these seven-day courses, Al Fuertes told his students: “We cannot give what we don’t have. Who heals the healers?”

Projecting to the future, CJP calls in its current five-year strategic plan for continued emphasis on “personal, relational, and spiritual well-being.”

Barry Hart, PhD, professor of trauma, identity and conflict studies, pointed to recent neuroscience suggesting that humans have an innate desire to bond and empathize with one another. Framed in different terms, pervasive physical and structural violence is at odds with our own biology, and therefore��will someday, somehow, come to an end. “You feel that in your bones,” says Hart. “That gives you not only hope, but strength and patience to go forward.”

Though often used interchangeably, hope and optimism represent different concepts, says David Brubaker, PhD, associate professor of organizational studies. Optimism, or lack thereof, is short-term, pragmatic and based on specific facts. Hope, though, looks above and beyond specific facts; it is rooted in an idea often referenced by Martin Luther King, Jr. – that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

The distinction is an important one for peacebuilders working in challenging environments that don’t justify an expectation that things are soon to get better.

“Optimism is often not warranted in our work with intractable conflict, but hope is something that has to be sustained,” Brubaker says.

At the same time, it is important to acknowledge the reality of despair and disillusionment that often accompanies peacebuilding work.

“We do the field of peacebuilding a disservice if we only cast our work within a utopian future vision,” says Carl Stauffer, PhD, assistant professor of development and justice studies.

There are no quick fixes in “deeply complex, nuanced and layered” conflicts like those faced by alumni in the Middle East, he continues, although that should not be mistaken for ineffectiveness. Doctors are still valuable, Stauffer notes, despite the fact they have yet to eliminate disease. While he also finds hope in the idea that seemingly impossible conflicts will be resolved – the end of apartheid in South Africa being one example – he says that peacebuilders should not be afraid to acknowledge and discuss “discouragement or despondency among practitioners in a tough place like the Middle East.”

Better networking among CJP and its alumni working in challenging environments was identified both by alumni interviewed for Peacebuilder and CJP faculty as one way to address the discouragement they sometimes face. In its new strategic plan completed in the spring of 2012, CJP sets forth developing new programs to strengthen alumni networking for this very reason.

To Jayne Docherty, PhD, professor of leadership and public policy, the shifting dynamics of conflict in the Middle East and the combination of hope and despair these elicit from alumni, also present CJP with an opportunity to evaluate its own role in peacebuilding.

“When the world changes around them, peacebuilders need to hold hope, practice humility and revise their practices,” she says. “What are we at CJP and in the U.S. peace community doing differently in response to the new realities in the Middle East? Have we examined our premises and our assumptions? Or, are we still promoting old practices [like] dialogue or taking the side of the oppressed? What can we learn from our graduates?” — AKJ

I’ve consulted with over 100 organizations in the last 25 years, but in the last five years I’ve noted a distinct trend. Organizational leaders used to contact me with a vague request for mediation or consulting services because “we have a conflict and we need help to resolve it.” In recent years, however, leaders have been much more likely to specifically request strategic planning or structure review processes—and often both together. I’ve experienced this shift as an encouraging move towards proactive rather than reactive intervention processes in organizations.

I also attribute this shift to growing awareness among organizational leaders of the importance of aligning structure with strategy. Organizational leaders today are keenly aware of the importance of developing a shared vision and values to enable diverse organizational members to work together for a common purpose. And most leaders also know that the decision-making structures that might have served the organization well for years need to be reviewed and often revised. In the turbulent environment within which all organizations now must operate, more organic and flexible structures are becoming an urgent priority.

But while I am increasingly asked to lead “strategic planning” and “structure review” processes, I have only once been asked to conduct a “culture review” for a client. Strategy is about vision and structure is about authority, so both are critically important. But culture is about meaning, and meaning will trump both vision and authority over time. As Peter Drucker once said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Why don’t organizations typically undertake culture audits? For one thing, it’s very hard to do. Most of culture is at the level of assumptions, beliefs, values and norms—and thus is tacit and invisible or at least informal. We may hesitate to initiate a study of our culture as we honestly don’t know how to do so. But I’ve also come to believe that organizational leaders intuitively know that an organization’s culture is stronger than even its top leaders. When a new leader eager to “make big changes” encounters an entrenched organizational culture the culture almost always wins. This is why many lead pastors, school superintendents, and even U.S. presidents don’t last more than three or four years in their roles. So how do we change an entrenched organizational culture, at least when that culture is preventing the organization from fully achieving its mission and vision?

In our , Ruth Zimmerman and I offer five suggestions for successful cultural change. They are as follows:

1. Learn the culture.
2. Name the strengths and weaknesses of the culture.
3. Build a coalition of organizational members committed to cultural change.
4. Work at cultural change incrementally rather than instantaneously.
5. Become the change you wish to see (especially important for leaders).

