Services
Services offered by Conciliation Services Canada
Training Workshops
Nan Cressman leads workshops, clergy retreats and leadership seminars across Canada on a variety of church conflict transformation topics. She has been described as a “conflict evangelist”, bringing encouragement, insight and hope in an area of church life that leads many to despair. Her goal is to help Christians to lose some of their fear of conflict, to start experiencing it as a potential gift from God, and to learn the skills they’ll need in order to use its energy to get problems solved and relationships strengthened. Nan’s workshops in conflict transformation are grounded not just in organizational development and the social sciences, but also in the Christian scriptures and in Christian faith. As well as providing opportunities for new skill development, Nan encourages participants to consider the scriptures anew through the lens of conflict transformation, and to apply those teachings to their conflict behaviours and attitudes in both personal and congregational settings.
For a list of frequently requested workshop topics, click on this link.
Summer Training Institutes for Church Leaders
If only they’d taught this in seminary!” is a refrain often heard during Conciliation Services Canada’s Summer Training Institutes for Church Leaders. These three-day ecumenical training events offer continuing education in vital areas of congregational health and leadership, led by internationally recognized facilitators, to Canadian church leaders here on home turf. The Summer Training Institutes typically attract ministry personnel, lay leaders, and judicatory staff from six or seven different Canadian denominations. This diversity creates a rich and supportive learning environment, allowing participants not just to learn from top-notch presenters, but to connect with peers from other traditions around issues of shared interest and experience. The Summer Training Institutes are traditionally held in Halifax and Edmonton in May, and in Waterloo, Ontario, in June
Decision Making Process Design and Facilitation
In the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, we get a glimpse of leaders of the early church working on a group decision that, in the end, they were able to describe as one that “seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28). Through Conciliation Services Canada, Nan Cressman offers help to modern day churches and leadership groups when they want to work through tough decisions, or simply want to explore their differences, in equally faithful ways. For more information, click here.
Congregational Conflict Intervention
Sometimes, despite our best efforts to catch difficult issues while they’re still small, they nevertheless grow into crises. If coffee hour is no longer comfortable, the congregation is starting to break into “camps”, and empty pews are starting to appear, it may be time to consider inviting some outside intervention. Since 1990, Nan Cressman has worked as a congregational conflict consultant in six different Canadian denominations. For more information on a typical intervention process, click here.
Consultation and Coaching
It is not always appropriate, or culturally acceptable, to invite an outside third party into a congregation when it is experiencing difficulties. Nevertheless, those leading decision making and conflict management processes within the church can still benefit from outside guidance and reflection through Conciliation Services Canada’s individual consultation and conflict coaching service. Phone consultations can be set up to provide you with a third party perspective on the situation thus far, to inform you of the predictable dynamics of conflict that you might yet expect and how you could prepare to work with them, to review with you the steps you are planning to take and brainstorm alternative actions, and to debrief after your meetings and encounters.