Can Conflict Be Good?

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
and the Healthy Relations Team
September 13, 2026
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Conflict is uncomfortable, and most of us would rather avoid it. But when we face it with love and wisdom, conflict can deepen our relationships and strengthen our community. This Sunday, the Healthy Relations Team will help us explore how we, as a community, have dealt with conflict and how, if we embrace healthy conflict as a means of growth, we can face challenges together and stay aligned with our values.

Welcome

Prelude: “Invention N.8 in F major” (JS Bach) – Valeria Diaz, piano

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

BRINGING CONFLICT TO THE TABLE
Amanda Doyle

Conflict resolution is in fact one of the greatest things that you can accomplish in your life and in your relationship. When I view people as not bringing conflict up, I think it’s being unfaithful to the relationship. I think it’s an abdication of your role in the relationship, and you are actually hoisting on the other person the responsibility to resolve your conflicts, the responsibility to speak those things out loud.

Because people go their whole lives never voicing any conflict. Not because there isn’t conflict, but because they’re either too lazy to do it; they don’t have the trust in their partner to receive it. Or they’re just like,”You know what? I tried that for seven years and not a damn thing changed and I’m done.” And that’s when you get in scary places in your relationship.

When I catch myself not bringing up conflict, I am like, ooh, red flag. It is an atrophy of the relationship because it’s an investment. The willingness to bring conflict to the table, to make yourself vulnerable, shows a faith in your relationship, an investment in a relationship, a belief that your relationship could be better than it is. And if you do not bring conflict at the table, you are saying, “My relationship is never going to get better. It’s going to be the same every day, over and over.”

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Anthem

“We Just Disagree” (Jim Krueger) – Jordan Price, lead vocal; Brent Baldwin, guitar & backing vocal; Noah Reinhuber, backing vocal; Efrain Davila, bass guitar; Rachel Fuhrer, drums

Been away, haven’t seen you in a while
How’ve you been, have you changed your style?
And do you think that we’ve grown up differently?
Don’t seem the same, seems you’ve lost your feel for me

So let’s leave it alone
‘Cause we can’t see eye to eye
There ain’t no good guy, there ain’t no bad guy
There’s only you and me and we just disagree
Ooh, oh-oh-oh

I’m going back to a place that’s far away
How bout you, have you got a place to stay?
Why should I care when I’m just trying to get along?
We were friends, but now it’s the end of our love song

So let’s leave it alone
‘Cause we can’t see eye to eye
There ain’t no good guy, there ain’t no bad guy
There’s only you and me and we just disagree
Ooh, oh-oh-oh

So let’s leave it alone
‘Cause we can’t see eye to eye
There ain’t no good guy, there ain’t no bad guy
There’s only you and me and we just disagree
Ooh, oh, oh-oh-oh

Reading

APPROACHING CONFLICT LIKE A POEM
Tania Y Márquez

“Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict.”
-Dorothy Thompson

I joined a poetry class because a new acquaintance invited me to. I mostly joined so I could get to know this person better. I was captivated the first day by the deep wisdom my professor shared. To me, it was like being at church. Every word he spoke found fertile soil in my heart. There were times where I felt myself overcome with beauty. The beauty I found in this class contrasted with the conflicts I was witnessing at work, in society, and almost everywhere.

One Friday, as I listened to my teacher recite one of our poems, I wondered: What if I approached conflict like writing a poem?

What if everyone did?

Most of the time, conflict is reactive: people tend to do and say things before they’ve had a chance to process their emotions, or to understand the totality of the conflict.

But I learned in my poetry class about carefully choosing words not because they need to rhyme or have a specific number of syllables, but because they need to be precise and beautiful. Poets are intentional about how to best deliver the message; how to best uncover the mystery of life so that others can experience it. Silences matter, too; part of the message is to pause, to wait, to leave space to breathe before the next line. There’s also the rhythm; a poem is a song and songs can touch on difficult subjects, too, but the rhythm, the melody matters.

Since that moment, I’ve been wondering: What if, the next time I find myself in the midst of conflict, I can slow down and imagine I am about to write a poem? Then, conflict resolution or transformation would turn into a craft, a laboratory where beauty is created. There would be a slowing down that would help me connect with what I’m feeling so I can find the right words to share that experience, and a silence to let me listen to the poem of the Other.

