The theme? “Approaching Personal Conflict with Faith, Social Awareness, and Personal Insight.” Big ideas, yes, but they came alive through hands-on workshops, teaching, videos, small-group conversations, and honest self-reflection. We explored how our faith can shift how we see conflict; not just as a challenge, but as a space where transformation happens.
The first session pushed us to ask: Can pain be holy ground when held with faith? What if God meets us in the midst of our mess? Then we zoomed out to consider the societal lenses we’ve inherited and how they shape our reactions to tension. How much of our approach to conflict comes from our stories, our families, our cultures, even our churches? We started unpacking the lenses we’ve inherited and talked about what it would mean to try on some new ones. Finally, we zoomed in close, examining our conflict styles with honesty and grace. We looked in the mirror: Do I freeze when things get tense? Get defensive? Try to keep the peace at all costs?
