Christian conciliation: New use for old tenets

This Article was originally published in The Birmingham Business Journal in March 2003.

By Glenn Waddell & Bill Ratliff

Business owners and employees who have substantial experience with litigation and alternative dispute resolution are increasingly being exposed to Christian conciliation – a "new old" way to resolve disputes.

Many, like Tommy Brigham, president and CEO of RealtySouth in Birmingham, are convinced that conciliation is a superior means of resolving disputes.

"Sometimes all you really need is for one person to acknowledge that they've wronged somebody else," Brigham says.

"Once the relational issues are resolved, coming to agreement on the dollars and cents is not all that difficult."

Similarly, Tom Newton of the Prattville real estate development firm Newton, Oldacre & McDonald is persuaded that conciliation's focus on relationships is the key.

"If your focus in business is on the issues, you always seem to have problems," he says.

"But if you focus on relationships, the issues have a way of working themselves out."

Brigham and Newton, like many in the business world in the Southeast, are not shy about their Christian faith and are eager to put Christian principles into practice – even when faced with difficult business disputes.

Common scenarios

Four years ago, Al and Bob had an argument over whether to hire a new employee.

In hindsight, the decision was clearly not worth the fuss, and both men ultimately agreed that hiring an office manager was the right move.

The new employee worked out well, but the angry words spoken that day seemed to hang over the office like a thick fog.

Three months ago, Al and Bob met for the first time with their attorney and their accountant to begin dissolving the partnership.

When asked why they wanted to end such a profitable relationship, the men simply replied that they had different business philosophies. Both looked back with longing on the early days of their business, when they faced challenges together and with excitement.

Although Al and Bob disagreed over how to divide the assets of the business, their accountant helped them to reach an accommodation, and the business was finally dissolved last month.

When they see one another on the street, Al and Bob are polite, but each privately blames the other for breaking up the business and both wish they had been able to keep the business together.

Business or personal?

Situations like the one described above are all too common in business. Each man would disavow having any personal animosity toward his former business associate.

Although Al and Bob described their dispute about dividing assets as "business, not personal," it's not difficult to see that the opposite was actually the case.

In fact, when former business associates describe the reason for their departure as "90 percent business, 10 percent personal," you can reliably flip the percentages to obtain a more accurate picture.

The situation is all the more discouraging when it is apparent to even the casual observer that all parties would have benefited from continuing the business relationship. What, then, should we do?

There is little doubt that litigating over the dissolution of a business enterprise rarely benefits anyone.

While our judicial system is designed to give litigants answers, it is neither inexpensive nor designed to restore personal relationships.

Simply stated, litigation destroys, rather than repairs, personal relationships. This is not a slap at our judicial system – just an acknowledgment of reality.

Alternative approaches

The most common alternatives to litigation utilized by businesses today are mediation or arbitration, collectively referred to as alternative dispute resolution, or ADR.

In short, a mediator is an impartial third party who helps parties reach a mutually agreeable resolution to their dispute, while an arbitrator is an impartial third party who imposes a decision or award on the parties.

Although not formally trained as such, Al and Bob's accountant essentially served as a mediator when he helped them reach an agreement on the division of partnership assets.

The fact that Al and Bob still hold a grudge against one another provides some indication that the deal the accountant brokered did not address their fractured personal relationship.

Indeed, the type of mediation most commonly practiced in our nation does focus exclusively on the substantive issues in dispute – completely, or at least largely, ignoring the personal issues.

Arbitration, although sometimes faster and somewhat more predictable than litigation, has even less to offer in the way of restoring personal relationships.

Where the parties had no prior personal relationships and have no possibility of a future personal relationship, these "ordinary" forms of ADR are adequate and often preferable to litigation.

The "new old" form of dispute resolution referenced at the beginning of this article is mediation or arbitration under the rules of the Institute for Christian Conciliation (ICC), a form of ADR broadly referred to as "Christian conciliation."

Unlike ordinary ADR, conciliation places as much emphasis on restoring the personal relationships as it does on reaching a substantive solution to a dispute.

It is "old" because the basic principles utilized are found in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible; it is "new" because it has only within the last 20 years been placed in a systematic format and seen rapid growth under the leadership of the ICC.

The ICC reports that "conciliation has been used to settle a wide variety of disputes, including contract, employment, family, personal injury, church, landlord/tenant, real estate, creditor, debtor and professional conflicts. The monetary claims in these cases have ranged from nothing to several million dollars."

Covington County Circuit Judge Ashley McKathan has nothing but good things to say about this "new old" means of dispute resolution, noting that "conciliation resolved two of the most difficult family disputes I've seen in my courtroom."

Judge McKathan stated that "five years of litigation wouldn't have produced an answer all those folks liked, but they were able to resolve their dispute and end years of bitterness in a matter of days through conciliation."

Other members of the bench and bar, many of whom eagerly desire to put their faith into practice, are taken with the notion of conciliation.

Federal District Court Judge Karon Bowdre, a former board member of the Christian Legal Society, is persuaded that lawyers can best serve their clients' long-term interests by persuading them to restore broken relationships.

She points out that "the Rules of Ethics specifically allow a lawyer to encourage their client to consider moral, economic, social and political considerations."

A lawyer advising a client who is a professing Christian "should strongly consider recommending that the client give thought to using conciliation as a means of resolving their dispute, particularly where the client is in a dispute with another Christian," Bowdre says.

This article likely has raised more questions about conciliation than there is space for answers. For those interested in pursuing those answers, please visit the "Frequently Asked Questions" section of the ICC's Web site at http://www.hispeace.org or contact the authors directly.

For now, let us simply return to the business dispute described at the beginning of the article. How could it have turned out using conciliation?

The rest of the story

Al, when asked about the dissolution of his prior business partnership for what felt like the thousandth time, blew off some steam by criticizing and blaming Bob.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Al happened to blow off that steam during his weekly Bible study.

One of the men in the study had been through some of the conciliation training material offered by the ICC.

He challenged Al to go speak directly to Bob about his frustrations, and even worked with Al about what he should say.

Most importantly, he encouraged Al to first admit his own wrongs to Bob and seek forgiveness. Al swallowed his pride and met with Bob for lunch the next week.

Although Bob was initially wary and defensive, he readily agreed to forgive Al for the harsh words Al had spoken four years earlier.

Before Al could go on, Bob admitted his own wrong actions from that horrible day and confessed his anger toward Al for the breakup of the business.

As often happens in situations like this, forgiveness led to confession, which led to more forgiveness.

The two men left their meeting reconciled to one another and with the same thought: "Why didn't we do this four years ago?"

Conclusion

Is this scenario real or a fairy tale? While the result may seem unrealistic, it is in fact not that unusual in a conciliation practice.

Ask yourself about the last business dispute you were in or witnessed. Do you believe it was adequately resolved? Aren't you persuaded that an effort at restoring the personal relationship is worthwhile?

Before jumping into the fray next time, think hard about this "new old" way of resolving disputes.