Centering

Music for Meditation: “Dig” (Incubus) – Noah Reinhuber, vocals; Valeria Diaz, piano

Sermon

CAN CONFLICT BE GOOD
Margaret Borden, Tomas Medina, and John Scott

Margaret Borden

From Conflict to Covenant: A Part of Our History

I want to share a piece of First UU Austin’s history one that explains why we have the values, mission, and Healthy Relations Covenant we have today.

The story begins with conflict.

In 2008 and 2009, our church went through a very difficult period. A contentious congregational meeting ended with a close vote that dismissed our minister. People were hurt, relationships were strained, and the congregation was deeply divided.

But what happened next is an important part of our history.

Rather than simply trying to move on, the Board focused on reconciliation. It organized listening sessions and brought in a consultant to help the congregation understand what had happened and determine how we could move forward.

And throughout this process, there was a deliberate effort to involve as much of the congregation as possible.

The consultant interviewed Board members, staff, volunteers, and lay leaders, and made himself available to anyone in the congregation who wanted to talk.

One of his findings was particularly important. Our church had a mission statement -but it was long, wordy, and very few people knew what it was. More significantly, we lacked a shared understanding of our purpose: Who were we as a congregation, and what did we want to be in the larger community?

So we began asking.

word-cloud

This word cloud records what members of this congregation said they wanted First UU to represent.

Notice the largest word: COMMUNITY, Two other prominent words are TRANSCENDENCE and CONNECTION.

Those ideas didn’t disappear.

	OUR VALUES
TRANSCENDENCE	To connect with wonder and awe of the unity of life
COMMUNITY	To connect with joy, sorrow, and service with those whose lives we touch
COMPASSION	To treat ourselves and others with love
COURAGE	To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty
TRANSFORMATION	To pursue the growth that changes our lives and heals our world

They became part of the values we still profess today. Connection is embedded in our definition of community: “To connect with joy, sorrow, and service with those whose lives we touch.”

So our present-day values aren’t simply words somebody chose for a plaque. They grew out of a difficult moment in our history and a congregational process of asking. Who do we want to be?

At roughly the same time, after our interim minister arrived in 2009, we began another congregational process. This one asked two simple questions:

How do we want others to treat us? And how do we promise to treat others?

Again, participation was extensive.

Meetings were held at different times during the week and on weekends. Tables were set up in the gallery before, between, and after our two Sunday services. Members wrote on yellow and blue notes three ways they wanted to be treated and three ways they promised to treat others.

Hundreds of those notes covered the windows of the foyer and gallery and the walls of Howson Hall.

A team gathered all of that input and distilled it into what became our Healthy Relations Covenant, introduced in 2010.

And the covenant itself has continued to evolve. It was revised in 2013 and again in 2023, each time with opportunities for congregational input.

Healthy Relations Covenant

As a religious community, we promise:

To Nurture and Protect by:

Communicating with one another directly in a spirit of compassion and goodwill

Speaking when silence would inhibit progress

Disagreeing from a place of curiosity and respect

Interrupting hurtful interactions when we witness them

To Sustain and Build by:

Forgiving ourselves and others when we fall short of expectations, showing good humor and the optimism required for moving forward

Thus, do we covenant with one another.

That history matters because the covenant was born from experience. Our congregation had learned what unresolved conflict could cost a community. When we are in conflict and avoid resolving that conflict, we are not connected and we are not in community.

So we made promises to one another:

We promise to communicate directly in a spirit of compassion and goodwill.
We promise to speak when silence would inhibit progress.
We promise to disagree from a place of curiosity and respect.
And we promise to interrupt hurtful interactions when we witness them.

These aren’t abstract ideals. They are part of our congregation’s response to its own history.

And there is one more promise I think is especially important:

We promise to forgive ourselves and others when we fall short of expectations, showing good humor and the optimism required for moving forward.

I might substitute the word aspirations for expectations.

Because Unitarian Universalists are covenant-making, covenant-breaking, and covenant-remaking people. We make promises knowing that we will sometimes fail to keep them. The important thing is what we do when that happens.

Years later, when Rev. Meg arrived in Austin, she created the Healthy Relations Ministry Team to help make this covenant come alive in our congregation. That work continues today.

But keeping the covenant alive isn’t the responsibility of only a committee or a minister. It belongs to all of us.

Our covenant shouldn’t simply be a plaque hanging on the wall of every room in this church.

It is part of the history of this congregation a history in which conflict led us to ask who we wanted to be, what we valued, and how we promised to treat one another.

