My work in mediation often sits across boundaries. Given my fifteen years of work in churches, dioceses, denominational teams, and charities, it is not surprising that I have become a regular mediator in disputes within churches and church systems. This might often be civil mediation, relating to boundaries, property, or access. It can also be workplace mediation due to a professional relationship breakdown, or, at times, a form of community mediation when members of a church community or congregation find themselves in disagreement.
Recently, I undertook a mediation within a church context involving all members of the congregation. This dispute was broadly a 50/50 split within the group. I met both groups separately and gave each side two hours. They used this time to talk among themselves and explain the issues to me. I asked questions for clarification, as I normally would in any mediation. There were clear themes, some obvious misunderstandings, and some differences of opinion that had become more significant because of the wider dispute. We did not finish covering all the issues—this was twenty years’ worth of disagreement—but availability meant that we could only address the key problems.
After a month, both groups met each other in a neutral venue on one of the hottest days of the year. There were forty people in a small church hall who, I knew from experience, had a lot to say. While I have mediated with groups before, it had never been an entire community, nor this many individuals. I think it is fair to say (and I acknowledged this to the participants before we began) that I fell back on my training as a teacher. We used raffle tickets and a stopwatch to ensure that each individual had the opportunity to speak. We were working against the limits of time (making use of up to three hours), the challenging conditions due to the heat, and people’s concentration and patience. The questions I asked were future-focused: “What do we want to achieve?” “How can we get there?” “Which levers can we pull to enable this to happen?”
Despite some initial reluctance, the mediation ultimately resulted in apologies, acknowledgements of misunderstandings, and an agreed way forward.
In truth, I could have spent weeks or months with this community—working with individuals and different pairings to resolve each specific context and problem. In reality, we needed to rebuild trust: that apologies could be made and accepted, that there were shared values and hopes, and that there was positive intent on both sides—and we had to do so within a total of six or seven hours.
Was everything resolved that could have been resolved? No—but is that ever the case? Was there a positive outcome to this mediation? Yes. Did it avoid doing harm and demonstrate the possibility of resolution? Yes, that too occurred. As all mediators will tell you, mediation is not just about what happens in the room with the mediator, but about opening minds to resolution and change as participants move forward.