Dr. Sue Edwards

Dr. Kay Daigle

If you're a leader, get ready for conflict according to Dr. Sue Edwards of Dallas Seminary. It's inevitable, so we need to prepare for it as best we can.

Dr. Edwards and Dr. Kay Daigle tell the story of a conflict they were both involved in years ago. Dr. Edwards strongly suggests that we learn about peacemaking now and practice it in every part of our lives. Get ready for conflict!

Don't miss the second podcast in the series: Women's Tendencies in Conflict, and the third, Empowering Practices in Conflict. Right now all are available on video, but the second and third will drop on our podcast soon.

This episode is available on video as well.

Recommended resources

Oletha Barnett's podcast series, Fight Right: 1. The Nature of Conflict, 2. Biblical Resolution 3. Accepting Other's Differences. All are also available on video.

All BOW videos on dealing with conflict

Book:  Leading Women Who Wound: Strategies for an Effective Ministry by Sue Edwards & Kelley Mathews

Timestamps

00:22 Introduction

02:45 Get ready for conflict

08:07 Research confirms the need to become peacemakers.

09:43 Conflict in Jesus' life

TranscriptKay >> Hi. I'm Kay Daigle of Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries, and I'd like to welcome you to a series on conflict. Our guest today is Dr. Sue Edwards from Dallas Seminary. Sue is the Associate Professor of Educational Ministries and Leadership there. Her complete bio is on our website if you want to read that. This series is really a follow up to a series that we previously posted with Oletha Barnett called “Fight Right,” which will give you the basics of conflict.

Sue and I today are going to talk more specifically about leadership. The title of this series is “Empowering Leaders to Survive and Thrive through Conflict.” So this will be specifically for you, but you will need the basics that Oletha gives about handling it and just some other tips that she has. It's a wonderful series. You'll find it also on our website at BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org. This is the first in three.

Right now, we're just going to talk about “Get Ready.”

Just to give you a little background, Sue and I met years ago and really at the time, Sue was weathering a conflict that she may talk about some in this series. I got drawn into the conflict really when I wouldn't take a stand against Sue by the people that were attacking her.

And so I became a second target of these people. It bonded me and Sue because we were dealing with the same people and had experienced some of the same things. It was a very difficult time, I know for her, and it certainly was for me. So I know that Sue not only has studied conflict and studied scripturally what to do with conflict, but she has experienced conflict.

She has weathered it; she has experienced it; and she has learned about it.

So, Sue, I'm excited to hear what you are going to tell us about conflict and we're talking about get ready. So get us ready.

Sue >> I'll start out by just saying be ready because conflict is coming and the more influential you are as a leader, the more conflict you'll experience. And our experience was, oh my goodness, it was a horrendous year for me. I was leading a women's ministry and we were in the same church there.

And a rival Bible teacher (Now, those words should never even be in the same sentence, but that was the reality of what was going on.), she attempted to have me thrown out of the church as a false teacher, and it was over a doctrinal issue that at our seminary our professors agreed to disagree about. It's a gray area and godly people take different stands on it. But this woman she was not willing to do that. In fact, I remember sitting in the Executive Pastor's office, and she was glaring at me over the table and she said, “You are holding women's hands to hell.”

It was that kind of rhetoric that was going on and the Executive Pastor basically said, and of course,