And every time we choose to live those promises, we continue writing that history.

Tomas Medina

Having a covenant, and knowing why we have it is not the same thing as actually living it.

Living in healthy relationship with one another can be hard. It asks us to do things that may not come naturally to us:

to speak directly,
to stay curious when we disagree,
and to engage with conflict rather than run from it.

And I know something about wanting to run from conflict. In fact, I hate conflict.

And, if you’re a member of this congregation, there’s a better than even chance that you hate conflict too.

If you were around here during the in between time, the time between Rev Meg retiring and Rev Chris being called, you likely remember that we had two interim ministers, Rev Erin and Rev Jonalu.

What most of you probably don’t remember is that our interim ministers produced an “interim report” about our congregation based on their observations and their interviews with members and staff. One of the findings of their report was that we are a conflict avoidant church.

You may think that avoiding conflict is a good thing and something to strive for. That’s what I thought when I joined the Healthy Relations team here at church. And,I thought our healthy relations covenant outlined a way for us to be together and avoid conflict. But, I was wrong.

During my time on the Healthy Relations team, I came to learn, or to remember, that avoiding conflict is, in fact, not healthy.

Here is how the interim report described conflict avoidance at First UU:

Many members continue to avoid conflict, fearing that difference could erupt in unexpected ways. Conflict avoidance can be seen in:

the reluctance of members to raise issues directly with leadership (including with the Healthy Relations Team),

uncertainty around how to deal with conflict when it arises,

blaming of anyone who names a problem, and

the tendency for people with concerns to fade away and leave the church rather than work together.

I now understand that the work of the healthy relations team and the goal of our healthy relations covenant is not to help us avoid conflict but rather to deal with conflict in a positive way so that it strengthens our congregation and our relationships.

Having spent 64 years avoiding conflict as much as possible, I really have very little idea of how to handle conflict in a positive way. I’m guessing that this may be true for some of you as well. And, that is why the Healthy Relations team will be leading a discussion group on the book Crucial Conversations, Tools for Talking When the Stakes are High.

The book’s outlines a process for holding conversations that are “crucial”, that is those that involve

high stakes,
opposing views
and high emotions.

The book came recommended by our ministers and had been read by all members of the Healthy Relations team, except for me (Hence, my belief that conflict was to be avoided).

I have since read the book and found it very helpful. If you decide to join us for the discussion group, I am highly confident that you too will find it valuable.

John Scott

The Healthy Relations Team will be hosting a facilitated book discussion group using the book Crucial Conversations, 3rd edition.

This book has been around for about 25 years and has been widely used in organizations of all sizes.

The 3rd edition notes that over 5 million copies had been purchased as of 2023.

A crucial conversation is defined as a conversation when

Opinions vary,
Stakes are high, and
Emotions run strong.

Sometimes we can anticipate a crucial conversation if we know we have something important to discuss with a family member, a co-worker, a neighbor, etc.

Other times what starts out as a “normal” conversation suddenly begins to feel different, and we realize that the conversation has become crucial because opinions vary, the stakes are high, and emotions begin to run strong.

This book offers many strategies that can be helpful. It addresses questions such as:

What is lag time, and why is it so harmful to crucial conversations?
What are some ways we get distracted from the real issue we need to talk about?
What role do stories play in the creation of our feelings and actions?
How do we ensure that conversations are safe?
When a crucial conversation comes to an end, what mistakes do we often make and how can we be more skillful?

Group Meetings/Schedule

The course is called “Healthy Conflict Skills.” The group will meet for 8 sessions. We’ll meet here at the church on first and third Sundays from 1:00-2:30. There may be some adjustments due to holidays, but that’s the general plan. Our first meeting will be Sunday, October 4, and we’ll run through early to mid-January.

The book has 13 chapters, and we’ll cover 1 or 2 chapters per meeting with discussion questions for each chapter, and sometimes the discussion may incorporate activities or practices.

You will need a copy of the book (3rd edition) in time to read Chapters 1-2 before our first meeting on Oct. 4. Class size is limited to 16, so please register early. A link is included in the Sunday e-newsletter.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

As we go forth today, may we dedicate ourselves to relationships of fierce love and the honesty, commitment, and shared vulnerability they require.

May we dwell in that fierce love until next we gather again.

May the congregation say, amen”, and “blessed be”.

I love you fiercely. Amen.

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