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Restoring relationships: Inside PeaceWise’s mission to take God-inspired conflict resolution across Australia

People talking

PETA MCCARTNEY reports on the work of Australian organisation, PeaceWise…

Last updated 3.45pm (AEST)
Sydney, Australia

“A complete surprise”. That’s how David Gleeson, then-head of campus at the Maranatha Christian School in the Australian state of Victoria describes his response when data revealed that the school had officially recorded no bullying as part of the State Government’s annual reporting requirements

“It was a surprise, and clearly to the person who delivered the results [and] to all of us,” he told Sight. “[There was] surprise on her face because she clearly had never seen this before.”

That’s just one example of how organisations have adopted a Christian peacemaking program to help tackle conflict. The program is the creation of PeaceWise, a cross-denominational, not-for-profit peacemaking ministry which has a mission to promote peace and reconciliation in relationships through Biblical principles and the power of Christ. Its vision? To “build peacemakers for life”.

People talking

PeaceWise is on a mission to restore relationships through God-inspired peacemaking. PICTURE: Unsplash/Alexis Brown (pictured posed by models)

Gleeson, who started his teaching career in 1987 with a year six class, is now principal of Melton Christian College in Melbourne’s outer western suburbs, where the PeaceWiseKids and PeaceWiseYouth programs are also taught as part of the curriculum.

Melton is a place he describes as a “pretty tough place” whose 860 students come to school with “not a lot of interpersonal skills”.

“In secular mediation practices, they measure success by settlement rates…but from my perception as a Christian, that left a whole dimension completely untouched, which was: the relationship.”

– Bruce Burgess, one of the founders of PeaceWise.

He says teaching PeaceWise is making a difference to students’ lives both now and in terms of taking it into their future.

PeaceWise, launched in 2007 by founder Bruce Burgess and some like-minded Christians, aims to restore broken and conflicted personal relationships by bringing God to the table.

As a lawyer, Burgess was highly aware that in mediation meetings the outcome was typically focused only on achieving a settlement or a deal.

What was missing, he realised, was the ability to restore and heal people’s broken relationships.

“I was working in a large law firm and never thought that [wife] Helen or my long-term futures would be in large law firms, but part of what I did while I was there was a mediation course,” he said.

“It was a fantastic example of how mediation was a better way of dealing with conflict than litigation, which just destroys people in every way. As I was looking at that, I guess my heart went to what happens in the church and amongst Christians when they’re in conflict.”

He said when Christian people fight “just as badly, or worse” [than non- Christians] people would leave the church and/or lose their faith, dishonouring the name of Christ, which “grieved” his heart.

“I thought mediation is a much better way of dealing with conflict than litigation, but at least in the expression of it that I saw (as a lawyer), it was mainly focused on cutting a deal – the goal is to say, ‘we’ve reached agreement’, to say, ‘we’ve settled this’. 

“In secular mediation practices, they measure success by settlement rates…but from my perception as a Christian, that left a whole dimension completely untouched, which was: the relationship.”

Burgess was acutely aware of this gap and the challenges associated with mending broken relationships from a Christian perspective and became further drawn into peacemaking.

“Mediation was good, but there was something big missing.”

Peacewise Bruce Burgess

Bruce Burgess. PICTURE: Supplied.

First came several years of study at Morling College, where he completed, among other studies, a Master of Theology, comparing secular and Christian mediation.

Armed with the theological tools to understand how to heal broken relationships according to Scripture, he also became aware of Peacemaker Ministries, a Biblical peacemaking ministry operating out of the US.

It was at an international peacemaker conference in Minneapolis at the end of 2006 that he felt God telling him that he would be renewed for the work He had in store.

Drawing on the Peacemaker Ministries and Mennonite models, Burgess began laying the framework to building a program for Australian audiences.

In 2007, the fledgling PeaceWise organisation – a group of seven like-minded Christians from across Australia – met on a mango farm in Queensland.



Fourteen years on, PeaceWise has peacemaking programs in more than 50 Christian schools around the nation, as well as in hundreds of organisations and churches.

It has assisted in resolving “conflicts and disputes in workplaces, schools, churches, denominations, businesses, colleges, media organisations, ministries, charities, families and individuals”, according to its website.

One such organisation is international discipleship group, The Navigators, which adopted the program when Grant Dibden, the organisation’s national director and a Reserve Army chaplain was invited to attend a PeaceWise training course.

“I did the first two courses and I thought it was good stuff, and [that] Navigators would benefit,” Dibden said.

“It could help us, but it could help us to help other people. These stories of conflicts, about how to deal with conflict. That was my thinking at the time.”

Since 2015, Dibden has continued to use PeaceWise courses within the organisation, including taking it to the national leadership team and at staff training sessions, to help resolve conflicts and to embed a different culture.

“I have tried to implement and have a cultural change within the organisation,” he said. “Doing the courses becomes interesting head knowledge, but we wanted to be living this out.”

Peacewise course journal cover

A PeaceWise course journal for youth.

But if the Bible is the Christian road map for life, what does PeaceWise offer those of faith in resolving conflict, marriage problems and trouble in the playground?

Gleeson says the impact of the program on students’ lives beyond the classroom and school gates cannot be undervalued.

He provides an example of how some siblings sat around their kitchen table with their PeaceWise resources to sort out a conflict at home, rather than involve their parents.

He mentions how the school’s head of pastoral care also reports instances of kids in the playground in huddles sorting out problems on their own, using the guidelines of what they’ve been taught in the classroom.

“This is not unusual,” Gleeson said. “PeaceWise is now used as a verb. Kids say they are ‘PeaceWising’, or have ‘PeaceWised’.”

Dibden says the resources and skills promoted by PeaceWise condenses those themes from Scripture to bring a Biblical focus to mediation and conflict resolution.

“I think it is that they [PeaceWise] are putting it together for us…[and] you can see the themes and application better,” he said.

“It is making a difference in how we conduct ourselves with each other. It doesn’t mean there are less conflicts, but it does mean there are more resolutions.”

In May this year, PeaceWise held its inaugural national conference in Parramatta, Sydney, where it launched a new logo and tagline, “building peacemakers for life”. It also announced its formal partnership agreement with Scripture in schools organisation GodSpace, and a bold plan for PeaceWiseVoice, a program that aims to speak into public spaces and “breathe a voice of hope” as well as reconciliation.

“The place for calm and respectful discussion of issues seems to be growing smaller and smaller. Instead, we see so much name calling, cancel culture, vilification, victimisation or violence,” the organisation says on its website.

“Amidst its many benefits, social media has also become a vehicle for real harm. People are losing their reputations, careers, relationships. They are also becoming depressed, or worse.
“Into this space, we want to breathe a voice of hope. A calm, non-shrill, non-aggressive voice that offers opportunities for dialogue and discussion. And for learning better ways for us to engage, discuss and disagree. And to respond to the challenge of conflict.”

This also includes entering the reconciliation process for First Nations peoples.

It is a bold vision but one which Burgess believes God is directing them to pursue.

“PeaceWise always was and always will be a work of God and the way [it] started was absolutely an expression of that,” Burgess said.

“The way we have gone about working out what we should do as a ministry has always been to seek God and His leading and His guidance and then try and follow Him.”

It’s a vision that Burgess hopes will send ripples into homes, schools, workplaces and the wider community.

This article has been clarified to better reflect Peacewise’s focus on peacemaking rather than mediation.

 

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