An organization’s culture (often comprised of numerous subcultures as well) determines the organization’s behavior more than the organization’s strategy or structure. Yet it is the one element of organizational life that we are least likely to study, name, or work deliberately to change. Let’s celebrate what’s right about our organizational cultures, but let’s not hesitate to also name the weaknesses of our cultures and work cooperatively to change them.

Related posts:

[, PhD, is Associate Professor of Organizational Studies and Practicum Director at ��ݮ����’s . David’s expertise is helping facilitate organizations through healthy review and change processes.]

Following is a collection of audio interviews with CJP-affiliated professors, talking about ��ݮ����’s recent . ��The interviews were conducted, produced, and edited by undergraduate students from a spring 2011 audio production class in EMU’s department. ��Students asked faculty members how attachment theory might inform their teaching and practice of peacebuilding.

I came as an associate with the KonTerra Group. My role included coaching the retreat planning committee prior to the retreat itself and then leading a workshop on teambuilding and an exercise on developing a vision statement during the retreat. At the conclusion, I joined the retreat planning committee and the ASMED management team to “debrief” and identify future possibilities for organizational development and teambuilding.

I felt privileged to get a glimpse into the impressive economic development work being done by ASMED. This is an organization that has grown from two staff people in Kabul in late 2006 to more than 75 staffers in Kabul, Herat, Mazar-i-sharif, Jalalabad and Kandahar. While there have been growing pains, the degree of shared vision among the staff and their apparent organizational effectiveness are remarkable.

ASMED has assisted aspiring exporters of Afghan products to present their goods – carpets, marble, wool and cashmere, dried fruits and nuts, food processing, gemstones, and handicrafts – at trade fairs in such locations as Tajikistan and India. In addition, the Sabawoon Poultry Feed Mill in Jalalabad, started in 2008 with the help of a grant from USAID, is producing quality feed in demand by chicken farmers. Previously such feed had to be imported. The lists the following results for ASMED’s work in the last three years:

• Provided 550 business skills training sessions throughout the country.
• Created about 25,000 full-time equivalent jobs since late 2006.
• Supported 6,370 Afghan businesses and facilitated access to
• Established more than 120 (including 27 women-run) business associations and supported more than 230 associations with grants for equipment, capacity building, and improving member services.
• Provided 137 small grants totaling $3.45 million for market development, value chain improvement, and association capacity building.
• Established an internship program benefiting 1,025 university students, a quarter being women. Approximately 75 percent of the graduated interns received full-time employment offers from their host companies.
• Offered 521 professional mentorship opportunities, linking young entrepreneurs with business executives.
• Facilitated the sale of more than $30 million of Afghan small- and medium-enterprise products at national and international trade shows.

To maintain and improve upon this remarkable record, ASMED and USAID recognize that ASMED must transition from leadership by non-Afghan experts to leadership by capable Afghans who have been given the time, training and support to develop into exceptional leaders. Fortunately, I could already see that such Afghan leaders are emerging in the organization – several played leading roles in the retreat.

Clearly, a week-long visit to a deeply complex country like Afghanistan means that any impressions are at best provisional. However, I left Kabul with a deep admiration for the ASMED staff with whom I interacted and a greater sense of hope for the future of Afghanistan. The commitment of Afghan staff to work for a better future for their country, at the risk of serving with a U.S.-linked organization during a time of war, was particularly impressive.

David R. Brubaker, associate professor of organizational studies at , has expertise in supporting healthy organizations, leadership, group conflict and change processes. He has trained or consulted with over 100 non-profit or governmental organizations in the United States, Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe.

Professor has made it his life’s work to understand organizations and to teach them how to negotiate conflict in a healthy way. His 2009 book is based on his doctoral dissertation, for which he analyzed information on 100 Presbyterian and Episcopalian congregations in Arizona. Insights from the book include:

• Congregations that succeed at change develop a culture that tolerates, if not encourages, disagreement. (p. 120)

• Some disagreement, and some conflict, provides energy and generates ideas, but too much becomes destructive. (p. 106)

• Leaders who learn to move towards conflict discover that they have opportunities to resolve issues when those issues are small, rather than attempting to fight fires when they are nearly out of control. (p. 108)

• Anxious systems need non-anxious leaders. (p. 114)

• Like people, congregations will generally only change when the pain of not changing (i.e. threat of extinction through dwindling membership) exceeds the pain and inconvenience of changing. (p. 100)

• Organizations tend not to make major changes unless and until their leaders change. (p. 11)

• Pastors beginning a new position would be well advised to study the congregation and build relationships before initiating major changes. Leaders have to earn the right to make changes. (p. 94)

• Leaders who want to change their societies (or congregations) start by building a diverse group of change agents who must first learn how to cooperate with each other. (p. 126)

• Leaders desiring to avoid destructive conflict will make structural changes slowly and deliberately, and they will introduce cultural changes gently and with substantial communication. (p. 120)

• During any significant change process, things usually get worse before they get better. (p.96)