I serve on a team dedicated to creating spaces for innovation in the church and sparking imagination in ministry. In our gatherings we receive training designed to help strengthen our competencies and expand our knowledge base for ministry. In my opinion, the most impactful training we’ve had was on nonviolent communication.
NVC begins with the assumption that all people are “compassionate by nature, and that violent strategies—verbal or physical—are learned behaviors taught and supported by the prevailing culture.” NVC invites its practitioners first to consider another’s humanity when communicating with them. It challenges us not to be guarded against others when entering into disagreements with them, and reminds us that the person in front of us is just that: a person, a whole person with fears, hopes, and anxieties of his or her own who may be communicating out of those fears and anxieties. Instead of responding out of our own fears and anxieties, we are to hold the other person in our hearts as a fellow human being deserving of compassion.
The prevailing culture teaches us to use “enemy images” when we encounter those who have perspectives, practices, and beliefs that are different from our own. But enemy images, says Marshall Rosenberg, come from “the thinking that says there is something wrong with the people whose actions and values we don’t agree with.” Whether they are antagonistic toward us or not, we decide that their worldview is a threat. Their practices are threatening, they mean us no good, and they’re undoing all the work we’re trying to do. The gun owner is antagonistic to the antigun community activist. The Muslim refugee is a danger to the evangelical citizen. The Democrat is anathema to the Republican. Because they are different, something is wrong with them.
